Sex, Money, and Power: Anthropology of Intimacy and Exchange
ANTH 203
Spring 2024
| Section:
01
|
| Crosslisting:
FGSS 223 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate, Queer Studies, Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate |
Sex and money--intimacy and economy--are often imagined to occupy distinct and separate spheres. Sex and intimacy are located in the private or domestic realm, in spaces of leisure, feelings, care, and personal connections. Money and economy, on the other hand, are purportedly public, located in the market and tied to labor, rationality, and impersonal (non)-relations. This course brings these spheres together, focusing on the links, exchanges, and circuits between the intimate and the economic in diverse cultural contexts.
Drawing on anthropological, feminist, Marxist, queer, and critical race theory, we will build
working definitions of key concepts: intimacy, division of labor, domestic labor, sexual labor, exchange, commodity, value, neoliberalism, consumer culture, and more. We'll test, apply, critique, and expand these concepts as we work through ethnographic case studies on contemporary sex work and tourism, marketing and pornography, reproduction and domestic labor, marriage, class and sexual lifestyle, labor and care work, and sex stores and commodities. We will connect economic, cultural, and political formations with race, ethnicity, nation, sexuality, class, and gender, scaling up to consider global and transnational exchanges and down to consider how these circuits impact families and communities. Throughout, we will ask: Whose labor is valued and recognized, and why? How do bodies accrue value, and in what kinds of marketplaces? When are intimacies--sexual and social--commoditized? How is race, gender, and sexuality central to these exchanges? How do new transnational circuits constrain and/or empower people? And finally, who benefits from these relations, and who does not? |
|
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
|
Fulfills a Requirement for: (ANTH)(CSCT)(FGSS)(HRAD-MN)(STS) |
|
Past Enrollment Probability: Less than 50% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
BOOKS TBD, potentially: Susanna Rosenbaum, DOMESTIC ECONOMIES: WOMEN, WORK AND THE AMERICAN DREAM IN LOS ANGELES; Sarah Luna, LOVE IN THE DRUG WAR: SELLING SEX AND FINDING JESUS ON THE US-MEXICO BORDER; Erica Lorraine Williams, SEX TOURISM IN BAHIA: AMBIGUOUS ENTANGLEMENTS; Noelle Stout, AFTER LOVE: QUEER INTIMACY AND EROTIC ECONOMIES IN POST-SOVIET CUBA; Elizabeth Bernstein, TEMPORARILY YOURS: INTIMACY, AUTHENTICITY, AND THE COMMERCE OF SEX; Margot Weiss, TECHNIQUES OF PLEASURE: BDSM AND THE CIRCUITS OF SEXUALITY; Svati P. Shah, STREET CORNER SECRETS: SEX, WORK, AND MIGRATION IN THE CITY OF MUMBAI. Essays including Viviana Zelizer, Friedrich Engels, Evelyn Glenn, Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, Arlie Hochschild, Maria Mies, Francoise Verges, Gayle Rubin, Emma Goldman, Silvia Federici, Kathi Weeks, Angela Davis, Gloria Joseph, Karl Marx, M. Jacqui Alexander, Sophie Lewis, Rosemary Hennessey, bell hooks, John D¿Emilio, Kimberly Kay Hoang
|
Examinations and Assignments:
reading memos, collective glossary, in-class presentation, short papers, final paper/project |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Readings are under consideration; email me at mdweiss@wesleyan.edu if you would like the finalized list of course texts. |
| Instructor(s): Weiss,Margot Times: .M.W... 02:50PM-04:10PM; Location: OLIN204; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 7 | | |
| Seats Available: 1 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 0 | JR non-major: 0 | SO: 8 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 15 | 1st Ranked: 4 | 2nd Ranked: 2 | 3rd Ranked: 3 | 4th Ranked: 2 | Unranked: 4 |
|
|