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CS92PROD
Sex, Money, and Power: Anthropology of Intimacy and Exchange
ANTH 203
Spring 2012 not offered
Crosslisting: FGSS 223

This course focuses on the dense exchanges between money and sex/intimacy in various cultural and historical contexts, from the normalized arrangement of sex/money in marriage to the stigmatized arrangement of sex/money in sex work. We will combine recent ethnographic explorations of the relationships between sex/intimacy and money/commodification with interdisciplinary analysis of capitalism, globalization, and neoliberalism. Case studies will be drawn from sex work and tourism; marketing and pornography; reproduction, domestic labor, transnational adoption; marriage; class and sexual lifestyle; labor and carework; the global market in organs and body parts; outsourced surrogacy; sex stores and commodities; and sexual activism and identity politics. Throughout, we will ask, How do practices or bodies gain value? How are intimacies--sexual and social--commoditized? Who benefits from such arrangements, and who does not? And, finally, how are transnational flows complicating relationships between sex and money in a variety of sites?

Essential Capabilities: Intercultural Literacy
Intercultural literacy: the course is a cross-cultural investigation of the differential ways sex and money, intimacy and exchange come together. Readings are ethnographic, and focus on multiple cultures (Thailand, the US, the Carribbean, Russia, India) in their own context, and in comparison.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS ANTH
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (ANTH)(CSCT)(FGSS)(HRAD-MN)(STS)

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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