Dear prospective students: this is a provisional syllabus.

Since this is a new course, I am still

developing it – choosing topics and readings. But this draft syllabus should give you a good sense of
the basic topics, readings, and requirements.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

MONEY AND POWER:

CULTURAL APPROACHES TO
ECONOMIC LIFE
ANTH E-1645/W, Spring 2022
Wednesdays, 2-4 pm
Live Web Conference

Instructor: James Herron

Phone: 5-5785 Email: jherron@fas.harvard.edu
Office Hours: Over zoom by appointment
https://harvard.zoom.us/my/jmsherron

Teaching Assistants:
TBD

Course Overview
This course will consider how culture shapes the economic aspects of our lives. That is,
we will be seek to understand ‘the economy’ not as a separate realm with its own
special logic and structure but instead as embedded in the social relations, identities,
and cultural practices of everyday life. Our major course themes will include exchange,
money, debt, commodification, markets, and labor. We will consider questions such as
the following. How do the different kinds of exchanges we engage in — gift exchanges
versus market exchanges, for instance — shape our relationships with others? We’ll
explore the social meaning of money and the role of the market in our lives. In a world
where it is possible to “rent” a family, does money destroy love and intimacy? What
aspects of our lives are governed by the logic of capitalism and what aspects escape
capitalism’s grip? Why does it feel shameful to be in debt, and how has this shame been
manipulated for political purposes? Why in the U.S. do we consider work to be sacred
and morally purifying even though many of us have tedious jobs? The course readings
Harvard University — Anthropology E-1645 — Money and Power

will include theoretical and empirical works drawn mainly from the fields of
anthropology, economic sociology, and heterodox economics. Our key texts will
include David Graeber’s Debt, Viviana Zelizer’s The Social Meaning of Money, and Sidney
Mintz’s Sweetness and Power.

An equally important goal of the course is to develop your ability to write clear,
engaging, and coherent analytical essays. With this in mind the class is structured to
give you the opportunity to work in a sustained and systematic way on improving your
writing.

Course Policies and Expectations

Students are expected to:

* complete all readings prior to lecture;

* attend all lectures;
* write two papers, the second of which must be revised in light of feedback
from the teaching assistants;
* perform satisfactorily on the midterm and final examinations.

Grading: Course grades will be determined as follows:

Diagnostic response paper Sat/Unsat

Paper 1 20%
Revision of paper 2 (6-7 pages) 30%
First examination 20%
Final examination 25%
Participation* 5%

*A note on participation grades: The participation portion of the grade reflects

attendance only, and will be calculated as follows: students who miss two or fewer
classes will get an A for participation; students who miss three lectures will get a C for
participation; students who miss 4 or more lectures will get no credit for participation.
This means it will be very difficult for students who miss 4 or more lectures to get an A
for the course. Excused absences (for medical reasons, etc.) will not count against the
participation grade.

Deadlines: We are on a tight schedule, so it is imperative that you submit work on

time. I will only accept late work if the student contacts me to request an extension in
advance of the deadline and has a compelling reason. Otherwise late work will receive a
significant grade penalty.

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Academic Honesty: All work submitted for this course must be your own work. Any
outside sources you use must be cited properly. Any student submitting plagiarized
work is eligible to fail the course and will be referred to the college’s Administrative
Board for further disciplinary action, including expulsion from the university. If you
have questions about what constitutes plagiarism, consult the relevant sections of
Harvard Guide to Using Sources website (usingsourcs.fas.harvard.edu) and/or speak with the
instructor.

You are responsible for understanding Harvard Extension School policies on academic
integrity (www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/student-conduct/academic-
integrity) and how to use sources responsibly. Not knowing the rules,
misunderstanding the rules, running out of time, submitting "the wrong draft", or being
overwhelmed with multiple demands are not acceptable excuses. There are no excuses
for failure to uphold academic integrity. To support your learning about academic
citation rules, please visit the Harvard Extension School Tips to Avoid Plagiarism
(www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/resources/tips-avoid-plagiarism),
where you'll find links to the Harvard Guide to Using Sources and two, free, online 15-
minute tutorials to test your knowledge of academic citation policy. The tutorials are
anonymous open-learning tools.

What does the designation of the course as “Writing Intensive” mean? Writing-
intensive courses at Harvard Extension offer students the opportunity to develop their
writing skills in the context of a particular academic discipline, and they all feature
common elements. Students will:

* develop core writing skills, as defined by the instructor, in the discipline of the
course;
* complete multiple writing assignments of varying lengths, at least one of
which must be revised;
* produce a minimum of 10-12 pages of writing, exclusive of the required
revisions, over the course of the term;
* meet at least once in individual conference (in person, by phone, or
electronically) with the instructor or TA to discuss writing in progress;
* receive detailed feedback on their drafts and revisions, on both content and
expression.

More on Expectations for Written Work: A main goal for the course is for you to
produce two original, compelling, and analytically sound essays. Such essays are not
written on the fly; they take time, continual re-working, and critical reflection. The
writing requirements are designed to provide you with the techniques for constructing
good essays.

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* Drafts: You will submit a draft of the final essay. You’ll receive detailed
comments from the instructor or teaching assistant on the draft.

* Draft Conference: After the instructor or teaching assistant has carefully read
your draft, you will meet with the instructor or T.A. for 10 minute
conference in which we’ll work together on strategies for revising the essay.
You should also plan on taking notes during the conference. Missed
conferences may not be rescheduled.

* Essay Revisions: You should expect to extensively revise your draft before
submitting it for a grade.

Graduate Students: Graduate students will be expected to write longer and more
sophisticated exam answers and will have the option of completing a research paper
in lieu of the second paper.

Disability Services: The Extension School is committed to providing an accessible

academic community. The Disability Services Office offers a variety of
accommodations and services to students with documented disabilities. Please visit
www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/resources/disability-services-
accessibility for more information.

Online Etiquette: During our online sessions, please observe the following
guidelines

o Keep your microphone muted when you are not speaking

o The expectation is that you will keep your camera on for the entire class
unless you have a reason for turning it off

Course Readings
Books: The readings will be available online. If, however, you would like to read an
actual physical book, we will be reading big chunks of the following books, which have
been ordered at the Harvard Coop.

• Graeber D. (2014). Debt : the first 5,000 years. Melville House.

• Lindblom, C. E. (2001). The market system : what it is, how it works, and what to make
of it. Yale University Press.

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Other readings: Other required readings are available as PDF files in a password
protected section of the course website. You must be logged in with Harvard ID in
order to access these readings.

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Schedule of Class Meetings and Topics

Dear prospective students: this is a new course which I am still developing, and so the list of topics
and readings below is approximate and tentative. I will not be changing most of the key topics
(exchange, markets, money, wage labor), but I might still make some alterations in terms of
readings.

WEEK 1 Introduction: Money and Power

WEEK 2: What is the economy? [introduction to political economy here]

WEEK 3: Culture versus economic rationality

• Selection from Polanyi, K. (1985). The great transformation. Beacon Press.

WEEK 4: Coercion in the economy

• Selection from Earle, T. K. (1997). How chiefs come to power : the political economy in
prehistory. Stanford University Press.

WEEK 5: Gifts, exchange, and reciprocity

• Selection from Mauss, M., & Halls, W. D. (2000). The gift : the form and reason for
exchange in archaic societies. W.W. Norton.
• Selection from Graeber, D. (2014). Debt : the first 5,000 years. Melville House.

WEEK 6: Redistribution: Bullshit Jobs

• Selection Graeber, D. (2018). Bullshit jobs. Simon & Schuster.

WEEK 7: The Market: Commodities

• Selection from Lindblom, C. E. (2001). The market system : what it is, how it works,
and what to make of it. Yale University Press.
• Selection from Mintz, S. W. (1985). Sweetness and power : the place of sugar in
modern history. Viking.

WEEK 8: The Market: Politics and Ideology

• Lindblom, C. E. (2001). The market system : what it is, how it works, and what to make
of it. Yale University Press.
• Optional: “The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret” in Marx, K. (2017).
Capital (Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy). Neeland Media LLC.

WEEK 9: Money (and Power)

• Selection from Graeber D. (2014). Debt : the first 5,000 years. Melville House.
• Selection from Zelizer, V. A. R. (1994). The social meaning of money. Basic Books.

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WEEK 9: Wage Labor

• Cohen, G. A. (1983). “The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom.” Philosophy &
Public Affairs, 12(1), 3–33.
• “Consent, Coercion, and Resignation” in Chibber, V. (2022). The class matrix :
social theory after the cultural turn. Harvard University Press.
• Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1990). Contested Exchange : New Microfoundations
for the Political Economy of Capitalism. Politics & Society, 18(2), 165–222.

WEEK 10: Debt

• Selection from Graeber, D. (2014). Debt : the first 5,000 years. Melville House.

WEEK 11: Topic TBD

WEEK 12: Concluding Thoughts