2012-2013 Academic Catalog

May 12, 2024

2012-2013 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

IDCE 30258 - Controlling Capitalism Controlling Capitalism,

This course turns an anthropological gaze onto industrialized societies or what some anthropologists have called the study of “late” capitalism. We focus much of the semester on the concept of hegemony and cultural control. While anthropologists have traditionally viewed culture as a deep unchanging structure, this course emphasizes the fragility and malleability of the human mind as the last frontier of neoliberalism. It seeks to problematize core Western cultural assumptions about “choice” and “individualism” and asks whether or not the North American model of corporate capitalist development is as “free” as it presents itself to be. By doing so, we revisit a perennial question about development: (a) Is what is good for business also good for democracy? and (b) is this sustainable? In doing so, we explore the ambiguity of the slogan of the World Social Forum, “Another World Is Possible.” What kind of world shall that be? That imagined by the elites of the World Economic Forum, or one imagined from the grassroots up?