GANT 6750 -

Institution:

The New School

Subject:

Description:

Anthropology of Materiality Fall 2008. Three credits. Arjun Appadurai and Peter van der Veer The subject of materiality in anthropology revisits debates about the social life of things, the tensions between gift and commodity, the traffic between humans and non-humans, and the relationship of human designs to the design of humanity. These debates raise questions about representation, as in modern art, or about agency, as in Protestantism, or take the shape of an opposition between materialism and spirituality fueled by anxieties about consumption and consumerism. While these concerns have a long genealogy worldwide, contemporary globalization forces us to place them in new ethical, political and cultural contexts. This graduate seminar involves close reading of classical and recent anthropological texts. Students collaborate in reports and class discussions to bridge longstanding debates about the anthropology of objects with more recent topics in the anthropology of science, technology and agency.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.newschool.edu

Phone Number:

(212) 229-5600

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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