Economics and Difference

The subject matter for this course is very broad, heterogeneous, and ill-defined—but really interesting—occurring somewhere around the conjunction of poststructuralism and explorations of economic topics and themes that take place at the margins of and often outside the official discipline of economics.

One of the goals of the course is to consider a series of economic concepts and to “make them different from themselves” by examining the ways in which scholars have sought to rethink the dichotomies that have been produced within mainstream (neoclassical and Keynesian) economic discourse. We will therefore draw on work from a number of different areas—including heterodox economics, literary theory, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, and so on—in order to challenge and move beyond the ways in which some important economic concepts have traditionally been defined and utilized. We will begin with some general readings and then proceed to read and discuss appropriate texts on the following topics: knowledges, bodies, values, gifts, monies, consumptions, labors, classes, developments, globalizations. We have decided not to cover the following topics in this course: markets, arts/cultures, productions, and distributions.

The other goal is to allow students the opportunity to explore topics and approaches that, eventually, may form part of their dissertation research. I’ll be asking each of you to do a final seminar paper for the semester, something that you can think of as a “trial run” of investigating one topic within a larger dissertation project. In order to get feedback on your research along the way, you’ll be expected to present an abstract or brief summary of your research midway into the semester and a rough draft of the paper approximately one month before the final version is due. Also, I will set aside one or more class sessions toward the end of the semester for you to present your work to the other seminar participants.

All of the readings (including those not marked as “required”) will be available in course packets that you can purchase at the Copy Center.

* indicates required reading

GENERAL

*Appadurai, A. 1986. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai, 3-63. New York: Cambridge University Press.

*Bataille, G. 1985. “The Notion of Expenditure.” In Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, trans. A. Stoekl, 116-29. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

*Callon, M. 1998. “Introduction: The Embeddedness of Economic Markets in Economics.” In The Laws of the Markets, ed. M. Callon, 1-57. Oxford: Blackwell.

*Jameson, F. 1991. “Postmodernism and the Market.” In Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 260-78. Durham: Duke University Press.

*Plotnitsky, A. 1993. “Exchanges, the Play of Forces, and General Economy.” In Reconfigurations: Critical Theory and General Economy, 3-61. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

*Shell, M. 1978. “The Ring of Gyges.” In The Economy of Literature, 11-62. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

*Shipton, P. 1989. “Understanding Ambivalence about Money in Rural Africa.” In Bitter Money: Cultural Economy and Some African Meanings of Forbidden Commodities, 3-15. Washington, D. C.: American Ethnological Society.

*Thompson, J. 1996. “Defoe and the Narrative of Exchange.” In Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel, 87-131. Durham: Duke University Press.

KNOWLEDGES

*Amariglio, J. and Ruccio, D. F. 1999. “The Transgressive Knowledge of ‘Ersatz’ Economics.” In What Do Economists Know? New Economics of Knowledge, ed. R. F. Garnett, Jr., 19-36. New York: Routledge.

*Foucault, M. 1973. “Exchanging.” In The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, 166-214. New York: Vintage Books.

*Gudeman, S. 1986. “Rice and Sugar: Local Models of Change” and “Models and Modes of Livelihood.” In Economics as Culture: Models and Metaphors of Livelihood, 1-47. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Porter, T. M. 1994. “Making Things Quantitative.” In Accounting and Science: Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason, ed. M. Power, 36-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tribe, K. 1978. “The Formation of Economic Discourse.” In Land, Labour and Economic Discourse, 110-45. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Amariglio, J. 1988. “The Body, Economic Discourse, and Power.” History of Political Economy 20 (4): 583-613.

*Amariglio, J. and Ruccio, D. F. Forthcoming. “Modern Economics: The Case of the Disappearing Body.” Cambridge Journal of Economics.

*Cooper, B. P. and Murphy, M. S. 1999. “‘Libidinal Economics’: Lyotard and Accounting for the Unaccountable.” In The New Economic Criticism: Studies at the Intersection of Literature and Economics, ed. M. Woodmansee and M. Osteen, 229-41. New York: Routledge.

*Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1983. “The Desiring-Machines.” In Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1-50. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Gallagher, C. 1986. “The Body Versus the Social Body in the Works of Thomas Malthus and Henry Mayhew.” Representations 14 (Spring): 83-106.

*Hewitson, G. Forthcoming. “The Disavowal of the Sexed Body in Neoclassical Economics.” In Postmodernism, Economics, and Knowledge, ed. S. Cullenberg, D. F. Ruccio, and J. Amariglio. New York: Routledge.

Connor, S. 1992. “Feminism and Value: Ethics, Difference, Discourse.” In Theory and Cultural Value, 158-89. Oxford: Blackwell.

*Guillory, J. 1993. “The Discourse of Value: From Adam Smith to Barbara Herrnstein Smith.” In Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation, 269-340. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

*Goux, J.-J. 1990. “Numismatics: An Essay in Theoretical Numismatics.” In Symbolic Economies: After Marx and Freud, 9-63. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

*Ruccio, D.; Graham, J.; and Amariglio, J. 1996.“‘The Good, the Bad, and the Different’: Reflections on Economic and Aesthetic Value.” In The Value of Culture: On the Relationship between Economics and Arts, ed. A. Klamer, 44-73. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Shapiro, M. J. 1993. “History and Value.” In Reading “Adam Smith”: Desire, History, and Value, 45-86. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.

*Spivak, G. C. 1988. “Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value.” In In Other Worlds, 154-75. New York: Routledge.

*Callari, A. 1999. “The Ghost of the Gift: The Unlikelihood of Economics.” Unpublished paper.

*Derrida, J. 1992. “The Madness of Economic Reason: A Gift without Present.” In Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. P. Kamuf, 34-70. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

*Mirowski, P. Forthcoming. “Refusing the Gift.” In Postmodernism, Economics, and Knowledge, ed. S. Cullenberg, D. F. Ruccio, and J. Amariglio. New York: Routledge.

*Strathern, M. 1992. “Qualified Value: The Perspective of Gift Exchange.” In Barter, Exchange, and Value: An Anthropological Approach, ed. C. Humphrey and S. Hugh-Jones, 169-91. New York: Cambridge University Press.

MONIES

Anderlini, L. and Sabourian, H. 1992. “Some Notes on the Economics of Barter, Money and Credit.” In Barter, Exchange, and Value: An Anthropological Approach, ed. C. Humphrey and S. Hugh-Jones, 75-106. New York: Cambridge University Press.

*Leyshon, A. and Thrift, N. 1997.“A Phantom State? The De-Traditionalisation of Money, the International Financial System and International Financial Centres.” In Money/Space: Geographies of Monetary Transformation, 291-321. New York: Routledge.

*Shipton, P. 1989. “Bitter Money.” In Bitter Money: Cultural Economy and Some African Meanings of Forbidden Commodities, 28-47. Washington, D. C.: American Ethnological Society.

*Stirrat, R. L. 1989. “Money, Men, and Women.” In Money and the Morality of Exchange, ed. J. Parry and M. Bloch, 94-116. New York: Cambridge University Press.

*Zelizer, V. A. 1989. “The Proliferation of Social Currencies.” In The Laws of the Markets, ed. M. Callon, 58-68. Oxford: Blackwell.

*Douglas, M. and Isherwood, B. 1996. “Why People Want Goods,” “The Uses of Goods,” and “Exclusion, Intrusion.” The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption, 3-10, 36-66. New York: Routledge.

*Fine, B.; Heasman, M.; and Wright, J. 1996. “The Poverty of Food Econometrics.” In Consumption in the Age of Affluence: The World of Food, 146-65. New York: Routledge.

*Howes, D. 1996. “Cultural Appropriation and Resistance in the American Southwest: Decommodifying ‘Indianness’.” In Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities, ed. D. Howes. New York: Routledge.

Morris, M. 1993. “Things to Do with Shopping Centres.” In The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. S. During, 295-319. New York: Routledge.

*Munro, R. 1996. “The Consumption View of Self: Extension, Exchange and Identity.” In Consumption Matters: The Production and Experience of Consumption, ed. S. Edgell, K. Hetherington, and A. Warde. Cambridge: Blackwell.

LABORS

*Baudrillard, J. 1975. “The Concept of Labor.” In The Mirror of Production, 21-51. St. Louis: Telos Press.

*DiFazio, W. 1985. Longshoremen: Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront, 28-113. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.

*Rancière, J. 1983. “The Myth of the Artisan: Critique of a Category of Social History.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 24: 1-16.

*Watkins, E. 1989. “English Departments as Workplaces” and “Literary Criticism: Work as Evaluation.”In Work Time: English Departments and the Circulation of Cultural Value, 13-44 and 77-141. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

CLASSES

*Balibar, E. 1991. “‘Class Racism’.” In Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, by E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein, 204-16. New York: Verso.

*Cameron, J. Forthcoming. “Domesticating Class: Feminity, Heterosexuality, and Household Politics.” In Class and Its “Others,” ed. J. K. Gibson-Graham et al. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

*Gibson-Graham, J.-K.; Resnick, S.; and Wolff, R. “Class in a Poststructuralist Frame.” In Class and Its ‘Others’.” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

*Stallybrass, P. 1990. “Marx and Heterogeneity: Thinking the Lumpenproletariat.” Representations 31: 69-95.

DEVELOPMENTS

*Crewe, E. 1997. “The Silent Traditions of Developing Cooks.” In Discourses of Development: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. R. D. Grillo and R. L. Stirrat, 59-80. New York: Oxford.

*Escobar, A. 1984. “Discourse and Power in Development: Michel Foucault and the Relevance of His Work to the Third World.” Alternatives 10 (3): 377-400.

*Gardner, K. and Lewis, D. 1996. “Anthropology, Development and the Crisis of Modernity.” In Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge, 1-25. Chicago: Pluto Press.

Gibson-Graham, J.-K. and Ruccio, D. F. Forthcoming. “‘After Development: Re-imagining Economy and Class.” In Re/presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Political Economy, ed. J.-K. Gibson-Graham, S. Resnick, and R. Wolff. Durham: Duke University Press.

*Mitchell, T. 1995. “The Object of Development: America’s Egypt.” In Power of Development, ed. J. Crush, 129-57. New York: Routledge.

GLOBALIZATIONS

*Hirst, P. 1999. “The Global Economy: Myth or Reality?” In The Ends of Globalization: Bringing Society Back In, ed. D. Kalb et al. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

*Larner, W. 1998. “Hitching a Ride on the Tiger’s Back: Globilisation and Spatial Imaginaries in New Zealand.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 16 (5): 599-614.

*Sassen, S. 1998. “Toward a Feminist Analysis of the Global Economy.” In Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money, 81-109. New York: The New Press.

*Scholte, J. A. 1998a. “Globalisation and Social Change (Part I).” Transnational Associations 1: 2-11.

Scholte, J. A. 1998b. “Globalisation and Social Change (Part II).” Transnational Associations 2: 62-79.

for another course:

MARKETS/EXCHANGES

Abolafia, M. Y. 1989. “Markets as Cultures: An Ethnographic Approach.” In The Laws of the Markets, ed. M. Callon, 69-85. Oxford: Blackwell.

Kopytoff, I. 1986. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai, 64-91. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Parry, J. 1989. “On the Moral Perils of Exchange.” In Money and the Morality of Exchange, ed. J. Parry and M. Bloch, 64-93. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Watkins, E. 1998. “Your Dog’s Just a Dog: Literary Scholarship and Market Politics.” In Everyday Exchanges: Marketwork and Capitalist Common Sense, 128-59. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

ARTS/CULTURES

Bourdieu, P. 1993. “The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods.” In The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. and intro. R. Johnson, 74-111. New York: Columbia University Press.

Connor, S. 1992. “Beyond Cultural Value: The Writing of the Other.” In Theory and Cultural Value, 231-59. Oxford: Blackwell.

Delany, P. 1999. “Who Paid for Modernism? ” In The New Economic Criticism: Studies at the Intersection of Literature and Economics, ed. M. Woodmansee and M. Osteen, 335-51. New York: Routledge.

Gagnier, R. Forthcoming. “Production, Reproduction, and Pleasure in Victorian Aesthetics.” In Culture and Economics: Economic and Aesthetic Man and Woman in Modern Market Society, 146-86. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mattelart, A.; Delcourt, X.; and Mattelart, M. 1993. “International Image Markets.” In The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. S. During, 421-37. New York: Routledge.

PRODUCTIONS

Kelley, R. D. G. 1997. “Playing for Keeps: Pleasure and Profit in the Postindustrial Playground.” In The House that Race Built: Black Americans, U.S. Terrain, ed. W. Lubiano. New York: Pantheon Books.

DISTRIBUTIONS

Cox, K. R. 1997. “Globalization and the Politics of Distribution: A Critical Assessment.” In Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local, ed. K. R. Cox, 115-36. New York: Guilford Press.

Gibson-Graham, J.-K. 1996. “Toward a New Class Politics of Distribution.” In The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, 174-205. Cambridge: Blackwell.