Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology: Global Economy and Culture
This MA specialization examines transformations of states, markets and political participation in the context of global connections. This implies looking at how international institutions and corporate bodies (whether through the World Bank, IMF or private financial institutions and multinational companies) influence the way states deal with or respond to issues of:
poverty and development,
political and economic security, and
domestic and international markets.
It also examines how different groups of people (within and between nation-states) respond to such policies. This specialisation emphasizes the multi-scalar connections between the economic and the political, between institutional and non-institutional policy-making and the responses by social movements, by the everyday politics of ordinary citizens or with the creation of alternative markets.
Students will develop a firm foundation in the anthropology and ethnography of global politics which is combined with the more performative and pragmatic directions nowadays taken in economic anthropology and sociology with the analysis of currencies and commodities. It combines issues that are politically relevant and urgent in the current world situation with local day-to-day events.