CULTURES OF CAPITALISM:
ANTHROPOLOGICAL READINGS OF POST-SOCIALIST ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS

Winter 2006/2007
4 credits


Description:
This is a four-credit course with weekly classes (double sessions). In the first part of the course, different cultural accounts of economic systems, including Western type of capitalism, will be reviewed, mostly through contemporary interpretations. These accounts are informed, on the one hand, by streams of classical and social theory, which consider economic categories as cultural constructs the meanings of which are defined by traditions of thoughts and transforming practices. On the other hand, these cultural accounts are produced by anthropological and qualitative sociological schools, which discuss economic systems as complex social and symbolic transactions and communications. In addition to contemplating on the shifting meanings of the market in modern Western and non-Western societies, cultural accounts examine the rise of modern capitalism, the variety of forms of production and exchange underpinning different contemporary systems of capitalisms, the peculiarities of late modern societies, and the contemporary global currents.

In the second part half of the course, it will be studied how societies in Central and Eastern Europe have disengaged themselves from the state socialist path of modernization and entered the road of market economy and capitalist transformations. The course reviews anthropological, sociological, political, and cross-disciplinary interpretations that explain the commonalities and the divergences in these capitalist transformations across the post-socialist world. It focuses on theoretical and empirical arguments by reading recent anthropological, ethnographic, and qualitative sociological inquiries that either explicitly refer to cultural accounts reviewed in the first half of the course, or make arguments that resonate with those accounts. The selection of readings embraces the most often referred works in the relevant literature but occasionally reaching beyond that. Moreover, the selection primarily embraces interpretations that share the convictions despite major differences in their ideological assumptions that broader public debates, micro-scale interpretive practices, and subjective biographies all participate in negotiating culture(s) of capitalism in different localities of the post-socialist world.

Requirements:
(1) Assigned readings to each class consist of required and recommended items. Students are to attend each class and to contribute to the discussions based on their knowledge and notes on the required readings. Recommended readings will be available in a master reader placed in two copies in the Library.
(2) Each student will make one major presentation based on the required readings to a particular topic (in case of longer readings, tandems could be formed) and serve as a discussant to another presentation. Presenters have to prepare a handout for fellow-students in which they sum up the methodological and topical lessons of the readings, and formulate questions for discussion.
(3) Students are required to write commentaries/reflection essays (2-3 pages) on the topic of the class four times during the semester by summing most problematic, innovative, influential, etc. arguments of the required (and recommended) readings. Commentaries are to be handed in at the start of the class.
(4) Each student is required to write an essay (3000 words) at the end of the course on any of the major topics discussed or related ones (by agreement with instructor).

Final grades will be composed by class work including presentation (30%), written commentaries (30%), and essay paper (40%).

Topics and readings:

PART 1

1. Concepts of capitalism in classical and modern social theory
Slater, Don and Fran Tonkiss (2001): Market Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Chapters 1, 3, 4. (Chapter 5 optional)
Hart, Keith (2001): Money in an Unequal World. New York: Texere, Chapters 3, 5.

Recommended:
Marx, Karl (1973 {1857-8}): Grundrisse. New York: Harper and Raw. “Introduction”.
Simmel, Georg (1990{1900}): The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge:204-280.
Weber, Max (1970 {1904}): The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Allen & Unwin. Introduction and Chapter II/2.
Durkheim, Emile (1984 {1933}): The Division of Labor in Society. London: Macmillan.
Schumpeter, Joseph (1992{1942}): The civilization of capitalism. In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper Torch Books: 121-130.
Polanyi, Karl (1971 {1944}): Societies and Economic Systems. In Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press: 43-55.

2. Classical and contemporary anthropological inquiries into economic systems
Narotzky, Susana (1997): Distribution and Exchange. In New Directions in Economic Anthropology. London: Pluto Press: 42-98.
Graeber, David (2001): Current Directions in Exchange Theory. In Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value. New York: Palgrave: 23-47.

Recommended:
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1984{1922}): Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Waveland Press.
Mauss, Marcel (1954 {1925}): The Gift. Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Society. New York: Free Press.
Sahlins, Marshall (1972): On the sociology of primitive exchange. In Stone Age Economics. New York: Aldine De Gruyter: 185-230.
Godelier, Maurice (1986) The Mental and the Material: Thoughts, Economy and Society. London: Verso.
Parry, Jonathan and Maurice Bloch eds. (1989): Introduction. In Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1-33.

3. Meanings of the market
Dilley, Roy (1992): Contesting markets. In Contesting Markets. Analyses of Ideology, Discourse, and Practice. R. Dilley ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press: 1-34.
Carrier, G. James (1997): Introduction. Meanings of the Market. The Free Market in Western Culture. J. Carrier ed. Oxford: Berg Publishers:1-67.

Recommended:
Haskell, Thomas L. & Richard F. Teichgraeber III eds. (1993): Introduction: The culture of the market. In The Culture of the Market: Historical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1-39.
Dumont, Louis (1977): From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
Hirschman, Albert O. (1986): Rival Views of Market Society and Others Recent Essays. Viking:105-141.
Gudeman, Stephen (1986): Models and Modes of Livelihood. In Economics as Culture. Models and Metaphors of Livelihood. London, Boston, Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul: 28-47.
Callon, Michael (1998): Introduction: the embeddedness of economic markets in economics. In The Laws of the Markets. M. Callon ed. London: Blackwell: 3-57.

PART 2

4. Crafting the inquiry of post-socialist capitalist transformations
Aslund, Anders (2002): Building Capitalism. The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Introduction, Chapter 3.
Burawoy, Michael, Katherine Verdery (1999): Introduction. In Uncertain Transition. Ed. by Burawoy and Verdery. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers:1-17.

Recommended:
Verdery, Katherine (1996): What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapter 1.
Greskovits, Bela (2000): Rival Views of Post-Communist Market Society: The Path Dependency of Transitology. In Democratic and Capitalist Transitions in Eastern Europe. Ed. by M. Dobry. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers:19-48.
Eyal, Gil (2000): Anti-Politics and the Spirit of Capitalism: Dissidents, Monetarists, and the Czech Transition to Capitalism. Theory and Society 29:49-92.

5. Decollectivization and property changes
Hann, Chris M. ed. (1998): Introduction: the embeddednes of property. In Properity Relations. Renewing the Anthropological Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press:1-47.
Verdery, Katherine (1999): Fuzzy Property: Rights, Power, and Identity in Transylvania's Decollectivization. In Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Post-Socialist World. M. Burawoy, K. Verdery, eds. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield: 53-82.
Stark, David (1998): Recombinant property in East European capitalism. In The Laws of the Market. Ed. M. Callon:116-146.

Recommended:
Verdery, Katherine (2003): The Vanishing Hectare. Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Chapter 8 and Conclusion.
Alexander, Catherine (2004): Values, Relations, and Changing Bodies: Privatization and Property Rights in Kazakhstan. In Property in Question. Ed. By Verdery K. and Humphrey C. Oxford, Berg Publishers:251-73.
Leonard, Pamela and Deema Kaneff eds. (2002): Introduction: Post-Socialist Preasant? In Post Socialist Peasant? Rural and Urban Construction of Identity in Eastern Europe, East Asia and the Former Soviet Union. New York: Palgrave:1-43.
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology; Postsocialist Eurasia, Property Relations. http://www.eth.mpg.de
Hann, Chris and the Property Relations Group, eds (2003) The Postsocialist Agrarian Question. Muenster: LIT Verlag.

6. New entrepreneurs, managers, and economic elites
Eyal, Gil, Iván Szelényi, Eleanor Townsley, eds. (1998): Making Capitalism Without Capitalists. London: Verso: 159-193.
Yurchak, Alexei (2001): Entrepreneurial governmentality in post-socialist Russia: A cultural investigation of business practices. In The New Entrepreneurs of Europe and Asia (eds) V. Bonnell and T. Gold. New York, M.E. Sharpe.
Lampland, Martha (2002): The Advantages of Being Collectivized: Cooperative Farm Managers in the Postsocialist Economy. In Postsocialism. C. Hann, ed. London: Routledge: 31-55.

Recommended:
Higley, John and Lengyel Gyorgy eds. (2001): Elites After State Socialism. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.
Kovács, Katalin; Váradi, Monika (2000): Women’s Life Trajectories and Class Formation in Hungary. In: Gal and Kligman, eds. Repoducing Gender. Princeton: Princeton University Press:176-199.
Buchowski, Michal (2001): Encountering Capitalism at a Grass-Root Level: A Case Study of Entrepreneurs in Western Poland. In Poland Beyond Communism:281-305.
Yurchak, Alexei (2003) Russian Neoliberal: The Entrepreneurial Ethic and the Spirit of “True Careerism”. The Russian Review 62 (January):72-90.
Stoica, Catalin Augustin (2004): From Good Communists to Even Better Capitalists? Entrepreneurial Pathways in Post-Socialist Romania. East European Politics and Society. Vol 18. No.2:236-277.

7. Shifting patterns of production and labor
Dunn, Elizabeth (1998): Slick Salesmen and Simple People: Negotiated Capitalism in a Privatized Polish Firm. In Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Post-Socialist World, M. Burawoy and K. Verdery, eds. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Pages: 125-150.
Dunn, Elisabeth (2001): Carrots, Class, and Capitalism: Employee Management in a Post-Socialist Enterprise. In Poland Beyond Communism. "Transition" in Critical Perspective. M. Buchowski, E. Conte, C. Nagengast eds. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag: 259-279.
Lampland, Martha (1995): The Object of Labor: Commodification in Socialist Hungary. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pages: 1-7 and 233-365.

Recommended:
Ost, David (2001): The Weakness of Symbolic Strength: Labor and Union Identity in Poland 1989-2000. In Workers After Workers’ States. Eds. S. Crowley and D. Ost. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers:79-96.
Kideckel, David A. (2002): The unmaking of an East-Central European working class. In Postsocialism: 114-131.
Kovacheva, Siyka; Lewis, Suzan; Demireva, Neli (2005): Changing Cultures in Changing Workplaces: UK and Bulgaria Compared. Sociological Problems. No 37:62-81.
Zbierski-Salameh, Slawomira (1998): Polish Peasants in the “Valley of Transition“: Responses to Postsocialist Reforms. In Uncertain Transition: 189-222.

8. Networks in black, gray, and white
Böröcz, József (2000): Informality Rules. East European Politics and Society. vol.14. no.2: 348-380.
Ledeneva, Alena V. (1998): Russia's Economy of Favors. Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press:175-213.
Konstantinov, Yulian (1996): Patterns of Reinterpretation: Trader-Tourism in the Balkans (Bulgaria) as a Picaresque Metaphorical Enactment of Post-Totalitarianism. In American Ethnologist, 23(4): 762-782.

Recommended:
Ries, Nancy (2002) “Honest Bandits” and “Warped People. In: Ethnography of Unstable Places. Greenhouse, Carol et al. eds. Durham: Duke University: 276-315.
Woodruff, David (1999): Barter of the Bankrupt: The Politics of Demonetizaton in Russia’s Federal state. In Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Post-Socialist World: 83-123.
Radaev, Vadim (2004): How Trust Is Established in Economic Relationship when Institutions and Individuals Are Not Trustworthy: The Case of Russia. In Creating Social Trust in Post-Socialist Transition. Ed. J. Kornai J., B. Rothstein, S-R. Ackerman. New York: Palgrave:91-110.
Böröcz, József (2000): Informality and Nonprofits in East Central European Capitalism. International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organization. Vol 11. no:123-140
Honesty and Trust: Theory and Experience in the Light of Post-Socialist Transformation
Research Project and Focus Group at Collegium Budapest, 2001-2003. http://www.colbud.hu/honesty-trust/

9. Everyday coping strategies, old and new inequalities
Pine, Frances (1998): Dealing with Fragmentation. In Surviving Post Socialism: Local Strategies and Regional Responses in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Susan Bridger and Frances Pine, eds. London: Routledge: 106-123.
Creed, Gerald W. (2002): Economic Crisis and Ritual Decline in Eastern Europe. In Postsocialism: 57-73.
Stewart, Michael (2002): Deprivation, the Roma, and the Underclass. In Postsocialism:133-155.

Recommended:
Nagengast, Carole (2001): Post-Peasants and Poverty. In Poland Beyond Communism:183-207.
Iliev, Ilia (2004): Small Farms in Bulgaria: Four Decade Anomaly. In “East-“West” Cultural Encounters. Ed. by P. Kabakchieva and R. Abramov. Sofia: 181-201.
Jancius, Angela (2006): Unemployment, Deindustrialization and “Community Economy” in Eastern Germany. Ethnos Vol 71:2:
Szalai, Julia (2000) From Informal Labor to Paid Occupations: Marketization from below in Hungarian Women’s Work. In: Gal and Kligman, eds. Repoducing Gender. Princeton: Princeton University Press:200-224.
Gal, Susan, Kligman, Gail eds. (2000): The Politics of Gender After Socialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

10. Markets, marketplaces, and places in urban and rural settings
Humphrey, Caroline (1997): Traders, 'Disorder', and Citizenship Regimes in Provincial Russia. In Uncertain Transition: 19-52.
Kaneff, Deema (2002): The Shame and Pride of Market Activity: Morality, Identity and Trading in Post-Socialist Rural Bulgaria. In Markets and Moralities. Ethnographies of Post-socialism. Eds. Mandel, Ruth and Caroline Humphrey. Oxford: Berg: 33-51.
Lemon, Alina (2000): Talking Transit and Spectating Transition: The Moscow Metro. In Altering States. D. Berdahl, M. Bunzl, M. Lampland eds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: 14-39.

Recommended:
Sik, Endre and Claire Wallace (1999): The development of open air markets in East-central Europe. International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies 23(4):697-714.
Bunzl, Matti (2000): The Prague Experience: Gay Male Sex Tourism and the Neo-Colonial Invention of an Embodied Border. In Altering States; Ed. By D. Berhdal, M. Bunzl, M. Lampland. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press:
Humphrey, Caroline (2002) The Villas of the “New Russians”. A Sketch of Consumption and Cultural Identity in Post-Socialist Landscape. In The Unmaking of Soviet Life. Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 174-201.

11. Emerging consumer societies
Pine, Frances (2002): From Production to Consumption in Post-Socialism? In Markets and Moralities. Ethnographies of Postsocialism. Mandel, Ruth and Caroline Humphrey, eds. Oxford: Berg: 209-224.
Fehervary, Krisztina (2002): “American Kitchens, Luxury Bathrooms, and the Search for a ‘Normal” Life in Postsocialist Hungary,” Ethnos, vol. 67:3:369-400.
Wanner, Catherine (2005) Money, Morality and New Forms of Exchange in Postsocialist Ukraine. Ethnos, Vol 70,4:515-537.

Recommended:
Bodnár, Judit (2001): Globalizing art and consumption. In Fin De Millénaire Budapest. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press:129-155.
Berdahl, Daphne (1999): (N)Ostalgia for the present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things. Ethnos, vol. 64:2:192-211.
Lankauskas, Dediminas (2002): On Modern Christians, Consumption, and the Value of National Identity in Post-Soviet Lithuania. Ethnos, vol. 67:3:320-344.

12. Global encounters
Kovács, M. János (2002). Rival Temptations and Passive Resistance. In Many Globalizations. Ed P. Berger and S. Huntington. Oxford U.P.
Gille, Zsuzsa (2000): Cognitive Cartography in a European Wasteland: Multinational Capital and Greens Vie for Village Allegiance. In Global Ethnography. M. Burawoy at al. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Naumovic, Slobodan (2005) It Is Hard To Take the Sky! Contingency and Culture in the Struggle to Establish an Organic Agro-Business in Contemporary Serbia. Sociological Problems. No 37: 23-48.

Recommended:
Vedres, Balazs (2003) Relational Mechanisms of Globalizing Postsocialism: A Sequence Approach to Foreign Investment and Large Firm Ownership in Hungary, 1991-1999. http://www.columbia.edu/~bv2002/papers.html
Lemon, Alaina (1998): Your Eyes Are Green Like Dollars: Counterfeit Cash, National Substance, and Currency Apartheid in 1990s Russia. In: Cultural Anthropology, vol.13, no.1: 22-55.
Boym, Svetlana (2001): Europa's Eros. In The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books: 219-247.
Caldwell, Melissa (2004): Domesticating the French Fry: McDonald’s and Consumerism in Moscow, Journal of Consumer Culture 4:5-26.

13. Contested frames of interpreting postsocialist capitalism
Hann, C.M.; Caroline Humphrey; Katherine Verdery (2002): Introduction: postsocialism as a topic of anthropological investigation. In Postsocialism: 1-28.
Kalb, Don (2002): Afterword: globalism and postsocialist prospects. In Postsocialism: 317-334.
Kandiyoti, Denis (2002): How far do analyses of postsocialism travel? The Case of Central Asia. In Postsocialism: 238-257.