Bus.Cult.Soc Fall18 Syllabus

ANTH 70ABusiness, Culture & Society

Course time:Tues / Thur 3:30 – 4:50 PM

LocationGolding Judaica Center 101

First Class Thurs, Aug 30Last Class Tue Dec 11Final Assignment due Tue Dec 18

Instructor: Michael Prenticemprentice@brandeis.edu

Office: Brown 220 Office hours: Thursday 1-3 (or by appt)Appointment link: https://appoint.ly/s/mprentice/

LATTE website https://moodle2.brandeis.edu/course/view.php?id=14033

Teaching Assistant: Aneil Tripathytripathy@brandeis.edu

Office: Rabb 260Office hours: Thursday 5-6 (or by appt)Appointment link: https://appoint.ly/t/tripathy

I. COURSE DESCRIPTIONAre business and culture innately separate? Does business make people cold, ruthless, and impersonal? Can culture solve business’s problems by making them meaningful, warm, and sensitive? All human societies have forms of economic production and trade. This course focuses on the modern origins of the separation between business and culture, between money and meaning, and between market value and human value. Through readings in cultural and economic anthropology, organizational sociology, and others, we will look at the nature of the business-culture distinction, how it is made, and when it is blurred or sharpened.

We will draw on case studies from different societies including UK, Japan, South Korea, India, Mexico, Indigenous Australia, Papua New Guinea, across different domains such as alcoholic drinks, artwork, convenience stores, and funeral homes. At each site, we will look at how business and culture become entangled together: the products we buy help shape our identities,

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money is a key part of family life, and business people have feelings too. Each week we will focus on different domains of business activity to return to two central questions: 1) How do cultural categories and norms shape our (implicit, unconscious) ideas about what business is? and 2) How do business practices push or challenge the basic categories of culture in new ways?

This course will provide students with firm conceptual thinking for how to evaluate arguments about the inherent rationality and neutrality of business and how to conceptualize culture in analyzing economic practices. This course is designed for both anthropology majors interested in business and economic anthropology and for students from all majors who want to learn how to think about the culture concept in their own disciplines or future jobs.

The final project for this course will be the production of a fifteen-minute radio-style podcast about a cultural aspect of the economy or an economic aspect of culture of your design. Along the way you will learn how to articulate an anthropological question and conduct ethnographic observation and interviewing.

Learning outcomes from this course:1. Become familiar with key twentieth century economic thinkers and their arguments2. Learn to distinguish between popular conceptions of culture and academic usages3. Learn how to conceptualize the business-culture relationship from multiple theories4. Learn how to define an anthropological question and how to investigate it5. Learn how to develop your own podcast and audio-based forms of argumentation/discussion

Required books:- Gershon, Ilana (2017) Down and Out in the New Economy. Amazon (recommend e-

version for $9.99)

II. CLASS POLICIES

Readings: All readings will be posted as links to download or posted as PDFs on the website. All readings are expected to be done before class. Readings have been selected to fit an introductory course. Students who fail to keep up with the readings will fall behind in the course.

Participation: This is primarily a lecture course with no formal mode of participation or participation grade. However, basic college conduct is expected of all students: this includes staying awake, paying attention, and not distracting others.

Questions are encouraged during the lecture. When you do speak, you are expected to engage in norms of public discussion which include: respecting others’ rights to speak, respecting others’ opinions, and respecting the environment of the class. You should keep four ideas in mind when interacting in class:

(a) Respond to ideas/points not to people(b) Having conflicting viewpoints/interpretations is a normal outcome

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(c) Opinions are not prisons: your ideas can, and should, change over the course of the semester(d) If you use a technical term or scholar unfamiliar to others, you should explain its definition

Computers and cell-phones: This is a computer-free class. Research has shown that computer usage during class results in a distracted learning environment for both the student and those around them. Because of integration with email, internet, note-taking, text messaging and social media, computers pose a risk to the learning environment, so students are encouraged to take notes with pen and paper.

*Cell-phones should be kept in bags. Keeping a cell-phone on your person can provide an unconscious distraction to you.

Academic ConductThis course adheres to Brandeis’s standards of Academic Integrity. You should familiarize yourself with the standards of academic integrity by completing the modules. Unintended errors in academic integrity are still unconsidered major infractions.https://www.brandeis.edu/studentlife/srcs/academicintegrity/academicintegritymodule.html

Faculty may refer any suspected instances of alleged dishonesty to the Office of Student Development and Conduct. Instances of academic dishonesty may result in sanctions including but not limited to, failing grades being issued, educational programs, and other consequences.

Medical Concerns & DisabilitiesIf you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.

Students with medical concerns that may affect their attendance, participation, or ability to do readings/assignments should communicate with the instructor in the first week of the course to discuss accommodations. This is necessary to make sure you do not miss substantial amounts of class time. Proper documentation of any medical conditions is needed. Late notices for medical excuses (except in the case of emergencies) will generally not grant exceptions. The night that an essay is due is not the ideal time to reveal a medical condition.

Any other potential issuesIf you have other situations that may affect performance in the class (commuting, child-care, second job, non-medical learning issues, expected absences, sports), please let the instructor or TA know early in the semester to come up with a plan. Sooner is better than later.

III. GRADING

Every discipline, every course, and every instructor have different standards for success in a course related to what the learning goals are. It’s important to figure out what those are.

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In this course, student success is based not on just “doing” all the work, but 1) showing engagement with course materials through reading, question-asking, response-making, or in talking with instructor/TA, 2) depth of interest in the materials, debates, issues, and deeper questions, and 3) creative application to new cases or assignments.

The following table should orient you to how you think about what each grade stands for:

A B C“Exceptional”

Consistent engagement with course material across entire semester; Deep engagement with debates and issues; Interest in learning beyond the syllabus; Creative or thoughtful writings/ projects; Demonstration of classroom leadership

“Average”Completing the readings and assignments on time; showing up to class each time; Ability to repeat or cite course topics, scholars, and debates; Conventional responses to assignments or questions

“Below Average”Inconsistent learning,

attendance, or reading.

The following assignments are geared to these goals. (These are “weighted” averages related to the goals above, not as empty tanks that need to be filled up.)

- Reading quiz (x1): 10%- Reading responses (x10): 20%- Attendance: 20%- Final project proposal: 10%- Interview or observation report: 15%- Final Podcast (audio and script): 25% - Listening to podcasts: 0%

Reading Quiz 10%: This will be a short quiz, part multiple choice, part free response, on the basic contents of the semester’s first four weeks. It will ask basic questions to make sure you have been keeping up with the readings.

Reading Responses 20%: Each week, you will be responsible for a 1-2 paragraph reading response or other writing/research exercise. These will be due each Tuesday morning by 10 AM to the LATTE site. Excluding the first and last week, there will be 11 total opportunities. You will be graded on the top 10 (you may skip the last one).

Attendance 20%: This is a college course where lectures are necessary for understanding the course materials. We will take attendance at each class. Each class attendance will count for ½ point.

Final project - proposal 10%: Every student will have to come up with a 2-paragraph project proposal for an issue they want to investigate featuring a key question around an economic aspect of a cultural practice or a cultural aspect of an economic practice. Part of the proposal

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will include meeting with TA Tripathy or Professor Prentice to discuss the topic and revise the topic.

Final project - interview or observation 15%: As part of your project proposal, you will have to do at least 1 interview with a potential subject AND/OR ethnographic observation.

Final project - radio podcast and script 25%: Your final in the course will be the production of a radio podcast related to your proposal. At a length of 15-20 minutes, it is roughly the length of a final paper. You will be encouraged to think of how to narrate the problem and the topic that you have chosen and record it yourself. As part of the final, you will have to submit a script.

Listening to podcasts 0%: Each week there is a recommended podcast related to the topic of the readings. You are encouraged to listen to these as you go to the gym or walk to class. You will not be tested on these.

How to do well (grade-wise) or simply get the most ROI out of this course:1. Sign up for office hours (TA or Prof) even if you don’t have a specific issue2. Make use of the writing center or anthropology tutors. 3. Talk and learn from other students about concepts, terms, or readings

*COURSE SCHEDULE*

Week 1Th 8/30: COURSE INTRODUCTION: BUSINESS, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Lecture Notes: We will go over the course syllabus and the larger questions that we are trying to solve in the course. We will do a brief introduction to the idea of business and culture as separate “spheres” or domains. We will look at how this idea is pervasive in our ideas about community and society, friends and strangers.

Key words: gemeinschaft, gesellschaftScholars: Tonnies, Polanyi

*Part 1: Core concepts*(Weeks 2-4)

Week 2Tu 9/4: THE MAINSTREAM VIEW OF BUSINESS AND CULTURE

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Lecture Notes: We will look at popular depictions of culture as a pre-existing framework of features that effects how ideas interfere or people interact. Culture in this case is an explanatory device that can be used to explain problems in intercultural communication in (neutral) business arrangements. We will look at the case of airlines to understand how culture is embedded into our ideas of business in ways we may have not expected.

Gladwell. “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes” Yano. “Flying Geisha’: Japanese Stewardesses with Pan American World Airways.”

Topic: AirlinesKey words: cultural features, intercultural communicationScholars: Edward T. Hall, HofstedePodcast: “The Fastest Growing, Least Popular Airline in America” (Link)

*Th 9/6 – NO CLASS – Follow Monday Schedule

Week 3Th 9/13: LOCATING THE CULTURE IN BUSINESS

Lecture Notes: Are drinks cultural? Are drinks business? We will first look at two examples of alcoholic drinks (consumer products!) and how they shape cultural categories of gender and personhood. We will look at cocktails in the US and “soju” in South Korea to understand the implicit ways that cultural categories shape consumer products and our self-identification with them.

Manning. “Semiotics of the Common Cocktail” (Word doc)Harkness. “Softer Soju” (Link) read pp. 12-13, 16-19, 21-25

Topic: Alcoholic drinksKey words: Cultural categories, personhood, markedness, entanglement, implicitnessScholars discussed: Levi-Strauss, WaughPodcast: “The Vodka Proof” (Link)

*Tu 9/11 – NO CLASS

Week 4Tu 9/18 and Th 9/20: CLARIFYING THE BUSINESS-CULTURE RELATIONSHIP

Lecture notes: The previous week we examined the way to study cultural concepts in business. This week we will turn the tables and look at the anthropological history of engaging with business and economics. We will look at anthropological criticisms of money and commodities and things that aren’t meant to be bought or sold. However, these concerns themselves are often overlooked by ethnographic case studies themselves. We will look at the role of allowance

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money in the US and “pocket money” in New Guinea to look at the different functions money plays.

Polanyi. “Fictitious Commodities: Labor, Land, and Money” (71-80)Simmel. Philosophy of Money (76-77)

Zelizer. “Special Monies” (8-31)Pickles “Pocket Calculator” (pages TBD)

Topic: Money and coinsKey words: abstract value, special moniesTheorists: Smith, Simmel, Sahlins, PolanyiPodcast: “The World Capital of Counterfeit Dollars” Link

*READING QUIZ* in class Th 9/20

*9/20 Pass fail deadline

* Part 2: Abstract Value & Impersonal Encounters *(Weeks 5-8)

Week 5Th 9/27: TALKING PRICES

Lecture Notes: Business is meant to revolve around transparency and rational exchange of abstract exchange values. Yet why would people ever avoid talking about prices? From retail to art, prices are usually not mentioned. Yet, people regularly talk about prices when describing their homes, rent, furniture, or clothes they’re wearing. This week we look at the case of art dealers who exemplify the paradox of “price”-ness and “priceless”-ness.

Velthuis. Talking Prices. Chs 5-6 (116-157) (PDF)

Topic: High-end artKey terms: quantificationScholars: Veblen, GregoryPodcast: “Planet Monet” Link

*Tu 9/25 No class – follow Monday schedule

Radio Project Part 1: Topic Selection (Details announced in class)

Week 6Tu 10/2 and Th 10/4: IMPERSONAL ENCOUNTERS

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Lecture Notes: Are business encounters always impersonal or always fake friendly? What kinds of relationships can you have with your barista? This week looks at the kinds of encounters opened up by different service encounters with examples from India, Japan, and the US (Starbucks). We will look at how sociality can emerge through, not just against, the sale of candy bars and coffee.

Brown. “The Public Backstage” (Link)Whitelaw. “Shelf Lives” (PDF)Manning. “Barista Rants” (PDF)

Topic: Service encountersKey words: on/off-stage sociality, fictive sociality, scripting, fast capitalismScholars: Harvey, AggerPodcast: (to be announced)

Week 7Tu 10/9 and Th 10/11: THE EMOTIONS OF BUSINESS

Lecture Notes: Is business emotional or unemotional? Does it create fake emotions? This week we look at the role of emotions and affect – themselves very tied to cultural expectations – in business interactions. We will look at how enthusiasm and care are hard to separate from business goals, and we will also look at a case of male anger in the office (Korea).

Hochschild. The Managed Heart. [selections]Boltanski & Chiappelli. “New Spirits of Capitalism” (selections)Van Maanen. “The Smile Factory”

Prentice. “Old Spirits of Capitalism” (article draft)

Topics: EmotionsKey terms: commoditization, alienationScholars: Smith, HirschmanPodcast: “Emotions as Commodities” (TaO) (Link); three-part interview (listen to at least part one)

Radio Project Part 2: Three-paragraph Proposal: Topic description, anthropological question, and research plan

Week 8Tu 10/16 and Th 10/18: A MARKET FOR EVERYTHING

Lecture Notes: Business discourse would assume that anything can be bought or sold, however this is not always the case: we find limits on what things can be sold and what the natural price on an object is. We look specifically at the case of the funeral industry and selling bodies.

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Barley. “Codes of the dead” (Link)Champney. “The business of bodies.” (Link)

Topic: BodiesKey words: cultural taxonomies, aestheticsScholars: Bohannon, Scheper-HughesPodcast: “The Zoo Economy” Link

* Part 3: Markets & Organizations *(Weeks 9 – 12)

Week 9Tu 10/23 and Th 10/25: WHAT IS A MARKET?

Lecture Notes: Are business people fearless risk-takers or risk-averse penny-pinchers? Is risk a natural feature of markets or a constructed one? Are markets real places where you can actually go? We will look at how risk works as a concept in the business world and what presumptions are part of risk-thinking.

Tu 10/16 *GUEST LECTURE: ANEIL TRIPATHY*

Geertz. “The Bazaar Economy”Tripathy. “Translating to Risk”Zaloom. 2006. Out of the Pits. Chapter 4, The Work of Risk, p. 93-109

Topic: MarketsKey words: institutionalization, translation, liberalizationScholars: Knight, Beck, Power, DouglasPodcast: “The Buffalo Talk-Off” Link

Radio Project Part 3: Submit interview / observation plan

Week 10Tu 10/30 and Th 11/1: OFFICE CULTURE

Lecture Notes: Are office cultures paradigms of business culture or their own worst enemy? This week we tackle two dimensions of office worlds: the “moral mazes” that encompass doing work in the office, and a culture of complaints in the office.

Jackall. Moral Mazes. “Drawing Lines” (106-142)Weeks. Unpopular Culture. “Unpopular Culture” (1-13) (Optional) Ho. Liquidated. “Wall Street’s Orientation” (73-121)

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(Optional) Anteby. Manufacturing Morals (selection TBD)

Topics: Office CulturesKey terms: moral markets, justification, legitimizationScholars: Weber, White, ScheinPodcast: “Open Office” Link

Feedback on interview/observation plan

Week 11Tu 11/6 and Th 11/8: THE JOB MARKET

Lecture Notes: How does a job market function? As a set of numbers and skills? Or as a unique intangible value? We look at the different genres that organize the world of job seeking and what they say about how job markets are supposed to work.

Gershon. Down and Out in the New Economy. First Half (1-89)

Topic: Job MarketKey terms: genre, quantitative/qualitative, implicit value, transparencyScholars: TBDPodcast: Gershon interview (Link)

Week 12 Tu 11/13 and Th 11/15: THE DESIGN PEAK

Lecture Notes: We look at design culture. Is contemporary design thinking the culmination of a symbiotic business and culture relationship or a particular (misguided) reification of culture? We explore how modern design thinking incorporates cultural knowledge and cultural features into its work. Is design good when it works on good projects (like disability aids) but bad when it uses culture for profit-making (store layouts or website designs)? What kinds of assumptions about business use shape our own attitudes to applied anthropological projects? We look at the role that anthropologists play in promoting, analyzing, and critiquing these worlds.

Murphy. Swedish Design. “The Diagram of Swedish Design” (30-58)Hartblay. “Good Ramps, Bad Ramps: Centralized Design Standards and Disability Access in Urban Russian Infrastructure” (Link)(Optional: Krause-Jensen. Flexible Firm: The Design of Culture at Bang & Olufsen)

Topic: DesignKey Terms: qualia, infrastructure, materialityScholars: Timothy Ingold, George Marcus

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Podcast: “Ethnography and Design” (Anthropod) Link Three part series (listen to at least one part)

* Part 4: Business and the Self *(Weeks 13 - 15)

Week 13Tu 11/20: PERSONALIZATION & STYLE

Lecture Notes: Can the market personalize things for you? Is it impossible to personalize things from large corporations? This week we look at two kinds of unauthorized personalizations: making personal things at work and using brands as part of your own style. We will look at how people recraft things from the market to non-market goods.

Anteby. “The Moralities of Poaching” (Link) (not that kind of poaching…)Nakassis. Doing Style. “Brands and Brandedness” (PDF)

Topics: StyleKey words: authenticity, craftingScholars: BenjaminPodcast: “The World Capital of Counterfeit Dollars” Link

Radio Project Part 4: Radio script draft submission & Two-Minute Audio Sample

*Th 11/22 No class – Thanksgiving

Week 14Tu 11/27 and Th 11/29: SELLING YOUR CULTURE

In Week 8, we looked at things that are close to life itself that can’t be sold in a market. This week we look at what the ethics are of selling goods that are

Myers. Painting Culture. Ch 2. “Practices of Painting: A Local History and a Vexed Intersection”Lynch. Reading on “Fab India”

Topic: indigenous craftsKey words: value, spheres of exchangeScholars: Graeber, BohannanPodcast: “The World Capital of Counterfeit Dollars” (Link)

*11/27 Last day to drop or change grade

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Week 15Tu 12/4 and Th 12/6: YOU, INC.

Lecture Notes: Are you a business? Should you be? In our last week, we will look at the second half of Gershon’s book to look at how people brand themselves. Has business culture really changed how we think about ourselves? Is there anything wrong with thinking about yourself as a business?

Gershon. Down and Out in the New Economy. Second Half (89-End)

Topic: Job huntingKey terms: self-branding, formatting, mis-recognitionScholars: Hayek

Podcast: Gershon Interview (Link)

Week 16Tu 12/11 – Last Class

- In-class radio listening- “Ask me anything”

12/18 Final audio recording files and scripts due

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