Ethnography from the Edges of Capitalism

Capitalism, by its very design, always pushes the edge: of markets, of beliefs, of people, of nature. In doing so, it produces forms of excess that no system seems able to fully control. This class examines through ethnography what happens to the excesses that capitalism produces at the edges of the global economy where life is often lived in ruins. It explores how people remake their symbolic and material worlds in ways that are often unexpected and unpredictable when faced with totalizing logics that turn their worlds upside down. It also asks what it means to write ethnographically about these edges. To do this, we will read, slowly and patiently, four ethnographies from the edges of the global economy that, in very different ways, shows how people appropriate the upheavals that come with systemic economic change. Arguing against reductionist analyses, the class probes the interstices of a global economy that thrives on living on the edge.

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