300630 The Social Life of Global Commodities (S) (SoSe 2021)

Have you ever wondered about the cup of coffee you are holding in your hands? Where does the coffee come from? Who grow it? Who process it? What part does coffee play in their lives? How does it connect their lives to yours? Is your consumption of coffee purely a matter of individual taste? What does it mean for the relationship between you and those in places through which the coffee travels on its way to the coffee shop?

This seminar considers such questions about a range of common commodities that are traded globally, such as coffee, tea, and banana. It aims to familiarize students with the economic, social and political mechanisms that regulate the production, distribution and consumption of such commodities. By considering these commodities as embedded in the social and political lives of producers, traders, consumers and other actors, you will be able to identify global forces and processes behind the common goods that you or people around you consume every day. This course is suited to undergraduate students who are interested in learning about issues of globalization via ethnographic studies that take familiar consumer goods as the central objects of investigation.
This is part of a series of BA-level seminars on a number of major
topics in economic anthropology and sociology that I offer in successive
semesters, including Money, Time, Labour and Commodities.