Culture and Industry

Catalog description

This course challenges students to find shadows of Fordist assembly lines in unexpected places. It analyzes how organizations of Fordist assembly lines have historically shaped power and social inequality in societies across the globe. To this end, readings and discussions explore anthropological and sociological concepts, such as gender, class, labor, consumption, and kinship to illuminate the overlapping worlds of culture and industry. Case studies include industrial pig farms in the U.S., copy-art workshops in today's southern China, danwei work-units in Maoist China, Joseph Stalin's project of building a 'country of steel' in the former Soviet Union, and fully-automated 'smart' factories. 001293