Economics, Politics, Inequality
An anthropological power analysis examines how economic and political systems create and maintain inequality. This hub analyzes race, class, and gender as intertwined systems; the economic arrangements that concentrate wealth; the state’s claim on legitimate violence; and the ways people resist, revolt, reconcile, and refuse.
Race-Class-Gender
Race may be a social construction, but it has real consequences for inequality and power. Class systems intersect with racialization to structure life chances and maintain hierarchies. These resources examine how race, class, and gender function as intertwined systems shaping contemporary injustice.
My most recent reflections race-racism in Intro to Anthro using The Human Story as a textbook
A 2-part lecture on how Racism Produces Race from the textbook Essentials of Cultural Anthropology
Economic Systems & Class Analysis
Contemporary inequality stems from specific economic arrangements that concentrate wealth and power. This section explores anthropological approaches to understanding class structures and how economic systems create and perpetuate hierarchies.
A deeper dive into class and inequality via Culture of Poverty Problems from the textbook Essentials of Cultural Anthropology
Anthropological Perspectives on Class and Inequality from Cultural Anthro 2023
Gramsci and Hegemony — this Intro-to-Anthro lecture asks: “Why do we accept inequality?”
Politics & State Power
Anthropology spent a century studying societies without states and left governments to political science. That division never described reality — the societies called stateless were shaped by states all along. These resources examine how political organization actually works, who holds the monopoly on legitimate violence, and why organized warfare is far more recent than most people assume.
Weber, Verdery, and Bourdieu on the Anthropology of State Power using Anthropological Theory for the 21st Century
Hobbes, Margaret Mead, and Why Anthropology Studies Politics from the textbook Essentials of Cultural Anthropology
The full chapter on Warfare and Agriculture in Intro to Anthro using The Human Story
Resistance & Refusal
When people face structural violence or injustice, they respond in more ways than resistance alone. Refusal rejects the legitimacy of a system rather than contesting outcomes inside it — and agency itself, once unhooked from progressive politics, turns out to include the many ways people inhabit norms rather than fight them.
Saba Mahmood on why Agency Is Not Resistance using Anthropological Theory for the 21st Century
Audra Simpson on Mohawk sovereignty and Ferguson in The Anthropology of Refusal
Resistance, Refusal, Revolution, Reconciliation — four ways of fighting back, in Intro to Anthro using The Human Story