Fabian Muniesa and Luca Pes

The course explores key insights from the anthropology of finance and law. It presents significant theoretical and methodological aspects of anthropological inquiry and uses them to illuminate important features of contemporary financial and legal life. Topics tackled throughout the course include the role of social networks in the construction of markets, the complexity and materiality of calculative practices, legal pluralism and the meaning of sovereignty in relation to emerging global legal orders. The course provides an introduction to relevant concepts and theory, combined with close attention to empirical cases on a variety of sites (from international financial centers to developing countries).

Students will be required to achieve the following tasks:
- Attending a series of lectures and participating in class discussions
- Understanding and commenting on a series of reading materials
- Conducting a short ethnographic study

Course layout

1) Key issues in the anthropology of markets: gifts, markets, networks (Weeks 1 & 2; F. Muniesa)
This section will start with an introduction to anthropological questioning and to principal topics of the anthropology of economic exchange. How are persons bound to each other in economic transactions? How are they detached from each other? How does a thing turn into a commodity? How are goods personalized or depersonalized? These and similar questions will be tackled through an examination of crucial contributions to the anthropology of gift and market exchange, but also through more recent work on the role of social networks in the formation of markets. Contemporary practices in financial markets will be analyzed in the light of these perspectives. Other topics such as the rationality and irrationality of financial markets will be tackled with an examination of the role played by material culture and calculative devices in the construction of markets.

2) Key issues in the anthropology of law: pluralism, legal orders, sovereignty (Weeks 3 & 4; L. Pes)
Part two of the course introduces the topic of legal pluralism, exploring its connections to the notion of sovereignty. Legal pluralism as a conceptual tool is presented in a variety of applications: from the discovery (and invention) of traditional law, as opposed to colonial or metropolitan law, to the current wave of recognition of indigenous rights concerning traditional knowledge, biodiversity, property of natural resources. Moving from the new conception of legal pluralism, focused on the emergence of legal orders without a state, the notion of sovereignty will be tackled in relation to international economic laws and institutions (such as the World Trade Organization) and the changing functions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in a system of government of chronically indebted and aid-dependent countries.

3) Fieldwork (Weeks 5 & 6 L. Pes / F. Muniesa)
Students will embark into a short ethnographic experience. In groups, they will conduct ethnographic fieldwork (observations, interviews) in Turin on topics related to the content of the course. This activity will provide them with a unique experience of social-scientific work “in the making” on issues such as financial relations in migrant communities or the socio-legal structure of the market for ideas in the creativity industry. Students will be guided into their fieldwork design and subsequent analysis of fieldwork material.

4) Opening up: the role of research practices in the framing of law and finance (Weeks 7 & 8; F. Muniesa / L. Pes)
Are legal and financial research tools merely devoted to the depiction of legal and financial orders? Or do they contribute to modify, alter or transform these orders? The last section of the course is devoted to novel developments in the anthropological and sociological study of the impact of research practices in the framing of legal and financial realities. Financial research has an effect on the configuration of financial markets. Thinking through legal categories produces the same consequence, limiting the possible uses of the law and its role in society. Examples such as the “performative” effect of financial pricing models on the shaping of financial markets will be explored. Parallel examples in the field of legal research will be also explored, with reference to the economic analysis of law (“Law and Economics”) and the old and new “Law and Development” movement.

Fabian Muniesa - Visiting Professor of Anthropology
French and Spanish nationalities, is a recognized expert in financial anthropology. He is currently a Professor at the Ecole des Mines, Paris.

Luca Pes - Post-Doctoral Fellow
Italian nationality, is a Phd candidate at the London School of Economics in anthropology.