Mergers & Acquisitions

We wind up our series on the anthropology of work with a fascinating conversation about the remnants of settler colonial valuations of labor in present-day India and in the United States with Sarah Besky. Sarah’s combination of historical and ethnographic research has allowed her to draw connections between British settler colonialism in India, the tea plantations launched under that regime, and ongoing questions of labor and its value today. We also discussed that most successful (one might say) example of British settler colonialism, the United States, and our own remnants of colonial labor valuation regimes.

Sarah Besky is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor in the ILR School. Her research uses ethnographic and historical methods to study the intersection of inequality, nature, and capitalism in the Himalayas. In her work, she analyzes how materials and bodies take on value under changing political economic regimes, and she explores the diverse forms of labor that make and maintain that value. Articles on these questions have appeared in Cultural Anthropology, American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Antipode, and Environmental Humanities, as well as other interdisciplinary journals.

One of my favorite people to talk to is Dr. Carlena Ficano. Carli is a labor economist, an interest she marries with a passion for equity and inclusion, and for recognizing how corporate power twists economic theory into market imperfections. She is also one of the many people I met in undergrad at Hartwick College who didn’t understand why I was a declared anthropology major instead of an economics major. Carli was the only one who made a good case for me to add an economics major to my anthropology major, and the rest was history.

Carli and I have very different ways of looking at work, as researchers with disparate methodologies. She tends to wear her economics hat and I wear my anthropology hat. Yet we often see many of the same things from different perspectives. Anthropology usually invests its time in deep hanging out, which keeps us from making definitive statements about more than the very specific communities in which we work. Economists, on the other hand, use large data sets to run regression analyses and other types of quantitative methods. But rather than fighting about which perspective is more valid than the other, Carli and I discussed the ways in which these two perspectives could be married to offer a more robust picture of labor in the United States.

Dr. Carlena Ficano is a professor of economics at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY. Dr. Ficano received her Ph.D. from Cornell University, and studied anthropology and sociology during her undergraduate years. Dr. Ficano is a labor economist. In addition to her work with students at Hartwick, Dr. Ficano is thoroughly involved in economic development in rural upstate New York where she lives and works.

References:

Monopsony – in economics, a monopsony is a market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers.

Smith, C. 2021. How the Word is Passed: A Reconing with the History of Slavery in America. New York: Little, Brown & Company.

One of the many fairy tales hegemonically attached to the world of work in capitalist economies is that all one need do is get a job and work hard, and those things will automatically lead to “the good life.” But what, exactly, is the good life? Is it a universal term or does it mean different things to different people in different places? What are the narratives attached to the “good life” and what are the narratives that come into play when the fairy tale does not come true? Finally, what happens when employers and employees have different ideas about the role of work in worker’s lives? In this brief, free-wheeling conversation, I discuss these questions and more with Dr. Christine Jeske, author of The Laziness Myth.

Dr. Christine Jeske is an associate professor of anthropology at Wheaton College. Prior to coming to Wheaton, Christine worked in microfinance, refugee resettlement, community development, and teaching while living in Nicaragua, Northwest China, and South Africa. Christine is the author of three books and many articles for popular and academic audiences. Her most recent book, The Laziness Myth, considers what makes work desirable, how racism shapes work, and how people find hope in undesirable working conditions.

References:

The Laziness Myth: Narratives of Work and the Good Life in South Africa by Christine Jeske

Jeske, C. 2018. “Why Work? Do We Understand What Motivates Work-Related Decisions in South Africa?” Journal of Southern African Studies (44:1). https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2018.1403219

Ferguson, J. 2016. Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Jeske, C. 2022. “Introduction: Hopoes of and for Whiteness.” Journal for the Anthropology of North America (25:2). https://doi.org/10.1002/nad.12172

Kristin Phillips, is associate professor of anthropology at Emory University. She studies inequality and activism on energy, food and environment in East Africa and the US South. Kristin won the 2020 Society for Economic Anthropology Book Prize for her book, An Ethnography of Hunger: Politics, Subsistence, and the Unpredictable Grace of the Sun (Indiana Univ. Press). 

Since 2017, Kristin has led two National Science Foundation projects on poverty and energy — one in East Africa and one in the southeastern US.  Our podcast focuses on her study of energy poverty and activism in Georgia connected with policies of the state’s dominant utility Georgia Power. See her article on this research in the February 2023 issue of Economic Anthropology (see references).  

Host: Sandy Smith-Nonini, Ph.D.  an anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Edited for sound quality by: Roque Nonini. Music by Ambient Space Background. 

NOTE:  Kristin’s  reference to an IRP in the podcast refers to a utility’s “Integrated Resource Plan.”

References:

Bakke, Gretchen (2016). The Grid: The Fraying Wires between Americans and our Energy Future. New York: Bloomsbury.  

Bryan, William, and Maggie Kelley. February 2021. Energy Insecurity Fundamentals for the Southeast. Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (Atlanta). 

Cater, Casey P. 2019. Regenerating Dixie: Electric Energy and the Modern South. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 

Georgia Conservation Voters Education fund (2021). “Ratepayer Robbery: The True Cost of Plant Vogtle.” Atlanta: Georgia Conservation Voters.  

Harrison, Conor & Shelley Welton (2021). “The states that opted out: Politics, power, and exceptionalism in the quest for electricity deregulation in the United States South.” Energy Research and Social Science 79: 1-11.  

Luke, Nikki. 2021. “Powering racial capitalism: Electricity, rate-making, and the uneven energy geographies of Atlanta.” Environment & Planning E: Nature and Space.  

Nolin, Jill. 2021. “Feds Side with Black Voters in Suit That Says Rights Violated by At-Large PSC Elections.” Georgia Public Broadcasting, July 29, 2021. www.gpb.org. 

Phillips, Kristin 2023 “Southern politics, southern power prices: Race, utility regulation, and the value of energy.” Economic Anthropology. 10:197–212.

Sovacool, Benjamin K., and Michael H. Dworkin. 2015. “Energy Justice: Conceptual Insights and Practical Applications.” Applied Energy 142: 435-444.  

US Department of Energy. Low Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) Tool. https://www.energy.gov/eere/slsc/maps/lead-tool. Accessed May 17, 2022. 

 In this episode, Dr. Sandy Smith-Nonini interviews Dr. Tom Love, professor emeritus at Linfield College. Dr. Love discusses why energy is so important in studies of the climate transition, and why the field of anthropology is well-suited to the study of energy in terms of the field’s history and premise. Economic anthropologists, in particular, are well positioned to explore the inter-disciplinarity of energy and the economy. Sandy also drew on Tom’s past explorations of peak oil and more recently his involvement with colleagues in ongoing work in net energy (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) to interrogate why these debates remain highly relevant to the climate transition. Finally, Sandy talked with her guest about his most recent work as a co-founder and developer with other colleagues of the Planetary Limits Academic Network (PLAN) website – which is providing a forum for these discussions and for public scholarship.

Guest Bio: Tom is emeritus professor of anthropology at Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon. He co-edited the Cultures of Energy reader with Sarah Strauss and Stephanie Rupp (Left Coast Press, 2013, 2016) and authored The Independent Republic of Arequipa (University of Texas Press, 2017). He co-edited with Cindy Isenhour a 2016 issue of Economic Anthropology on “Energy and Economy.” Tom has done field research on solar energy in rural Peru. He is a founding organizer with other scholars of PLAN –the Planetary Limits Academic Network website: https://planetarylimits.net/user/tomlove/.

Music: Borough by Molerider at Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).

References:

Campbell, C. and J. Laherrere. (1998). “The End of Cheap Oil,” Scientific American, Vol. 278, No. 3, 78- 83.

Graeber, D. and D. Wengrow. (2021). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Hornborg, Alf. (2016). Global Magic: Technologies of Appropriation from Ancient Rome to Wal Street. Palgrave.

_____ & C. Isenhour. (2016). Energy and Economy: Re-cognizing High Energy Modernity as an Historical Period. In Love & Isenhour, eds., Economic Anthropology, 3:1 “Energy and Economy.”

_____ & D. Murphy (2016). Implications of Net Energy for the Food-Energy-Water Nexus; An NSF-funded workshop, Linfield College, 14-16 January.

Mitchell, T. (2011). Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Verso.

Strauss, S., S. Rupp and T. Love, eds. (2013/2016) Cultures of Energy: Power, Practices, Technologies. London: Routledge.

Murphy, D.J.; et. al. (2022). Energy Return on Investment of Major Energy Carriers. Sustainability, 14, 7098.

Wilhite, H. (2013/2016). Energy Consumption as Cultural Practice. In Strauss, S., S. Rupp and T. Love, eds. Cultures of Energy: Power, Practices, Technologies. London: Routledge.

Wilk, R. and Cliggitt, L. (2007/2008). Economy and Cultures, 2nd Ed. Taylor and Francis.

Dr. Alexy’s most recent book, Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan, considers how people negotiate freedom, happiness, and connections through divorce. It was published by the University of Chicago Press and is also available through open access. Since a Chinese version has been published by the East China Normal University Press, Xinyan also invited the Chinese translator of Dr. Alexy’s book to join the conversation. Amy Xu is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology department at Brown University.

References:

Cook, E. E. (2016). Reconstructing adult masculinities: part-time work in contemporary Japan. Routledge.

Hoang, K. K. (2015). Dealing in desire: Asian ascendancy, Western decline, and the hidden currencies of global sex work. University of California Press.

Koch, G. (2020). Healing labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy. Stanford University Press.

Host: Xinyan Peng

References:

Boyer, Dominic, and George E. Marcus. (2021). Collaborative anthropology today: A Collection of Exceptions. Cornell University Press.

McDonald, D. (2014). The firm: The story of McKinsey and its secret influence on American business. Simon & Schuster.

Ortner, S. B. (2016). “Dark anthropology and its others: Theory since the eighties.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6(1), 47-73.

Host: Xinyan Peng

03:32 The Study of Supercorporate

References:

Irvine, J. T. (1989). “When talk isn’t cheap: Language and political economy.” American ethnologist, 16(2), 248-267.

Janelli, R. L., & Yim, D. (1995). Making capitalism: The social and cultural construction of a South Korean conglomerate. Stanford University Press.

Host: Xinyan Peng

GUEST BIO

In this podcast, Tanya Matthan speaks with Dr. Taylor Nelms about his research within and outside the academy. In particular, we discuss his ongoing research on and with credit unions, and its relationship to his disciplinary training as an economic anthropologist. Dr. Nelms shares his insights on mentorship, graduate school curricula, and the futility of insider/outsider distinctions vis-a-vis the contemporary academy.

GUEST BIO