The Anthropology of Politics: U.S. Presidential Election Edition

This course examines the birth and international expansion of an American industry of political marketing. It focuses attention on the cultural processes, sociopolitical contexts and moral utopias that shape the practice of political marketing in the U.S. and in different countries. By looking at the debates and expert practices at the core of the business of politics, the course explores how the “universal” concept of democracy is interpreted and reworked through space and time, while examinin…

The syllabus, on MIT OpenCourseWare

The full course — syllabus, assigned readings, problem sets, exams, and lecture notes — lives on OCW. These open the real thing: