WREL.2100 Economics, Religion, and Patriarchy
This course explores how wealth, religions, and gender have shaped civilized life. It begins with the emergence of agriculture, patriarchy, and cities. It builds from Karen Armstrong's thesis that religions have not caused violence, but channeled the violence of the agricultural and patriarchal state. One model of that state, a male ruler with a harem of women and eunuchs, dominated empires of China, Persia, Byzantium, and the Ottomans. Other forms of patriarchal religious and economic life permeate the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, the Hindu Laws of Manu and Chinese (Confucian and Daoist) traditions, and continue through Islam to the Middle Ages. The course proceeds through capitalism and reactions against it by Marxists and Feminists to the eras of the Social Gospel and Catholic Social Teaching, to Liberation Theology and the Prosperity Gospel, and returns to the crises of today. At the middle and the end of the course, students are asked to propose and to discuss solutions.
LA