Anthropology › Section G · Economic anthropology › Topic G.7

Industrialism and postmodernity

Factories, wage labour and fossil fuels changed how people work, where they live and what they buy, and they pulled every other way of making a living into one global system. Anthropologists study that transformation from the shop floor, the plantation and the gig worker's phone.

In this topic

  • A new mode of subsistence
  • From fields to factories
  • Sugar, slavery and industry
  • Colonialism and its legacy
  • Many modernities
  • Worked example: spirits on the factory floor
  • Commodity fetishism
  • Postindustrialism and postmodernity
  • Worked example: reading employment shifts
  • Precarity and the environment
  • Common mistakes to avoid
  • Key takeaways

This topic is part of Wuanberri Pro. Checking your access…

← Previous topicNext topic →