Week 3: Spheres of exchange in comparative and historical perspective
Ryan Schram
ANTH 1002: Anthropology for a better world
August 22, 2025
Slides available at: https://anthrograph.rschram.org/1002/2025/week-3/friday-noon
What are things everyone needs?
- Take a piece of paper and write all the things people need.
- Generate as many ideas as possible.
- Be as specific as possible, drill down to things you can see and touch.
Stations and banks
- Count off to form groups
- Introduce yourself to your group; appoint one person to take notes and one person to be the spokesperson
- Discuss the following: Swanson (2014) describes milk stations (pp. 162, 164) and milk banks (e.g., pp. 171, 182, 195–196) as two different ways US society has made it possible for nursing mothers to circulate and distribute breastmilk. Consider the things that everyone needs but are unequally distributed among those who need them. Do you see any other examples of station-like and bank-like approaches to redistribution of these resources? Do you see evidence of stations for other valued things turning into banks? Is the reverse possible, that is, can “banked” goods be brought back to the “station” approach? What is it like to be a user of a “station” or a “bank” when you need something other people have?
References
Swanson, Kara W. 2014. “Feminine Banks and the Milk of Human
Kindness.” In Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk,
and Sperm in Modern America, 159–97. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674369481.