Colorado State University’s College of Liberal Arts hosted Kevin Yelvington, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, April 9 for a keynote speech on the ideology of dwelling. 

The keynote served as the introduction to the Society for Economic Anthropology’s 46th Annual Meeting, a three-daylong conference centered on a key theme: the anthropology of dwelling. The conference gathered scholars from institutions around the country, including Brown University, Amherst College, California State Fullerton and University of California, Los Angeles. 

Landon Yarrington, an assistant professor of cultural and applied anthropology at CSU and the chair of the conference, said that current issues surrounding housing and affordability in Colorado can be seen through an economic anthropological lens.  

“In general, what I want people to take away from this is to realize that housing could be a sort of evergreen topic, and there’s increasingly stuff that’s happening in our state legislature about housing and homelessness,” Yarrington said. “It’s a surprise to me that economic anthropologists haven’t really weighed in on it.”

Yelvington opened by explaining economic anthropology as a discipline. He referenced a book called, “Economic Anthropology: The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples” by Melville J. Herskovits, which argues that scarcity and economic principles of choice are universal and that social and cultural behaviors ultimately shape economic behavior. 

The USF anthropologist emphasized that ideology can then be seen as a way to understand our unconscious assumptions within economic life, defining ideology as a dynamic, evolving discourse that is grounded in social and historical contexts. 

“Ideology, I want to define, is a discursive articulation of political projects as systematic discursive representations of political dispositions,” Yelvington said. “Ideology is located within discourse, but discursive formations can’t be understood outside of the historical materials (and) social structures. So it’s not so much a question of what is ideology, but instead, when is ideology? That is, when ideology becomes emergent. That’s the title of the talk: when ideology dwells.”

Yelvington gave a number of examples from his own research of how ideology functions within economic systems, including the rise of capitalism, his field work in Trinidad researching Caribbean women workers in world markets, development, wine tourism and more.

“Ideology comes in here and in all of this, including the state’s role,” Yelvington said. “What should be provided by the state and what should not be provided by the state? How does perspective stress the unequal power to create and institute particular meanings as cultural values when they have wide impact? Those of us working on money and payment systems must remember that under capitalism, that money and value are inseparable, yet not identical.” 

To conclude the keynote, Yelvington called on attendees to reimagine ideology as a tool that evolves with time and that can be mobilized against social struggle. 

“We must rebuild and rehabilitate ideology as an oppositional instrument, (and) it’s one that is sensitive to historical particularities,” Yelvington said. “So the scientific revelations that we provide for ourselves and those from whom we learn and advocate for in another moment might be put to use for part of social struggle, ideological and otherwise, for liberation and equality.”

The keynote ended with a Q&A session in which attendees were able to clarify certain topics and build off Yelvington’s ideas. Afterward, attendees expressed their thoughts about the lecture. 

“For me personally, I’m really interested in cultural and linguistic anthropology, so diving into some other types of anthropology that are different from what I’m most interested in is kind of fun,” said Teagan Crites, a CSU anthropology student. 

Peter Kyriacou, a student at the University of South Florida who is currently working on his undergraduate thesis under Yelvington, said the lecture offered him knowledge that builds upon his current thesis, which centers on remittances. 

“The main thing I found that I was trying to communicate is these shifting ideologies migrants develop in their home countries and the communities that they go to, which influence the things that are sent back in that process,” Kyriacou said. “The lecture talking specifically about ideology connects those pieces more clearly.” 

Payton Lee, an incoming graduate student at CSU in cultural anthropology, said he was already familiar with Yelvington’s work, as it was an inspiration to him during his undergraduate years. He said the lecture presented interesting ideas about the intersection of anthropology and sociology.  

“I wouldn’t call it a disconnect so much (as) just a difference in approaches or where the emphasis is,” Lee said. “I think anthropologists, historically, have placed a lot of emphasis on positionality and subjectivity, which are two words we heard in the lecture, whereas sociologists are more focused on movement, which can make anthropologists uncomfortable because it undermines the idea of self-determinism.”

The conference concluded April 11 with attendees participating in breakout sessions and additional presentations that explored key dimensions of housing, including relative values, terms of occupation and settlement patterns.