Download Quick links

PAPER GUIDE - SAN 1, 2016/17
SAN 1.
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY: THE COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Coordinator: Professor James Laidlaw ([email protected])
Paper aims and objectives:
To provide a general introduction to the aims, scope and methods of Social Anthropology by
following three complementary avenues to the comparative study of human society and
culture: ethnographic description and analysis of particular societies and cultures; the
comparative study of social institutions; and the different theoretical approaches involved in
anthropological description, analysis and comparison.
General Background Reading:
Astuti, R., J. Parry, & C. Stafford (eds) (2007) Questions of Anthropology. Oxford: Berg.
Barnard, A. & J. Spencer (eds) (2011 [1996]) Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural
Anthropology. Second Edition. London: Routledge.
Carrithers, M. (1992) Why Humans Have Cultures: Explaining Anthropology and Social
Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Eriksen, T. H. (2004) What is Anthropology? London: Pluto Press.
Ingold, T. (ed.) (1994) Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology: Humanity, Culture and
Social Life. London: Routledge.
Core Ethnographies:
Richards, A. (1982 [1956]) Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony among the Bemba of
Zambia. Second Edition. Introduction by J. S. La Fontaine. London: Routledge.
Robbins, J. (2004) Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New
Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Syllabus:
Social Anthropology addresses the really big question – what does it mean to be human? –
by taking as its subject matter the full range of human social and cultural diversity. What
does this diversity tell us about the fundamental bases and possibilities of human social and
political life? Can it help us to comprehend how contemporary global changes manifest
themselves in people’s lives across the world? In this paper you will learn how
anthropologists study, analyse, and theorise about the immense variety of forms of social life
they have found across the world: how such taken-for-granted categories as gender, family,
sexuality, economy, and the state are subject to radical cultural variation, and how everyday
matters such as food, clothing, work, and trade may be bound up with religious and other
symbolic meanings. You will also learn about the main kinds of social theory developed by
anthropologists in response to the challenge of understanding this diversity, and about the
distinctive forms of ethnographic field research anthropologists use in order to gain close,
first-hand knowledge of the societies they study.
The paper provides: (1) An introduction to the key anthropological concepts such as society
and culture, examining different approaches to social and cultural analysis through empirical
case studies; (2) a framework for understanding variations in social organisation, with an
emphasis on politics and economic life, kinship, and symbolism; (3) an overview of the
history of anthropological theory in relation to changing social contexts; (4) an introduction to
the ethnographic method. These themes will be covered by separate lecture courses (there
will also be video classes) during the Michaelmas and Lent Terms; they will be brought
together in the Easter Term through the in-depth analysis of two social groups via the ‘core’
ethnographies.
PAPER GUIDE - SAN 1, 2016/17
Assessment:
This paper is assessed through a three-hour written examination. All topics are covered in a
single undivided paper, and candidates must answer three questions from a choice of
(approximately) 12. Credit will be given to students who display a wide range of
ethnographic knowledge.
Structure of Teaching:
In addition to attending lectures, students will receive regular supervisions, in preparation for
which an essay will normally be required, covering the key topics of this course.
Supervisions are arranged by Directors of Studies, and should be distributed evenly across
the three terms. A normal supervision load would be three supervisions in each of
Michaelmas and Lent, and two in Easter; a small number of additional discussion/revision
sessions, without requiring an essay, are usually considered helpful.
During the Michaelmas and Lent Terms there will also be video classes. Students are
encouraged to incorporate material from these video classes into their regular supervisions
and essays.
Detailed Reading Lists will be made available for each lecture series. Below are introductory
background readings.
Lecture series provided on the course:
1. Identity and Difference
Considers the socio-cultural bases of people’s identities.
Background Readings:
Banks, M. (1995) Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions. London: Routledge.
Barth, F. (1969) Ethnic groups and boundaries. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
Cohen, A. P. (1985) The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Tavistock.
Eriksen, T. H. (2010) Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural
Anthropology. Third Edition. London: Pluto
Holy, L. (1996) Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship. London: Pluto.
MacCormack, C. & M. Strathern (eds) (1980) Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Moore, H. L. (1988) Feminism and Anthropology. Cambridge: Polity.
2. The Symbolic and the Real
These lectures provide a broad introduction to anthropology’s concerns with the role of
symbols and symbolism in human society.
Background Readings:
Douglas, M. (1999 [1975]) Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology. London:
Routledge.
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Kuper, A. (1999) Culture: The Anthropologists’ Account. Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press.
James, W. (2003) The Ceremonial Animal: A New Portrait of Anthropology. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Leach, E. (2000) The Essential Edmund Leach. 2 vols. Edited by S. Hugh-Jones & J.
Laidlaw. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lambek, M. (ed.) (2008) A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. Second Edition. Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell.
PAPER GUIDE - SAN 1, 2016/17
Tambiah, S. J. (1900) Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
3. Introduction to Anthropological Theory
Explores major themes and perspectives in the social and cultural theories employed by
anthropologists.
Background Readings:
Kuper, A. (2005) The Reinvention of Primitive Society: Transformations of a Myth. London:
Routledge.
Kuper, A. (2015 [1973]) Anthropology and Anthropologists: The British School in the
Twentieth Century. Fourth Edition. London: Routledge.
Dumont, L. (2006) Introduction to Two Theories of Social Anthropology: Descent Groups and
Marriage alliance. Berghahn, Oxford.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966) The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Clifford, J. & G. E. Marcus (eds.) (1986). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ortner, Sherry B. (1984) ‘Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties’. Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 26: 126-66.
Stewart, M. (1997) The Time of the Gypsies. Westview Press, Oxford.
4. Politics and Economic Life
Presents political organisation and processes and economic life in cross-cultural
perspective.
Background Readings:
Blom Hansen, T. & F. Stepputat (eds) (2001) States of Imagination: Ethnographic
Explorations of the Postcolonial State. Durham NC: Duke University Press.
Hann, C. & K. Hart (2011) Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ho, K. (2009) Liquidated. An Ethnography of Wall Street. Durham NC: Duke University
Press.
Evans-Pritchard, E. (1940). The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political
Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mauss, M. (1990 [1950]) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic
Societies. Trans. W. D. Halls. London: Routledge.
Sharma, A. & A. Gupta (eds) (2006) The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Vincent, J. (ed.) (2002) The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and
Critique. Oxford: Blackwell.
5. Ethnography
This section focuses on two core ethnographies to discuss the nature of ethnographic
fieldwork and of ethnographic texts.
Core Ethnographies:
Richards, A. (1982 [1956]) Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony among the Bemba of
Zambia. Second Edition. Introduction by Jean La Fontaine. London: Routledge.
Robbins, J. (2004) Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New
Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Background Readings:
Asad, T (1986) ‘The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology’, in J.
Clifford & G. E. Marcus (eds) Writing Culture,. Berkeley: University of California Press.
PAPER GUIDE - SAN 1, 2016/17
Borneman, J. and A. Hammoudi (2009) ‘Introduction’, in Being There: The Fieldwork
Encounter and the Making of Truth. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Crapanzano, V. (1980) Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Gupta, A. & J. Ferguson (1997) ‘Introduction’, in Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and
Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Marcus, G. E. & D. Cushman (1982) ‘Ethnographies as Texts’. Annual Review of
Anthropology, 11: 25-69.
Robbins, J. (1997) ‘When Do You Think the World Will End? Globalization, Apocalypticism,
and the Moral Perils of Fieldwork in “Last New Guinea”’. Anthropology and Humanism, 22: 630.