Download 163ANTH-203B-1 - Brandeis University

Anthropology Department
Brandeis University
Fall 2016
ANTH 203b
Contemporary Issues in Anthropological Theory
Class:
Instructor:
Office Hours:
Fridays 9-11:50 am, location TBA
Elizabeth Ferry, Brown 226, [email protected]
Tuesdays 1-2 pm; Thursdays 10 am -12 pm and by appointment
In this seminar, we will examine major theoretical and methodological concerns that inspire and
inform contemporary social-cultural anthropology. Our aim is to examine and critically evaluate
important theories and debates in anthropology, from about the 1970's on, concerning such topics as:
history, social change, practice, agency, structure, power, subjectivity, gender, sexuality, postcolonialism,, globalization, biopolitics, science and technology, multispecies ethnography, affect and
the anthropology of the senses, violence and social suffering, and the role of anthropology beyond the
academy.
One of the seminar's objectives will be to reflect on the historical roots and philosophical
foundations of particular perspectives, asking whether or not current approaches are truly “new,” or
whether they are extensions or reformulations of preceding theoretical legacies. We will also probe the
interplay between theory and ethnography, evaluating both the philosophical coherence of theories as
well as their empirical adequacy. How well does each theoretical perspective help us understand
human beings and the worlds they create and inhabit?
Finally, we will aim to assess where anthropology is heading: What is and should be the
continuing role of anthropology in the academy? What role does and should anthropological method
and writing play in worlds beyond the academy? What inspires you about anthropology, and where do
you think the discipline is and should be heading?
The course is designed especially for graduate students in anthropology but students in other
graduate programs are welcome to enroll.
Required readings: Books are on reserve in the library, or students may purchase them online via
Powell’s, Amazon, etc. Articles and book chapters will be available on LATTE. Whenever possible,
please bring hard copies to class.
We will be reading substantial portions of the following books:
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.
Bruno Latour, We Have Never been Modern
Learning Goals:
The central learning goals of the seminar will be to:
• Gain knowledge about the current trends and historical development of major theories and
concerns in contemporary anthropology.
• Learn about which theories, methodologies, problems, and styles of ethnographic writing in
anthropology inspire you most: What do you see as anthropology’s purpose and mission?
• Develop and enhance critical/analytical thinking, reading, and writing skills.
• Hone skills in oral presentation, and collaborative discussion.
Selected contemporary ethnographies:
Ferry, ANTH 203b, Fall 2016, page 2
For your take-home final exam, you will be asked to read and analyze two of the below significant
contemporary ethnographies. You may wish to select two to purchase and to read in entirety for the
final exam assignment.
Biehl, João: Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment (California 2005, 2013, online access
through LTS ebrary)
Boellstorff, Tom: Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human
(Princeton 2008)
Bourgois, Philipe and Jeff Schonberg: Righteous Dopefiend (California 2009, online access
through LTS ebrary), California Series in Public Anthropology
Dave, Naisargi: Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics (Duke 2012,
online access through LTS ebrary)
Han, Clara: Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile (California 2012, online
access through LTS ebrary)
Ho, Karen: Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Duke 2009, online access through LTS
ebrary)
Jain, S. Lochlann: Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (California, 2013) (2014 Winner of the
Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing)
Mahmood, Saba: Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton 2005,
2012) (Her related Cultural Anthropology 2001 article is one of the most-cited in anthropology
publications featured in AnthroSource)
Muehlmann, Shaylih: When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S.-Mexico
Borderlands. (California 2013; Series in Public Anthropology).
Ralph, Laurence: Renegade Dreams: Living through Injury in Gangland Chicago (Chicago 2015).
Schull, Natasha: Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2013.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt: Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in
Capitalist Ruins (Princeton 2015, online access through LTS ebrary), OR Friction: An Ethnography
of Global Connection (Princeton 2004)
Ulysse, Gina Athena: Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post Quake Chronicle. (Wesleyan,
2015).
Course requirements:
•
One take-home midterm exam/essay (approximately 8 pages) @ 25%
(This assignment may be revised—due two weeks after the first version is returned with comments.
The two grades will be averaged.)
•
One take-home final exam (15-18 pp.) @ 35%
•
One seminar presentation/discussion facilitation @ 15%
•
Class participation & LATTE postings @ 25%
Written work: Mid-term and final exam topics are posted on LATTE. Due dates are specified in the
syllabus and on the assignments. The exam topics will be based on the course readings.
Late work: normally grades are lowered by 1/3 of a grade for each weekday late.
Ferry, ANTH 203b, Fall 2016, page 3
Seminar presentation: Each member of the class will be responsible for assisting in leading one
seminar discussion, by 1) providing a brief analysis of important points raised by the assigned readings,
2) succinctly placing the assigned readings in a historical context, and 3) framing a set of relevant
discussion questions. The presenter should communicate with me by noon on the day before class with
their plans for the discussion.
Class participation: This includes regular attendance, careful preparation of the readings, and
informed contribution to seminar discussions. This is a discussion-based rather than lecture-driven
class. Because we only meet once per week, if you miss a class (regardless of the reason), you must
provide a 4-5 page written analysis of that day’s readings.
You will also be asked to submit one selected brief passage (of about 1-2 sentences) from the assigned
reading materials, and just one or a few (brief, informal) sentences explaining what struck you about
the passage. Please submit these by 5 pm on the day before class. These informal notes might address
one of the following: Why is the passage insightful, exciting, confusing, irritating, on-point, expressive
of the core nuggets of the author’s argument, akin to something else we’ve read, or….? It’s OK to miss
a few of these, but aim to submit most times. There’s no need to fully flesh out your comments; rather,
just add a quick note to be further pursued in class discussion.
If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to
have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me as soon as possible.
Workload: Success in this 4-credit class is based on the expectation that students will commit on
average at least twelve hours per week to the coursework (including class meetings, reading, writing,
research, etc.)
**********
Introduction to the course. [please read these before class on August 26]
8/26
Bruce Knauft, Genealogies for the Present in Cultural Anthropology (1996),
chs. 1-2: pp. 9-61.
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973): "Thick Description: Toward an
Interpretive Theory of Culture": pp. 3-30.
Laura Ahearn: “Commentary: Keywords as a Literary Practice in the History of
Anthropological Theory.” American Ethnologist 40(1) (2013): 6-13.
9/2
Structure and History
Reading TBA
Marshall Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History
of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (1981): pp. 1-72 (skim or skip pp. 55-66).
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, “Structure, Event and Historical Metaphor: Rice and Identities in
Ferry, ANTH 203b, Fall 2016, page 4
Japanese History.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1(2) (n.s.) (June 1995): 227253.
9/9 Practice.
Sherry Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties," Comparative Studies in Society
and History (1984) 26:126-161.
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977). Read especially chapter 2,
“Structures and the Habitus” (pp. 72-95), and chapter 4, “Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis
for a Theory of Symbolic Power” (pp. 159-197).
Michel de Certeau “Introduction” and “Walking in the City” in The Practice of Everyday
Life
Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Quest of Michel de Certeau” New York Review of Books, May
15, 200
Recommended: Sherry Ortner, “Updating Practice Theory,” Introduction to Anthropology and
Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject (2006): pp. 1-18.
Power and Resistance, Agency and Constraint
9/16
James Scott, “Preface” and chapter 1, “Small Arms Fire in the Class War,” in Weapons of
the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985): pp. xv-xxii & 1-27.
William Roseberry, “Hegemony and the Arts of Contention” In Everyday Forms of State
Formation, edited by Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent, Duke University Press (1997)
Lila Abu-Lughod, “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through
Bedouin Women.” American Ethnologist (Feb. 1990) 17(1): 41-55.
Laura Ahearn, “Agency.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology (2000) 9(1-2): 12-15.
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdfplus/10.1525/jlin.1999.9.1-2.12
Saba Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on
the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural Anthropology (2001) 16(2): 202-236.
Recommended:
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1979), ch. 1, “The Body of the Condemned” (pp. 331) and ch. 3: "Panopticism" (pp. 195-228).
An archaeological perspective: William Walker and Michael Schiffer, “The Materiality of
Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective.” Journal of Archaeological Method and
Theory (2006) 13(2): 67-88.
Ferry, ANTH 203b, Fall 2016, page 5
9/23 Gender, sexuality, feminism(s) and queer studies
Gayle Rubin, “Introduction: Sex, Gender, Politics,” in Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader, by
Gayle S. Rubin (Duke University Press, 2011): pp. 1-32.
Michelle Rosaldo, "Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview," in M. Rosaldo
and L. Lamphere, eds. Woman, Culture and Society (1974): pp. 17-42.
Sherry Ortner, "The Problem of 'Women' as an Analytic Category," in Making Gender (1996):
pp. 116-138.
Kath Weston, “The Bubble, the Burn, and the Simmer: Introduction: Locating Sexuality In
Social Science,” in Long Slow Burn: Sexuality and Social Science (Routledge,
1998): pp. 1-27.
Judith Butler, “Critically Queer,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (1993): 17-32.
(Concentrate on pp. 21-24, “Gender Performativity and Drag.”)
Evan B. Towle, Lynn Marie Morgan
Romancing the Transgender Native: Rethinking the Use of the "Third Gender" Concept GLQ:
A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8, Number 4, 2002 pp. 469-497
Recommended: Kamala Visweswaran, "Histories of Feminist Ethnography," Annual Review of
Anthropology (1997) 26:591-621.
Tom Boellstorff, “Queer Studies in the House of Anthropology.” Annual Review of
Anthropology (2007) 36(1): 17-36, OR “Queer Techne: Two Theses on Methodology and
Queer Studies,”
Recommended from archaeology: Traci Ardren, “Studies of Gender in the Prehispanic
Americas.” Journal of Archaeological Research (2008) 16: 1-35.
9/30 Post-coloniality and critiques of anthropology
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’
Pasts,” Representations 37:1-26 (1992)
Talal Asad, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (1973) pp. 9-19, 103-11
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “Anthropology and the Savage Slot: the Poetics and Politics of
Otherness,” in Recapturing Anthropology, ed. By Richard Fox, SAR Press, 1991
Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses”
Feminist Review 30: 61-88 (1988)
Jafari Sinclaire Allen and Ryan Cecil Jobson, “The Decolonizing Generation: (Race and)
Theory in Anthropology since the Eighties” Current Anthropology 57(2) 129-148.
Ferry, ANTH 203b, Fall 2016, page 6
Recommended: Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
From archaeology: Lynn Meskell and Robert W. Preucel, “Politics,” in Meskell and Preucel,
eds., A Companion to Social Archaeology (2004): pp. 315-334.
Lisa Overholtzer, “Archaeological Interpretation and the Rewriting of History:
Deimperializing and Decolonizing the Past at Xaltocan, Mexico.” American Anthropologist
115(3) (2013): 481-495.
10/7 Neoliberalism, Governmentality and Biopower
Allen Feldman, “On the Actuarial Gaze: 9-11 to Abu Ghraib” Cultural Studies Vol. 19:. 2
(2005), pp. 203 - 226
Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose, “Biopower Today,” BioSocieties (journal published by the
London School of Economics) 1 (2006): 195-217.
Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang, “Biopolitical Beijing: Pleasure, Sovereignty, and SelfCultivation in China’s Capital.” Cultural Anthropology (2005) 20(3): 303-327.
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1, pp 140-144
Michel Foucault On Governmentality
10/14 Violence and Social Suffering
Allen Feldman, “On the Actuarial Gaze: From 9-11 to Abu Ghraib” Cultural Studies (2005)
19(2):203-226
Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois, “Introduction: Making Sense of Violence,” in
Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois, eds.
(Blackwell 2004): pp. 1-32.
Paul Farmer, “On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below.” Race/Ethnicity:
Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 3(1), Autumn 2009: 11-28 [originally published in 1996 in
Daedalus 125(1): 261-283].
Veena Das, “Violence, Gender, and Subjectivity.” Annual Review of Anthropology (2008)
37: 283-299.
Laurence Ralph, Renegade Dreams introduction and ch. 4
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer pp. 71-115
10/21 Science, Technology, and Science and Technology Studies
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, chapters 1, 2, and 5
Ferry, ANTH 203b, Fall 2016, page 7
Heather Paxson, “Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk Cheese in the
United States,” Cultural Anthropology 23(1) (2008): 15-47.
Ruha Benjamin, “Innovating inequity: if race is a technology, postracialism is the genius bar”
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Mains, Daniel. "Blackouts and Progress: Privatization, Infrastructure, and a Developmentalist
State in Jimma, Ethiopia." Cultural Anthropology 27, no. 1 (2012): 3–27.
Evan Conaway, “Pokémon GO and the visibility of digital infrastructure” July 26, 2016
Platypus
http://blog.castac.org/2016/07/pokemon-go/
Recommended: Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist
Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”
10/28 - Beyond the textual, verbal, and visual
Thomas Csordas, “Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology” (1990) 18(1) 5-47.
Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work
in Medical Anthropology” Medical Anthropology Quarterly (1987) 1(1): 6–41
Melissa Gregg, “On Friday Night Drinks: Workplace Affects in the Age of the Cubicle” (2010)
The Affect Theory Reader pp 250-266.
Brian Massumi, “The Autonomy of Affect,” Cultural Critique, No. 31, The Politics of Systems
and Environments, Part II. (Autumn, 1995), 83-109.
Recommended:
Steven Feld “Voices of the Rainforest” Public Culture Fall 1991 4(1): 131-140;
Emily Martin, “The Potentiality of Ethnography and the Limits of Affect Theory, Current
Anthropology, Vol. 54, No. S7, Potentiality and Humanness: Revisiting theAnthropological Object
in Contemporary Biomedicine (October 2013), pp. S149-S158
10/30 Take-home midterm exam/essay due by midnight, to be submitted via LATTE.
11/4
Anthropology and the Global
Sarah Lamb “Intimacy in a Transnational Era: the Remaking of Aging Among Indian
Americans.” Diaspora (2002) 11(3), 299-330
Eric Wolf, “Modes of Production,” chapter 3 of Europe and the People without History
(1982): pp. 73-100.
Ferry, ANTH 203b, Fall 2016, page 8
Talal Asad, “Review: Are There Histories of Peoples without Europe? A Review Article”.
Comparative Studies in Society and History (1987) 29(3): 594-607.
Mario Blaser, “Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe
Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology.” (2013) 54(5): 547-568
Marshall Sahlins, "Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of the 'World
System'," Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988):1-51; reprinted in
Culture/Power/History (ed. N. Dirks et al.), pp. 412-456.
Anna Tsing, “The Global Situation” Cultural Anthropology 15(3) 327-360 (2000)
Recommended:
Wallerstein, Immanuel, “The Rise and Future Demise of the Modern World-System: Concepts for
Comparative Analysis:” Comparative Studies in Society and History 16(4) (Sept. 1974): 387-415
Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” (ch. 2, pp. 27-47)
and “Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology” (ch. 3, pp. 48-65)
from Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minnesota, 1996).
11/11 Humans and Other Stuff
Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power, chapters 3, 4. Viking Press, 1985
Marisol de la Cadena “Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes” Cultural Anthropology 25(2)
334-370 (2010)
Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (California
2013): “Introduction: Runa Puma,” pp. 1-25.
Ferry, Elizabeth. "The Birth of the Mineral ‘Aguilarite’ and What Came Next: A Twice-Told
Tale.." Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. 18. 3 (2013): 376-394.
Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, “Outer Worlds: the Persistence of Race in Movements “Beyond the
Human” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21(2-3): 215-218.
Recommended:
Kirksey and Helmreich, “The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography” (2010)
Archaeological Perspective:
Tim Ingold, “The Temporalities of the Landscape,” World Archaeology
25, no. 2 (1993): 24-174.
11/18 – no class American Anthropological Association Meetings
Ferry, ANTH 203b, Fall 2016, page 9
11/25 – thanksgiving break
12/2
Anthropology Facing Outward
Matti Bunzl, “The Quest for Anthropological Relevance” American Anthropologist 110(1):
53-50.
Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa, “#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and
the racial politics of social media in the United States,” American Ethnologist (2015) 42 (1):
4–17
Faye Harrison, et al. “Introducing the Public Anthropology Institute,” June 27, 2016 Savage
Minds
Shannon Speed, “At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology: Toward a Critically
Engaged Activist Research.” American Anthropologist 108(1) (2006): 66-76.
George E. Marcus "The Unbearable Slowness of Being and Anthropologist Now." Xcp # 12
12/9 Takehome final exam due via LATTE at midnight