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Anthropology 472, Social Theory & Anthropology
Fall 2015, Wednesdays, 9-12
John R. Bowen, [email protected], 935-5680, McMillan 150
This seminar is designed as a core course for graduate students in anthropology, graduate
students in other fields, and advanced undergraduates who have an interest in social theory
and anthropology. (The course counts as the “cultural requirement” for anthropology
graduate students.) We consider modern anthropological responses to two questions of
intellectual and social importance: How is there social order without a state? How and why
do people differ in their knowledge, values, and practices?
We work by reading and discussing, and all our energy must be focused on making the
seminar lively and informative. Starting with week 2, on each Tuesday by 2 PM each student
will have posted at least two questions or comments for discussion related to the week’s
readings on the course Blackboard site. In addition, each week a pair of students will lead
class discussion; their joint posting will contain a more extensive list of questions and points
for discussion.
You also will write three short “response essays,” of 3-4 (typed, double-spaced) pages each:
an essay about ideas, claims, arguments, and findings found in the readings. You might
explore methods, take issue with claims, or relate the readings to other work with which you
are familiar. You need not undertake outside reading or research in order to write these
essays. The first must reach me by October 9th, the second by October 3th, and the third by
December 1st. Essays may be on any of the readings, whether or not we have already
discussed them. Please post essays on the course Blackboard site; I will then post the essays
with comments in your inbox. Please include your last name on the essay title and post in
Word format.
Anthropology graduate students (and only they) will present 15-minute, AAA-style
presentations instead of their third essay. The presentations may concern their own current,
past, or planned work, but must emphasize the relationship of social theory (of any sort) to
empirical work.
Your grade will be based on your participation in the weekly seminar, written questions, and
your essays (and for anthropology graduate students the final presentation). I do not expect
anyone to know any of this material before we begin and grading is not competitive; most
students earn high grades. Because the course revolves around in-class participation, no
incompletes will be given for the course except in unusual cases.
I have ordered the following books in the campus bookstore. The first two are not required
for the course, but some students find them helpful.
Alan Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology, 2000: a good overview of
anthropological theory to read before or during the course
Anthony Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory, 1973: the best companion to Marx,
Weber and Durkheim
Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, 1990
edition (1925)
Paul Willis, Learning to Labour, 1981
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Journal articles are available through the library’s electronic catalogue; other readings are
available on electronic reserve (password is “society”). Please be sure to have read (and
thought about) all the week’s readings before class.
Syllabus
8/26: Models and theories in anthropology.
George W. Stocking, “Paradigmatic traditions in the history of anthropology”, in Stocking,
The Ethnographer’s Magic and Other Essays in the History of Anthropology, pp. 342-61,
1990.
9/2: Why do people differ so?
E. B. Tylor, “Man, ancient and modern,” in Anthropology, 1881
Franz Boas, “The limitations of the comparative method in anthropology” (1896), in Boas,
Race, Language, and Culture, pp. 270-271-80, 1982
Franz Boas, “The instability of human types” and “Race, language, and culture,” in Boas,
The Mind of Primitive Man, 1911
Ruth Benedict, "Configurations of culture in North America", American Anthropologist
34: 1-27, 1932
[I will refer to: Johann Gottfried von Herder, Reflections on the Philosophy of the
History of Mankind (selections), 1968 (1784-91)]
9/9: How is there social order?
Emile Durkheim, “The Conjugal Family” (1892); “Divorce by Mutual Consent” (1906), in
Mark Traugott, ed, Emile Durkheim on Institutional Analysis, pp. 229-52, 1978
Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, 1925
[I will refer to: John Locke, The Second Treatise, secs. 39-51, 95-122, in Two
Treatises of Government, P. Laslett, ed., 1960 (1690)]
9/16: Where does kinship count?
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, “On Joking Relationships,” Africa 13 (3), 1940
Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology”, in
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, pp. 29-53, 1963 (1945)
Pierre Bourdieu, “Parallel-Cousin Marriage”, in Outline of a Theory of Practice,
pp. 30-71, 1977 (1972)
Camille Robcis, “How the symbolic became French: Kinship and republicanism in the
PACS debates”, Discourse 26 (3): 110-135, 2004.
9/23: Practical social life
Bronislaw Malinowski, “Systems of law in conflict”, in Crime and Custom in Savage
Society, 1926; “Magic and the Kula” (from section IV), in Argonauts of the Western
Pacific, 1922
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, Part III,
chapters 1, 3, 1937
Fredrik Barth, “Ethnic groups and boundaries,” in Fredrik Barth, Process and Form in Social
Life, pp.198-227, 1981 (1969)
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9/30: Semiotics
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, Ch. 1, 1966 (1962)
Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a cultural system”, in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of
Cultures, pp. 87-125, 1993 (1966)
Talal Asad, “The Construction of religion as an anthropological category”, in Talal Asad,
Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam,
pp. 27-54, 1993 (1982)
Patrick Eisenlohr, “As Makkah is sweet and beloved, so is Madina: Islam, devotional
genres, and electronic mediation in Mauritius,” American Ethnologist 33 (2):
230-245, 2006
9/7: No Class
10/14: How does class shape society?
Karl Marx, The German Ideology, I (A), “Idealism and Materialism”,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01.htm),
1932 (1845-46)
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/, chs. 1, 2, 7,
1937 (1851-52)
Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History, chs. 1, 3, 6, 1982
10/21: How does ideology work?
Paul Willis, Learning to Labour, 1981
and watch the film, 35 Up
10/28: Culture and class
Max Weber, “The Protestant sects and the spirit of capitalism”, in H. H. Gerth and C.
Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, pp. 302-22, 1946 (1922-23)
Pierre Bourdieu, “Social space and symbolic power,” Sociological Theory 7:14–25, 1989
Michèle Lamont and Annette Lareau, “Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps and Glissandos in
Recent Theoretical Developments”, Sociological Theory, 6 (2), pp. 153-168, 1988
11/4: Power and governance
Michel Foucault, “Governmentality”, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Millers, eds. The
Foucault Effect, pp. 87-104, 1991 (1978)
James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta, “Spatializing states: Toward an ethnography of neoliberal
governmentality,” AE 29 (4): 981-1002, 2002
Peter Benson and Stuart Kirsch, “Capitalism and the Politics of Resignation”,
Current Anthropology 51(4):459-486, 2010
Bret Gustafson, “Flashpoints of Sovereignty: Natural Gas and Territorial Conflict in
Bolivia”, in Andrea Behrends, Stephen Reyna, and Gunther Schlee, eds., Oil, Integration,
and Conflict: Towards an Anthropology of Oil. Oxford: Berghahn Books
John Bowen et al., “France After Charlie Hebdo”, Boston Review, March 2015
(http://bostonreview.net/forum/john-bowen-france-after-charlie-hebdo)
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11/11: Self-governance
Marcel Mauss, “Techniques of the body,” in Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter, eds,
Incorporations, pp. 455-477, 1992 (1935)
Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the Self”, in Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and
Truth, vol, 1 (P. Rabinow, ed.), pp. 222-251, 1997 (1982)
Saba Mahmood, ‘Feminist theory, embodiment, and the docile agent’, Cultural
Anthropology 16(2): 202-36, 2001
Rebecca Lester, “Self-Governance, Neoliberalism, and the Subject of Managed Care:
Internal Family Systems Therapy and the Dialogic Self in an American Eating Disorders
Clinic”, ms
11/18: ‘The Field’ Today
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Discipline and practice: `The field’ as site, method, and
location in anthropology,” in A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, eds., Anthropological Locations,
pp. 1-46, 1997
Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,”
Public Culture 2 (2), 1- 24, 1990
John R. Bowen, “How the French State Justifies Controlling Muslim Bodies: From Harmbased to Values-based Reasoning.” Social Research, Summer 2011, 78:2, 1-24, 2011
P. Boyer and M.B. Petersen, “The Naturalness of (many) social institutions”, Journal of
Institutional Economics 8(1): 1–25, 2011
11/25: Thanksgiving Break
12/2: Graduate Student Talks
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