Download ANTH 301 - Wellesley College

ANTH 301
History and Theory in Anthropology
Wellesley College
Fall 2008
Thursdays, 6:30-9:00pm, PNE 351
Gregory A. Ruf
(Part-time Visiting Faculty: Associate Professor, Asian & Asian American Studies/Anthropology, Stony Brook University;
[email protected])
Office: PNE 346; email: [email protected]
Office Hours: Th 5:30-6:30pm (other times by appointment only)
Course Description
This course introduces students to contemporary anthropology by tracing its historical development and its
specific application in ethnographic writing. It examines the social context in which each selected model or
“paradigm” took hold and the extent of cognitive sharing, by either intellectual borrowing or breakthrough. The
development of contemporary theory will be examined both as internal to the discipline and as a response to
changing intellectual climates and social milieu. The course will focus on each theory in action, as the theoretical
principles and methods apply to ethnographic case studies.
Course Goal and Objectives
This course is a weekly seminar of intensive-reading on history and theory in socio-cultural anthropology, with the
goal of presenting closely-reasoned critical analyses of theoretical ideas and their applications. The principal
objectives of seminar participation include acquiring: 1) an understanding of major theoretical developments in
the history of the discipline and its practice, as well as of the historical context in which such paradigms took form
and gained ascendancy; 2) an ability to link theory and method to ethnographic examples and ethnological
comparison; 3) an appreciation for the ways in which assumptions, biases, and other factors may influence
observations, considerations of evidence, and interpretations of data.
Requirements, Evaluation, and Grading
Active participation in weekly critical discussions will be a significant factor in determination of grades. Regular
attendance is expected of all participants; absences will be excused (or extensions granted) only in special
circumstance, judged in conformity with College practice. Please come to class sufficiently prepared. Assigned
weekly readings are required to be completed prior to class sessions. Participants will be asked not only to
present summary briefs on the readings and to respond to questions about them, but also to pose questions and
comments of their own for the seminar to consider and discuss.
Final grades will be determined on the following basis:
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•
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General Participation: 20%– includes active engagement in weekly seminar discussions, as well as
short presentations of assigned material
Three Short Papers: 20% each (totaling 60%) – over the course of the semester, each participant will
be required to submit three short (~5 pg.) response papers that offer comparative theoretical critiques of
assigned readings. The challenge is to provide an informed critique that contrasts strengths and
weakness of alternative perspectives. Details regarding each evaluative exercise will be made available
at appropriate junctures.
Final Presentation: 20%– at the final session of the course, each participant will brief the seminar on a
research issue of their own choice, outlining how questions on that particular topic might be framed from
the perspective of at least three different theoretical approaches. Students will be expected to critique
the respective strengths and weaknesses – the ‘highlights and blindspots’ – that each approach brings to
the problem, and to reflect on how the ‘framing’ of analytical questions by different theoretical
perspectives shapes not only the answers we seek but also how we pursue them methodologically.
Students will be expected to review relevant anthropological literature in order to contextualize their
research brief, which is to be delivered as an oral presentation roughly 10-minutes in length; a ~5-page
written copy of the brief must also be submitted by December 19, 2008.
Course Texts and Readings
As an advanced-level seminar, this course is entails intensive reading. Most assigned readings are available online through JSTOR (or Electronic Reserves). In addition, several book-length studies have been ordered through
the Wellesley College bookstore:
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•
•
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Claude Levi-Strauss, 1995, Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture, NY: Schocken (Dist:
Random House), ISBN 080521038 (pbk), $10
Marcel Mauss, 2000, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, NY: Norton,
ISBN 039332043X (pbk), $13.95
Paul Rabinow, 2007 (1977), Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, 30th edition, California, ISBN
0520251776 (pbk), $19.95
Anna L. Tsing, 1993, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place,
Princeton, ISBN 0691000514 (pbk) $26.95
Recommended: Although no reading assignments will be drawn from this book, several copies have been ordered
through the college bookstore for students interested in purchasing a clear and concise overview of the
development on anthropological theory.
• Paul A. Erickson & Liam D. Murphy, 2003, A History of Anthropological Theory, 2nd edition,
Broadview, ISBN 1551115263 (pbk) $19.95
Reference Works
There are a number of helpful reviews on the historical development on anthropological theory, each offering a
different focus and interpretation. Here are several recommended starting points:
• Marvin Harris, 1968, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture, NY:
Crowell [GN320 .H33]
• Joan Vincent, 1990, Anthropology and Politics: Visions, Traditions, & Trends, Tucson: University of
Arizona [GN492 .V55 1990]
• Adam Kuper, 1996, Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School, NY: Routledge
[GN308.3.G7 K86 1996]
• Sydel Silverman (ed.), 1981, Totems and Teachers: Perspectives on the History of Anthropology,
Columbia [GN17 .T69]
• See also the (currently) 10-volume ‘History of Anthropology Series’ published by the University of
Wisconsin [http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/History_of_Anthropology.html]
Please Note:
Students with disabilities who are taking this course and who need disability-related accommodations are
encouraged to work with Barbara Boger, the Director of Programs of the Pforzheimer Learning and Teaching
Center (if you have learning or attention disabilities), and Jim Wice, the Director of Disability Services (if you have
a physical disability or are uncertain) to arrange these accommodations. Their offices are located in the
Pforzheimer Learning and Teaching Center in Clapp Library.
Course Outline
Week 1 (September 4)
Introduction
Week 2 (September 11)
Legacies of Victorian Era Evolutionism
Read:
• Charles Darwin
o The Descent of Man, Ch. 21: ‘General Summary & Conclusions’
ƒ
http://www.human-nature.com/darwin/descent/chap21.htm
•
Henry Spencer
o 1857 – ‘Progress: Its Laws & its Causes’
•
Walter Simon
o 1960 – ‘Herbert Spencer and the ‘Social Organism’’ [JSTOR]
Edward Bennett Tylor
o 1871 – selection from Primitive Culture
•
ƒ
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/spencer-darwin.html
•
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/victorian/topic_4/tylor.htm
•
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S207.htm
•
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/morgan-lewis/ancient-society/ch01.htm
ƒ
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
•
Alfred Wallace
o 1872 – Review of E.B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture
•
Lewis Henry Morgan
o 1877 – ‘Ethnical Periods,’ from Ancient Society
•
Karl Marx
o 1859 – ‘Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’
o
1857-61 – ‘Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange (Circulation),’ from Outline to the
Critique of Political Economy (Grundrisse)
ƒ
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm
Recommended:
•
Derek Freeman, 1974, “The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin & Herbert Spencer,” Current Anthropology 15(3):211-38 [JSTOR]
•
Eleanor Leacock, 1972, “Introduction,” in Frederick Engels [1884], The Origins of the Family, Private Property, & the State, NY:
International Publishers, pp. 7-67 [e-book at WC library]
•
Marx & Engels Internet Archive: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/index.htm
Week 3 (September 18)
Positivist Traditions
Read:
• Durkheim
o 1912 – ‘Cultural Logic of Collective Representations – selection from Elementary Forms of
Religious Life [pdf]
o 1933 – ‘Division of Labor’
ƒ
o
•
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/divlabor.html
1938 – ‘What is a Social Fact?’
ƒ
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/socfact.html
Max Weber
o 1930 – ‘The Spirit of Capitalism’ from The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism
ƒ
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/weber/WeberCH2.html
o 1909-20 - Types of Legitimate Domination – selection from Economy & Society [pdf]
• Marcel Mauss
o 1924 - The Gift
Film: ‘Everything is Relatives’ (WHR Rivers; Strangers Abroad Series)
Week 4 (September 25)
Boasian Divergences: Historical Particularism & Cultural Patterning
• Franz Boas
o 1896 – ‘The Limits of the Comparative Method of Anthropology’ [JSTOR]
o 1932 – ‘The Aims of Anthropological Research’ [JSTOR]
• A.L. Kroeber
o 1915 – ‘Eighteen Professions’ [JSTOR]
o 1917 - ‘The Superorganic’ [JSTOR]
• Edward Sapir
o 1912 – ‘Language & Environment’ [JSTOR]
• Ruth Benedict
o 1930 – ‘Configurations of Culture in North America’ [JSTOR]
• Margaret Mead
o 1937 – ‘Reply to a Review of Sex & Temperament in Three Primitive Societies’ [JSTOR]
o 1954 – ‘The Swaddling Hypothesis’ [JSTOR]
Recommended:
•
George Stocking, 1966, “Boas & the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective,” American Anthropologist 68:867-882 [JSTOR]
Film: ‘The Shackles of Tradition’ (Franz Boas; Strangers Abroad Series)
Week 5 (October 2) – Essay 1 DUE
Function & Structure: Organic Analogies in the Colonial Field
Read:
• Bronislaw Malinowski
o 1920 – ‘Kula’ [JSTOR]
o 1921 – ‘Primitive Economics of the Trobriand Islanders’ [JSTOR]
o 1939 – ‘The Group and the Individual in Functional Analysis’ [JSTOR]
• A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
o 1935 - ‘On the Concept of Function in Social Science’ [JSTOR]
o 1940 – ‘On Social Structure’ [JSTOR]
o 1940 – ‘On Joking Relationships,’ [JSTOR]
• E.E. Evans-Pritchard
o 1939 – ‘Nuer Time-Reckoning’ [JSTOR]
Recommended:
•
Joan Vincent, 1991, “Functionalism Historicized,” in Fox (ed.) Recapturing Anthropology, op. cit, pp. 45-58 [GN33 .R43 1991]
•
George Stocking, 1992, “The Ethnographer’s Magic: Fieldwork in British Anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski,” in The Ethnographer's
Magic & Other Essays in the History of Anthropology, Wisconsin, pp. 12-58
Film: ‘Off the Verandah’ (Bronislaw Malinowski; Strangers Abroad Series)
Week 6 (October 9)
Deep Thoughts: Structuralism & Symbolic Meaning
Read:
• Ferdinand de Saussure
o 1911 – ‘Arbitrary Social Values & the Linguistic Sign’ – from Course in General Linguistics [pdf]
• Sigmund Freud
o 1930 - Civilization & the Individual –from Civilization & Its Discontents [pdf]
o 1939 - Psychical Apparatus & the Theory of Instincts (1900-39) –from An Outline of PsychoAnalysis [pdf]
• Claude Levi-Strauss
o 1955 – ‘The Structural Study of Myth’ [JSTOR]
o 1978 – Myth and Meaning
• Mary Douglas
o 1966 – ‘The Abominations of Leviticus’ [http://prophetess.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/douglas.htm]
• Victor Turner
o 1973 – ‘Symbols in African Ritual’ [JSTOR]
Recommended:
•
Robert Murphy, 1963, “On Zen Marxism: Filiation & Alliance,” Man 63:17-19 [JSTOR]
•
Mary Douglas, 1975, Implicit Meanings, Routledge & Kegan Paul
•
Claude Levi-Strauss, 1981, Tristes Tropiques, NY: Atheneum [F2520 .L4813 1981]
Film: ‘Strange Beliefs’ (E.E. Evans-Pritchard; Strangers Abroad Series)
Week 7 (October 16)
System & Process
Read:
• Leslie White
o 1943 – ‘Energy & the Evolution of Culture’ [JSTOR]
• Robert Murphy & Julian Steward
o 1956 – ‘Tappers and Trappers’ [JSTOR]
• Marvin Harris
o 1966 – ‘The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle’ [JSTOR]
• Roy Rappaport
o 1967 – ‘Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations among a New Guinea People’ [pdf]
• Sydel Silverman
o 1979 – ‘On the Uses of History in Anthropology: The ‘palio’ of Siena’ [JSTOR]
• Victor Turner
o 1980 – ‘Social Dramas and Stories About Them’ [JSTOR]
Recommended:
•
Joan Vincent, 1986, “System and Process, 1974-85,” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 15:99-119 [JSTOR]
•
John Comaroff, 1982, “Dialectical Systems, History, & Anthropology: Units of Study & Questions of Theory,” Journal of Southern African
Studies 8(2):143-172 [JSTOR]
•
Sally Falk Moore, 1987, “Explaining the Present: Theoretical Dilemmas in Processual Ethnography,” American Ethnologist 14(4):727-36
[JSTOR]
•
Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure & Anti-Structure, Cornell, pp. 94-130 [GN473 .T82]
Week 8 (October 23) - Essay 2 DUE
The Interpretative Turn
Read:
• Clifford Geertz
o 1974 – ’From the Native’s Point of View’ [JSTOR]
• Thomas Scheff
o 1986 – ‘Toward Resolving the Controversy over Thick Description’ [JSTOR]
• Willliam Roseberry
o 1989 – ‘Balinese Cockfights and the Seduction of Anthropology’ [pdf]
• Peter Kosso
o 1991 – ‘Method in Archaeology: Middle Range Theory as Hermeneutics’ [JSTOR]
Recommended:
•
Sherry Ortner, 1984, ‘Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(1):126-166 [JSTOR]
Week 9 (October 30)
Agency & Power
Read:
• Michel Foucault
o 1982 – ‘The Subject & Power’ [JSTOR]
• Edward Said
o 1989 – ‘Representing the Colonized’ [JSTOR]
• Pierre Bourdieu
o 1989 – ‘Social Space & Symbolic Power’ [JSTOR]
• Lila Abu-Lughod
o
1990 – ‘The Romance of Resistance’ [JSTOR]
Week 10 (November 6)
Reflexive Critique
Read:
• Paul Rabinow, Reflections of Fieldwork in Morocco
Week 11 (November 13)
Questioning Authority
Read:
• George Marcus & James Clifford
o 1985 – ‘Making Ethnographic Texts’ [JSTOR]
• Akhil Gupta & James Ferguson
o 1992 – ‘Beyond Culture’ [JSTOR]
• Nancy Scheper-Hughes
o 1995 – ‘The Primacy of the Ethical’ [JSTOR]
Recommended:
George Marcus, 1995, “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography, Annual Reviews of
Anthropology 24:95-117 [JSTOR]
•
Week 12 (November 20)
Reconsidering Marginality
Read:
• Anna Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen
Essay 3 DUE: Wednesday, Nov 26
Week 13 (November 27) – NO CLASS – Thanksgiving Recess
Week 14 (December 4)
Student Presentations
Final Paper Due: Friday, Dec 19, 4:30pm