CORE SEMINAR
IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Winter 2012: Anthropology 511, CRN
45797
Shattuck Hall 255; Monday and Wednesday 2:00 – 3:50
Click here for a .pdf version of this syllabus
Michele
Gamburd
Office: 141-H
Cramer Hall
Office Hours: MW
12:30-1:30
and by appointment.
Phone: (503)
725-3317
Email: gamburdm@pdx.edu
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This
course offers a graduate-level introduction to key areas of contemporary theory
in socio-cultural anthropology. The class will cover issues of identity,
political economy, practice theory, agency, hegemony, power, state violence,
resistance, structuralism, and deconstructionism. Emphasis will be placed on
techniques of critical thought, such as how to identify paradigmatic
statements, read “against the grain,” and uncover underlying assumptions. Students
will interact with texts through discussions, presentations, and essays, and
will have the opportunity to explore theoretical perspectives by writing
critical book reviews on works of their own choice.
Most
class readings are available on D2L (see below).
Required texts (available at the book store):
Dirks,
Nicholas, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner, eds.
1994
Culture / Power / History: A Reader in
Contemporary Social Theory. Princeton:
Ortner, Sherry B.
2006 Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture,
Recommended texts (available at
the book store):
Strunk,
William and E.B. White
2000 The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition.
Hacker,
Diana
2011 A Pocket Style Manual, Fifth Edition.
CLASS
REQUIREMENTS
Policy
on illness, emergencies, extensions, and plagiarism
During the
winter, viruses spread through many colleges and universities across the
country. If you feel ill (fever, sore throat, runny nose, headache, cough,
aches), please stay home until you have been without fever for 24 hours without
the use of fever-reducing medication. Let
the instructor know about your illness. You will not be penalized for
illness-related absences, and you will have the opportunity to make up missed
assignments.
Unexcused
absences count against you, and students
who have more than three (3) unexcused absences will receive grade deductions
for class participation. Legitimate reasons to miss class are few and
dire.
Requests
for extensions on deadlines and notification of unavoidable absences should be
made in written or electronic media, and should if at all possible be reported
to the instructor ahead of the due date and before the start of the class
period.
Students with a documented disability
needing accommodations in this course should immediately inform the
instructor.
All
written work must be completed to receive a passing grade in this class. Email
submissions will be accepted only for “time stamps”; the instructor marks only
on hardcopies. Please retain for your own records a copy of all the work you
submit. Late work will lose one letter grade for each day past due. In the
event of severe illness or other emergency, please contact the instructor as
soon as possible to arrange an alternative deadline.
Plagiarism
(intellectual theft) is a very serious academic
offense. Any assignment containing plagiarized material will receive a failing
grade. You are responsible for reading and understanding the department handout
on plagiarism, which is posted on the class D2L site. Please ask the instructor
if you have any questions.
D2L
Class
readings, the course syllabus, the plagiarism document, assignment sheets, and
discussion questions will be available on D2L. You may read the materials
online or print copies for use during class discussions.
All
students can access D2L with an Odin account. If you do not have an Odin
account, you can sign up to get one at https://www.account.pdx.edu. Use your Odin
username and password to login to D2L at http://psuonline.pdx.edu/. Use of D2L will
be demonstrated on the first day of class. Please contact the instructor if you
encounter difficulties in accessing this resource.
Assignments
Your final
grade will be evaluated based on 2 book reviews (15% each); 3 section essays
(20% each); and classroom participation, discussion leadership, presentations,
and attendance (10%).
Three
essays (20% each); due dates listed below
You
are asked to write three essays, each 5-6 double-spaced pages long. Essay topics
will be assigned for sections 2-8 of the class and will focus on readings in
that particular section; instructions will be posted on D2L. Choose three
sections and write an essay for each. To
minimize ensure early participation and feedback, each student is requested to
write at least one of the first two essays (on Sections 2 and 3). Essays
will be due roughly a week after we finish covering the section material. Section
2: due Mon 6 Feb.; Section 3: due Mon 13 Feb.; Section 4: Mon 20 Feb.; Section
5: due Mon 5 Mar.; Section 6: due Weds 7 Mar.; Section 7: due Weds 14 Mar.;
Section 8: Due Weds 21 Mar.
Two book reviews (15% each), due Monday 5 March and Wednesday
21 March Presentations: Wed 29 Feb. and Mon 19 March
You
are asked to write two 750-word book reviews. Further instructions will be
posted on D2L. Suggested texts for review are listed at the end of each
section’s readings. You may choose to review alternative readings, but please
consult with the instructor before starting your review. On Wed 29 February and
Mon 19 March, students will briefly present their critical book reviews to the
class.
Discussion leadership, presentations, and attendance
(10%)
Regular attendance and active
participation in class is expected and required (see policy statement above).
Students will sign up in advance to lead discussion on particular articles, and
will present their critical book reviews to the class (see above).
COURSE
OUTLINE:
Section 1: Introduction
Lowie,
Robert H.
1935 Chapter 12: Rites and Festivals. In The Crow Indians. Pp. 256-263.
Ortner,
Sherry B.
1994
[1984] Theory in Anthropology Since the
Sixties. In Culture/ Power/ History: A Reader in
Contemporary Social Theory. Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B.
Ortner, eds. Pp. 372-411. Princeton:
Dirks,
Nicholas, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner
1994 Introduction. In Culture, Power, History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory.
Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner, eds. Pp. 3-46. Princeton:
Ortner,
Sherry B.
2006 Introduction: Updating Practice Theory. In Anthropology and Social Theory. Pp.
1-18.
Section 2: After Culture: Power, Inequality,
and Identity
Williams,
Raymond
1985 Culture. In
Keywords. Pp. 87-93.
1992 The Question of Cultural Identity. In Modernity and Its Futures. Stuart
Hall, D. Held, and T. McGrew, eds. Pp. 274-325.
Di
Leonardo, Micaela and Roger N. Lancaster
1997 Introduction: Embodied Meanings, Carnal
Practices. In The Gender/Sexuality Reader, Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo,
eds. Pp. 1-10. New York: Routledge.
Read
1 of the following authors (Said, Anderson, Crowfoot, Lynch, Biolsi, Ortner):
Said,
Edward
1979 Latent and Manifest Orientalism. In Orientalism. Pp. 201-225.
Anderson,
Benedict (If you choose Anderson, please read both of these pieces)
1991 Introduction. In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. Pp. 1-7.
1991 Census, Map, Museum. In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. Pp. 163-185.
Crowfoot,
Silas
Lynch,
Caitrin
2002 The Politics of White Women’s Underwear in
Biolsi, Thomas
2007 Race
Technologies. In A Companion to the
Anthropology of Politics. David Nugent and Joan Vincent, eds. Pp. 400-417.
Ortner,
Sherry B. (read one of these three)
2006
2006 Identities: The Hidden Life of Class. In Anthropology and Social Theory. Pp.
63-79.
2006 Generation X: Anthropology in a
Media-Saturated World. In
Anthropology and Social Theory. Pp. 80-106.
Brubaker,
Rogers and Frederick Cooper
2000 Beyond “Identity.” Theory and Society
29:1-47.
Kuper,
Adam
2003 The
Return of the Native. Current Anthropology 44(3): 389-402.
Suggested review options:
Edward Said: Orientalism (rest of the
book) or another book by Said
Liisa Malkki:
Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and
National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania.
Silas Crowfoot: rest of the dissertation
Section 3: Political Economy
Giddens,
Anthony
1971 Introduction and Selections on Marx. In Capitalism and Modern Social Theory. pp. xi-xvi, 1-64.
Marx,
Karl
1967
Commodity Fetishism. In Das Kapital: A
Critique of Political Economy. Abridged version. Friedrich Engels, ed. Pp.
50-63.
Carrier,
James G. and Josiah McC. Heyman
1997 Consumption and Political Economy. Journal
of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3(2):355-373.
Read
1 of the following 4 articles:
Farmer,
Paul
2004 Anthropology of Structural Violence. Current
Anthropology 45(3): 305-325.
Hoffman,
Susanna M. and Anthony Oliver-Smith
1999 Anthropology and the Angry Earth: An
Overview. In The
Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective, Susanna M. Hoffman and
Anthony Oliver-Smith, eds. Pp. 1-16. New York: Routledge.
Julier,
Alice
2008 The Political Economy of Obesity: The Fat
Pay All. In Food and Culture. Carole
Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, eds. Pp. 482-499. New York: Routledge.
Singer,
Merrill
1986 Toward a Political-Economy of Alcoholism:
The Missing Link in the Anthropology of Drinking. Social Science and Medicine
23(2):113-130.
Recommended:
Miller,
Daniel
1995 Consumption and Commodities. Annual Review
of Anthropology (24): 141-61.
Suggested review options:
Sidney
Mintz: Sweetness and
Section
4: Practice Theory, Agency
Ortner,
Sherry
1989
Introduction and Conclusion. In High Religion: A Cultural and
Political History of Sherpa Buddhism. Pp. 3-18, 193-202. Princeton:
Bourdieu,
Pierre
1994
Chapter 4: Structures, Habitus, Power:
Basis for a Theory of Syumbolic Power. In
Culture/
Ortner,
Sherry
1996 Making Gender: Toward a Feminist, Minority,
2006 Power and Projects: Reflections on Agency. In Anthropology and Social Theory, pp.
129-153.
Ahearn, Laura M.
1999 Agency.
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9(1-2):12-15.
Sedgwick,
Eve Kosofsky
1993 Epidemics of the Will. In Tendencies. Pp. 130-142.
Brodie,
Janet Farrell and Marc Redfield
2002 Introduction. In High Anxieties:
Cultural Studies in Addiction. Janet Farrell Brodie and Marc Redfield, eds. Pp.
1-15.
Recommended:
Ahearn, Laura M.
2001 Language and Agency. Annual Review of
Anthropology 30:109-37.
Suggested review options:
Ortner:
Making Gender (the rest of the book)
Ahearn:
Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters and Social Change in Nepal
Section 5:
Hegemony & Disciplinary
Williams, Raymond
1977 Chapter II.6: Hegemony. In Marxism and Literature. Pp. 108-114. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Foucault, Michel
1979 Panopticism. In Discipline and Punish. Pp. 195-228.
1994 Chapter 5: Two Lectures. In Culture/ Power/ History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory.
Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner, eds. Pp. 200-221.
Princeton:
Rose, Nikolas
1999 Governing. In Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Pp. 15-60
Read
2 of the following 5 articles:
Howell,
Philip
2004 Race, Space and the Regulation of
Prostitution in Colonial Hong Kong. Urban History 31(2):229-248.
Ngalamulume,
Kalala
2004 Keeping the City Totally Clean: Yellow Fever
and the Politics of Prevention in Colonial Saint-Louis-du-Sénégal, 1850-1914.
Journal of African History 45:183-202.
Ong,
Aihwa
1988 The Production of Possession: Spirits and
the Multinational Corporation in
Sen,
Satadru
2004 A Separate Punishment: Juvenile Offenders in
Colonial India. Journal of Asian Studies 63(1):81-104.
Triantafillou,
Peter
2004 From Blood to Public Office: Constituting
Bureaucratic Rulers in Colonial Malaya. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35(1):21-40.
Suggested review options:
Foucault: Discipline
and Punish (the rest of the book); The History of Sexuality, Volume I; another
book by Foucault (check with instructor)
Section 6: Resistance
Scott, James
C.
1992 Domination,
Acting, and Fantasy. In The Paths to Domination, Resistance, and Terror.
Carolyn Nordstrom and JoAnn Martin, eds. Pp. 55-84.
Gal,
1995 Language and the “Arts of Resistance.”
Review of Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, by James
Scott. Cultural Anthropology 10(3):407-424.
Mitchell,
Timothy
1990 Everyday Metaphors of Power. Theory and
Society 19(5):545-577.
Foucault,
1978 Method. In
The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Volume 1. Pp. 92-102.
Abu-Lughod,
Lila
1990 The Romance of Resistance: Tracing
Transformations of Power Through Bedouin women. American Ethnologist 17(1):41-55.
Ortner,
Sherry B.
2006 Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal.
In Anthropology and Social Theory.
Pp. 42-62.
Recommended
Bakhtin,
Mikhail M.
1981
[1935])
Discourse and the Novel. In
The Dialogic Imagination. Michael Holquist, ed. Pp. 259-422.
Guha,
Ranajit
1994 Chapter 11: The Prose of Counter-Insurgency.
In Culture/
Spivak,
Gayatri Chakravorty
1985 Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on
Widow Sacrifice. Wedge 7/8: 120-130.
O’Hanlon,
Rosalind
1988 Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies
and Histories of Resistance in Colonial
Suggested review options:
Abu-Lughod:
Veiled Sentiments
Jean
Comaroff: Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance
Bakhtin
(referenced above)
Section 7:
Neoliberalism, State Violence, and Governmentality
Feldman,
Allen
1995 Ethnographic States of Emergency. In Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival.
Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius Robben, eds. Pp. 224-252.
Gledhill,
John
1999 Official Masks and Shadow Powers: Towards an
Anthropology of the Dark Side of the State.
Blumenthal,
Sidney
2007 Bush’s
Old-World Disorder. The Progressive
Amnesty
International
2007
Agamben,
Giorgio
2005 The State of
Ong,
Aihwa
2006 Introduction: Neoliberalism as Exception,
Exception to Neoliberalism. In
Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Pp. 1-27.
Suggested review options:
Allen
Feldman: Formations of Violence
Death
without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
Section
8: Structuralism, Deconstructionism, Critique of Anthropology
Douglas,
Mary
1966 Secular Defilement. In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and
Taboo. Pp. 29-40.
1966 The Abominations of Leviticus. In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the
Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Pp. 41-57.
Read
either Claus or Gusfield:
Claus,
Peter
1982 A Structuralist Appreciation of ‘Star Trek.’
In Anthropology for the 1980s:
Introductory
Gusfield,
Joseph
1987 Passage to Play: Rituals of Drinking Time in
American Society. In Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from
Anthropology. Mary Douglas, ed. Pp. 73-90.
Rothstein, Edward
2001 Attacks on
Fish,
2001 Condemnation Without Absolutes. The
Miéville, China
2007 Despotic Logorrhoea and Insurgent Verbiage. In
Un Lun Dun. Pp. 290-301. London: Macmillan.
Derrida, Jacques
1977 Signature, Event, Context. Glyph 1: 172-97.
Clifford,
James
1986 Introduction. In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.
James Clifford and George Marcus, eds. Pp. 1-26.
Mohanty, Chandra T.
2003 Chapter 8: Race, Multiculturalism, and
Pedagogies of Dissent. In Feminism
Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Pp. 190-217.
Suggested review options:
Ruth Behar: Translated Woman: Crossing
the Border with Esperanza’s Story
James Clifford and George Marcus, eds:
Writing Culture (finish the book) AND:
Gordon,
Deborah
1988 Writing Culture, Writing Feminism: The
Poetics and Politics of Experimental Ethnography. Inscriptions 3-4:7-24.
COURSE
SCHEDULE:
|
Week |
Day |
Date |
Month |
|
|
1 |
M |
9 |
January |
Introductions |
|
|
W |
11 |
|
Read: Lowie, Ortner |
|
2 |
M |
16 |
|
MLK Holiday; PSU Closed |
|
|
W |
18 |
|
Read: Dirks et al., Ortner |
|
3 |
M |
23 |
|
Read: Williams, Hall |
|
|
W |
25 |
|
Read: di Leonardo & Lancaster, 1
of 6 options |
|
4 |
M |
30 |
|
Read: Brubaker & Cooper, Kuper |
|
|
W |
1 |
February |
Read: Giddens, Marx |
|
5 |
M |
6 |
|
Read: Carrier & Heyman, 1 of 4
options Due: Section 2 Essay option |
|
|
W |
8 |
|
Read: Ortner ’89, Bourdieu, Ortner ’96,
‘06 |
|
6 |
M |
13 |
|
Read: Ahearn, Sedgwick, Brodie &
Redfield Due: Section 3 Essay option |
|
|
W |
15 |
|
Read: Williams, Foucault ’79, ‘94 |
|
7 |
M |
20 |
|
Read: Rose, 2 of 5 options Due: Section 4 Essay option |
|
|
W |
22 |
|
Read: Scott, Gal, Mitchell |
|
8 |
M |
27 |
|
Read: Foucault, Abu-Lughod, Ortner |
|
|
W |
29 |
|
Student presentations: Book reviews |
|
9 |
M |
5 |
March |
Read: Feldman, Gledhill Due: Book review #1 Due: Section 5 Essay option |
|
|
W |
7 |
|
Read: Blumenthal, Amnesty, Agamben,
Ong Due: Section 6 Essay option |
|
10 |
M |
12 |
|
Read: |
|
|
W |
14 |
|
Read: Clifford, Mohanty Due: Section 7 Essay option |
|
11 |
M |
19 |
|
Student presentations: Book reviews |
|
|
W |
21 |
|
Due: Section 8 Essay option; Book
review #2 |