ANTH 206: CULTURE AND HUMAN NATURE
Spring 2001 T/Th 2:35 - 3:50 SC 1206
Texts
Grading
and Policies
Course Schedule
10 Jan. Th Introduction to course assignments, texts, and
philosophy
15 Jan. T Anthropology and Culture: The 19th Century
Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881), Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), and the context of 19th
century evolutionism (with reference to Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer)
selection from Morgan's (1877) Ancient Society (reprinted in High Points in
Anthropology, eds. Paul Bohannan and Mark Glazer, 1973, pp. 29-55).
19th century anthropology and cultural evolution
17 Jan. Th The Boasian Revolution: Franz Boas (1852-1942) and
his legacy in America anthropology
Boas, Franz (1920) "The Methods of Ethnology" (from American Anthropologist,
reprinted in Bohannan and Glazer 1973, pp.81-100)
Boas
22 Jan. T Documenting Cultural Relativism: Boas' students Ruth
Benedict (1887-1948) and Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
Mead, Margaret. 1928. Coming of Age in Samoa. Chapter VII, "Formal Sex
Relations, pp. 86-109.
selection from Benedict's (1934) Patterns of Culture (reprinted in Bohannan
and Glazer 1973, pp. 177-181)
Benedict and Mead
24 Jan. Th Alfred Kroeber (1876-1960), Emile Durkheim
(1858-1917), and Max Weber (1864-1920)
selections from Kroeber's (1923) Anthropology: Culture Patterns and Processes, pp.
60-64, 67-73, 137-144
Knauft, "Aperture" and Chapter 1
Kroeber, Durkheim, and Weber
29 Jan. T Fieldwork and Functionalism: Bronislaw Malinowski
(1884-1942)
selection from Malinowski reprinted in Bohannan and Glazer 1973 (pp. 272-293)
Malinowski
31 Jan. Th Marx and Materialism: Karl Marx (1818-1883)
selections from Marx's reprinted in Karl Marx on Society and Social Change (ed.
Neil J. Smelser, 1973, pp. 3-21, 73-85)
Marx
http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/mater.htm
5 Feb. T Off the Veranda
7 Feb. Th The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
selections from Marx's (1852) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. The
full text is available online at http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1852-18brum/
Notes on
the 18th Brumaire
12 Feb. T Carnival, Culture, and Domination: Mikhail Bakhtin
(1895-1975), Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
Knauft, Chapter 6
Gramsci and Bakhtin
See also Gramsci entries at:
1. http://www.theory.org.uk/main.htm
2. http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/soc/courses/soc2r3/gramsci/gramindx.htm
3. http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/panop/home.htm
4. http://www.soc.qc.edu/gramsci/
14 Feb. Th Hegemony and the Political Economy of Cultural
Desires
Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff (1991) Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity,
Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, pp. 7-32.
Nader, Laura. 1997. Controlling processes: Tracing the dynamic components of
power. Current Anthropology 38(5):711-737.
hegemony and agency
19 Feb. T 1983: Inventing Traditions and Imaging Communities
Hobsbawm, Eric. 1983. Introduction: Inventing traditions. In The invention of
tradition, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp.1-14.
Willis, Paul. 1977. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class
Jobs, chapters 1 and 3.
hegemonies and counter-hegemonies
21 Feb. Th review
26 Feb. T MIDTERM – bring pen and blue books
Midterm Results
28 Feb. Th Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and Claude
Lévi-Strauss (1908- )
Leach, Edmund. 1970. Claude Lévi-Strauss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
pp.15-34.
on structuralism
2-10 March Spring Break
12 March T Structuralism in Action
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Raw and the Cooked. Mythologiques, Volume 1. New
York: Harper and Row. Selected passages.
Mytho-logics
14 March Th Pierre Bourdieu and Practice Theory
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 16-23, 171-183.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, pp.
260-283.
Practice and distinction
19 March T Practice and Structuration
Knauft, Chapter 4
Giddens, Anthony. 1979. Central problems in social theory: Action, structure, and
contradiction in social analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp.63-73.
Practice and structuration
see also Giddens entry at http://www.theory.org.uk/main.htm
21 March Th Interpretation: Clifford Geertz
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight. In The
interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books, pp. 412-453.
Roseberry, William. 1989. Anthropologies and histories: Essays in culture, history,
and political economy. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 17-29.
Geertz
26 March T Cognition
Shore, Bradd. 1996. Culture in mind: cognition, culture, and the problem of meaning.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-11, 42-54.
Strauss, Claudia and Naomi Quinn. 1997. A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning, pp.
3-11, 48-65
culture in mind
Also look at http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/cog.htm
28 March Th A Micro-physics of Power: Michel Foucault
selections from Foucault's (1977) Discipline and Punish and his (1979) The
History of Sexuality, Volume I.
Foucault
See also Foucault entries at:
1. http://www.theory.org.uk/main.htm
2. http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/panop/home.htm
2 April T Knowledge/Power
Knauft, Chapters 5, 7
more Foucault
4 April Th
9 April T A Gendered Approach
selections from Judith Butler's (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
Identity (pp. 1-17) and Donna Haraway's (1997)
Modest_Witness@SecondMillenium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouseTM, Chapter 1.
See also entries on Butler, Haraway, and Queer Theory at:
1. http://www.theory.org.uk/main.htm
(Butler and Q.T.)
2. http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/panop/home.htm
(Butler and Haraway)
thinking queer
11 April Th Globalization and Cultural Processes
Appadurai, Chapters 1-4
ethno-escapades
16 April T Globalization: Material and Symbolic
Appadurai, Chapters 7-9
implosions
18 April Th Hyperreality
Baudrillard, Jean. 1994 [1981]. Simulacra and Simulation, pp 1-42, 75-78, 87-94,
149-157.
See also Baudrillard entry at http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/panop/baudrillard.htm
Baudrillard and hyperreality
Term Paper Due
23 April T Postmodernity at the Grassroots
selected readings from Subcomandante Marcos
on the Zapatistas and postmodernity
27 April Sat. Alternate Final Exam, 12:00noon – bring
pen and blue books
2 May Th FINAL EXAM, 9:00 am