Anth. 310 - Anthropology Theory
Dr. Phillip McArthur – MCK 108B
Course Objectives: In this course we will explore the foundational concepts that underlie the theory, and in many ways the methods, of anthropology. We will approach this theory as an intellectual history in order to see how these ideas have emerged, and to become familiar with a genealogy of a discipline. I am persuaded that the most salient contemporary disciplines in the academy are those that critically direct their gaze on the foundational underpinnings of their own intellectual enterprise. This is not just for some esoteric journey into the mental obsessions of obscure academics, but will be useful for cultural studies students for three key reasons: One, you will find that anthropological theory reveals much about how we do and can think about members of the human species as social and cultured beings (even many of our most common and everyday assumptions about humans and culture are rooted in anthropological concepts); Two, you will see that when we theorize about the differences of "other" cultures we discover an "otherness" in ourselves; and Three, you will discover how careful attention to anthropological theory can sharpen our ability to think holistically and critically. We will read a great deal in this course and I expect you to read all of it. You are advanced anthropology students in the cultural studies program. That means you choose to read and think through an argument because you want to become competent, rather than seek for ways to maximize your grade with the minimum amount of effort.
Required Text
Requirements:
· Midterm Exam -- Covers units one and two (30%)
· Final Exam -- Covers units three and four (with some comprehensive return to units one and two). (40%)
Nineteenth-Century Evolutionism
29 (fri) *Herbert Spencer, “The
Social Organism”
*Sir
Edward B. Tylor, “The Science of Culture”
May 02 (mon) *Lewis
Henry Morgan, “Ethnical Periods”
*Karl
Marx &Friedrich Engels, “Feuerbach:
Opposition of Materialist and
Idealist
Outlook”
The Foundations of
Sociological Thought
04 (wed) *Emile Durkheim, “What is a Social Fact?” And “The Cosmological
System of Totemism and the Ideas of Class”
*Marcel
Mauss, excerpts from The Gift
06 (fri) *Max
Weber, “Class, Status, Party”
Unit II Cultural Theory in the Early Twentieth
Century
Historical
Particularism
*Franz
Boas, “The Methods of Ethnology”
09 (mon) *A.L. Kroeber,
“Eighteen Professions”
*Paul Radin,
“Right and Wrong”
Functionalism
11 (wed) *Bronislaw Malinowski, “The Essentials of the Kula”
*A.R.
Radcliffe-Brown, “The Mother’s Brother in
13 (fri) *E.E.
Evans-Pritchard, “The Nuer of the
*Max
Gluckman, “Licence in
Ritual”
Culture
and Personality
16 (mon) *Ruth Benedict, “Pyschological Types in the Cultures of the Southwest”
*Margaret
Mead, “Introduction” to Sex and Temperament…
18 (wed) Catch up
and Review
20 (fri) Writing Day – Exam Paper
due by
Unit III Theory at
Mid-Century
Neoevolutionism,
Cultural Ecology and NeoMarxist Thought
23 (mon) *Leslie White, “Energy and the
Evolution of Culture”
*Morton
H. Fried, “On the Evolution of Social Stratification and the State”
25 (wed) *Marvin
Harris, “The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle”
*Philippe
Bourgois, “From Jibaro to
Crack Dealer: Confronting the Restructuring of Capitalism in El Barrio”
Structuralism
27 (fri) *Claude Levi-Strauss,
“Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology”
*Sherry Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture”
30 (mon)
Ethnoscience and Cognitive Anthropology
June 01 (wed) Harold Conklin, “Honunoo
Color Categories”
Claudia
Strauss, “What Makes Tony Run? Schemas as Motives Reconsidered”
Unit IV Recent Trends in
Anthropological Theory
The Feminist
Critique
03 (fri) *Sally
Slocum, “Woman the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology”
*Eleanor
Leacock, “Interpreting the Origins of Gender
Inequality”
06 (mon) *Ann L. Stoller,
“Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual
Morality
in Twentieth-Century Colonial Culture.
Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology
*Mary
Douglas, “External Boundaries”
08 (wed) *Victor
Turner, “Symbols in Ndembu Ritual”
*Clifford
Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”
Postmodernism
and Postcolonial Issues
10 (fri) *Renato Rosaldo, “Grief and the
Headhunter’s Rage”
*Roger
M. Keesing, “Creating the Past: Custom and Identity
in the Cont. Pacific”
*Haunani-Kay Trask, “Natives and
Anthropologists: The Colonial Struggle”
*Roger
M. Keesing, “Reply to Trask”
13 (mon) Catch up and Review
16 (thu) Exam
Paper due by