ANTH 200 – Core Perspectives in Anthropology (3
credits)
TTh 2:10-3:25 (Fall
2008)
Dr. Jon W.
Office Hours: Wed 1-3 (10 Marist)
ANTH 200 is an introduction to core perspectives in Anthropology and how they
guide research to specific data and frame questions. Further steps – research
design and conduct – are the subject of ANTH 201, which will be taught in the Spring semester. ANTH 200 is concerned with the movement
from what is interesting/necessary to know to
specifying relevant data and all the steps in between. It is not a survey of
anthropological theories but a look at perspectives that anthropology has
adopted and so define the field as a discipline, and
not just as a topic.
Readings will include 4 books: one is a textbook (written for students as surveys and guides), one a theoretical critique, and two exemplary texts:
Stanley R. Barrett, Anthropology: A Student’s
Guide to Method and Theory (1996)
E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer (1940)
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline
of a Theory of Practice (1977)
Biao Xiang, Global Body-Shopping: An Indian Labor System
in the Information Technology Industry (2006)
In addition, we will read,
discuss, and write papers about a group of articles, which are available on an
electronic BlackBoard for this course. These are what
scholars write for each other – in other words, primary material that you need
to become familiar with and able to read anthropologically.
Recommended for Majors: Thomas Barfield, ed. The
Dictionary of Anthropology (1997)
We will read, discuss, and write papers about a
group of articles, which are available on an electronic BlackBoard for this
course. These are what scholars write for each other – in other words, primary
material that you need to become familiar with and able to read
anthropologically. Grouped roughly in the topics of the course, these include:
Wholism is the methodology on which modern ethnography rests,
distinguishing it from survey methods by specifying the priority of local
context over analytical categories, or cross-cultural classifications. The
perspective developed with and emerged from historical methods that emphasized
seeing events and motives of actors in their own time, the ethnographic version
in anthropology being to see cultures in their own place(s). Relates to issues
of objectivity, and the objective status of native-actor subjectivities at the
outset of modern social sciences.
F. Boas – Limitations of the Comparative Method in Anthropology
C. Geertz – Thick Description
P. Winch – The Idea of a Social Science
J. Anderson – Rhetorical Objectivity
M. Weber – Objectivity in the Social Sciences
Structural-Functionalism is the perspective that focused ethnography on
community studies. Its principle objective was the identification of local
institutions and their specification as systems, or structures of relations.
Minimally, specifies culture as rules or values, maximally as re-presentations
in symbolic or discursive terms of structures of social relations. The classic
text is Evans-Pritchard’s The Nuer (1940).
E.E. Evans Pritchard – The Problem of Symbols
Karp & Maynard – Reading the Nuer
E. Leach – Concerning Trobriand Clans
P. Bourdieu – The Kabyle House
M. Sahlins – Anthropology and Two Marxisms
Practice perspectives highlighting agency & meaning bring
negotiation and strategies to the fore by emphasizing actors’ choices,
decision-making, scheming, and self-conscious reflection on ostensive
values/rules. Minimally, specifies culture as a sort of resource; maximally as
‘hegemonic’ perspectives. Actor subjectivities become objects, both for actors
(occasionally) and for analysts (all the time). By comparison to the harmonies
that structural-functionalism tended best to identify, this perspective focuses
on quandaries and struggles, and on interaction both between actors and between
actors and their cultures. For anthropologists, the point of departure is
Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977), particularly chapter 1.
J.C. Scott – Domination, Acting & Fantasy
W. Keane – Self-Interpretation, Agency & the Objects of Anthropology
C. Schilling – Undersocialised Concept of Agency
R.W.K. Lau – Habitus & the Logic of Practice
Globalization, or Network Society, is a perspective that all local
systems of action and value are immediately embedded in more global ones, which
have variously ‘silent’ impacts on them. Seeks an anthropology that can
identify and relate various systemic effects of differing scale and subjective
register for actors. With a strong focus on power and multiple levels of
‘interaction’ comes a shift to network perspectives on social action that
emphasize whom one relates to over the attempt in structural functionalism (and
in many agency theories) to match social action to some internal (or, in social
terms, shared) value structures. The anthropological point of departure is
Appadurai’s essay (below) on “Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural
economy” (1992); but articles by Drummond and Marcus earlier opened the issue
of thinking of ‘communities’ as openended and continuous.
A. Appadurai – Global Cultural Economy
L. Drummond – The Cultural Continuum
G. Marcus – Contemporary Problems of Ethnography
J. Webb – Organizations, Self-Identities, and the New Economy
S. Sassen – New Geographies of Power
Schedule of Readings & Assignments (Fall 2008
available on the Blackboard for this course)
Grades will be based on three papers
(20% each), and 8 set of notes on the readings (5% each). There are no exams or
major term papers for this course.