Ethnography of the U.S.

Anthropology 666

Spring semester 2004

Dr. Phyllis Chock
Class times TBA

This course will examine how "Americans" (our "natives") make meanings, what makes these meanings "American," and what these meanings are used to accomplish. Our focus will be on social categories such as those of gender, class, culture, race and ethnicity, or language. We will ask: What are their meanings? How are these categories and meanings organized in interpretive frameworks, myths, and rituals? What themes do we find recurring? We assume that meanings of social categories are multivocal, that is, that they have many meanings, and that they are contingent, unstable, ambiguous, and often contradictory. So we will examine how meanings are produced and changed. We will examine contexts such as social movements or social practices and institutions, including those of law, family and kinship, land use, and the media, in which categories are used. We will ask by whom and for what ends are these categories used? What makes these categories problematic for the natives?

We will ask: Which categories and meanings are powerful and why? What are the centers in U.S. culture? What are the margins and what makes them marginal? Which meanings are oppositional? What makes them so?

Finally, we will be concerned throughout the semester with methods of analyzing cultural data because in examining "experience-near" phenomena, social scientists are constantly in danger of complicity in the reproduction of cultural forms and social hierarchies. As well, we will examine ethnographic methods and strategies of cultural analysis appropriate to fragmented, negotiable, contingent, and mobile cultural forms.

COURSE TEXTS

These books are available in Central Reserve.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Attendance at seminars is required.  Other course requirements include responsibility for this reading list in class (1/3) and five short papers (5-7 pages each, a total of 2/3) on assigned topics. Short papers are due at the seminar class assigned; copies for each member of the seminar should be provided.  They may be sent via e-mail to all seminar members before the assigned class. 

Course Topics and Reading Assignments

Week 1: Introduction: Creating "Persons," Creating "Community"

**Varenne, Herve. 1977. Americans Together: Structured Diversity in a MidwesternTown. New York: Teachers College.

Greenhouse, Carol. 1992. "Signs of Quality: Individualism and Hierarchy in American Culture." American Ethnologist 19:233-254.

Handler, Richard. 1986. "Authenticity." Anthropology Today 2(l):6-9.

Week 2: On Ethnographic Method

**Handler, Richard. 1985. "On Dialogue and Destructive Analysis." Journal of Anthropological Research 41:171-82.

**Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1995. "Language and Borders." Annual Review of Anthropology 24:525-546.

**Varenne, Herve. 1978. "Culture as Rhetoric." American Ethnologist 5:635-650.

Chock, Phyllis P. 1986. "Irony and Ethnography: On Cultural Analysis of One's Own Culture." Anthropological Quarterly 59: 87-96.

Marcus, George. 1995. "Ethnography In/Of the World System." Annual Review of Anthropology 24:95-117.

Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1994. "Representing Class, Who Decides?" Anthropological Quarterly 66(4):203-210.

Week 3: Classic Ethnographic Texts

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America, Vol. II.

Warner, W. Lloyd and Paul Lunt. 1941. The Social Life of a Modern Community. New Haven CT: Yale U. Press.

Warner, W. Lloyd. 1959. The Living and the Dead. New Haven CT: Yale U. Press.

Week 4: Centers in American Culture

Brenneis, Donald. 1994. "Discourse and Discipline at the National Research Council: A Bureaucratic Bildungsroman." Cultural Anthropology 9(l):23-36.

Chock, Phyllis P. 1991. "'Illegal Alien' and 'Opportunity': Myth-Making in Congressional Testimony." American Ethnologist 18:279-294.

Downey, Gary L. 1988. "Structure and Practice in the Cultural Identities of Scientists: Negotiating Nuclear Wastes in New Mexico." Anthropological Quarterly 61:26-38.

Handler, Richard. 1988. "The Center in American Culture: Analysis and Critique." Anthropological Quarterly 61:1-2.

Marcus, George E. 1988. "The Constructive Uses of Deconstruction in the Ethnographic Study of Notable American Families." Anthropological Quarterly 61:3-16.

Page, Helan and R. Brooke Thomas. 1991. "White Public Space and the Construction of White Privilege in U.S. Health Care..." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 8:109-116.

Pfaffenberger, Bryan. 1988."The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why the Personal Computer Revolution was No Revolution." Anthropological Quarterly 61:39-47.

Segal, Daniel. 1988. "A Patient So Dead: American Medical Students and Their Cadavers." Anthropological Quarterly 61:17-25.

Yanagisako, Sylvia. 1994. "Transforming Orientalism: Gender, Nationality, and Class in Asian American Studies." In Naturalizing Power, ed. S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney. NY: Routledge.

Week 5: Kinship, the Family, and the New Reproductive Technologies

**Schneider, David M. 1980[1968]. American Kinship: A Cultural Account, rev. ed. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.

Dolgin, Janet. 1994. "Family Law and the Facts of Family." In Naturalizing Power, ed. S.Yanagisako and C. Delaney. NY: Routledge

MacKinnon, Susan. 1994. "American Kinship/American Incest: Asymmetries in a Scientific Discourse." In Naturalizing Power, ed. S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney. NY: Routledge.

Ragone, Helena. 1994. Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Rapp, Rayna. 1992. "Constructing Amniocentesis: Maternal and Medical Discourses." In Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture, ed. F. Ginsburg and A. L. Tsing. Boston MA: Beacon.

Rapp, Rayna. 1994. "Heredity, or Revising the Facts of Life." In Naturalizing Power, ed. S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney. NY: Routledge.

Weston, Kath. 1992. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. NY: Columbia U. Press.

Weston, Kath. 1994. "Forever is a Long Time: Romancing the Real in Gay Kinship Ideologies." In Naturalizing Power, ed. S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney. NY: Routledge.

Week 6: New Social Movements

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 1993. The Culture of Protest: Religious Activism and the U.S. Sanctuary Movement. Boulder CO: Westview Press.

Ginsburg, Faye. 1989. Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Vance, Carol S. 1992, "Negotiating Sex and Gender in the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography." In Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in AmeUncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture, ed. F. Ginsburg and A. L. Tsing. Boston MA: Beacon.

Week 7: Identities, Meanings, Communities

**Anderson, Jon W. & William B. Friend, eds. 1995. The Culture of Bible-Belt Catholics. Paulist Press.

Week 8: Learning to be American

Holland, Dorothy and Margaret Eisenhart. 1990. Educated in Romance. Chicago IL: U. Chicago Press.

Eckert, Penelope. 1989. Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School. New York: Teachers College.

Ikada, Keiko. 1998. A Room Full of Mirrors: High School Reunions in Middle America. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.

Moffatt, Michael. 1989. Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Ortner, Sherry B, 1994. "Ethnography among the Newark: The Class of '58 of Weequahic High School." In Naturalizing Power, ed. S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney. NY: Routledge.

Patthey-Chavez, G. Genevieve. 1993. "High School as an Arena for Cultural Conflict and Acculturation for Latino Americans." Anthropology and Education Quarterly 24:33-60.

Peshkin, Alan. 1991. The Color of Strangers, The Color of Friends. Chicago IL: U. Chicago Press.

Week 9: Deconstructing Gender

Lewin, Ellen. 1993. Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in American Culture. Ithaca NY: Comell U. Press.

Martin, Emily. 1987. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston MA: Beacon Press.

Newton, Esther. 1979[1972]. Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.

Week 10: Constructing Justice

**Merry, Sally Engle. 1990. Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness Among Working Class Americans. Chicago IL: U. of Chicago Pr.

Greenhouse, Carol. 1986. Praying for Justice: Faith, Order,…. Ithaca NY: Cornell U. Pr.

Greenhouse, Carol. 1989. "Interpreting American Litigiousness." In History and Power in the Study of Law, ed. J. Starr and J.F. Collier. Ithaca NY: Cornell U. Pr.

Week 11: Violence at the Margins

**Wagner-Pacifici, Robin. 1994. Discourse and Destruction: The city of Philadelphia vs. MOVE. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chavez, Leo. 1992. Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society. Fort Worth: HW College Pub.

Herrell, Richard. 1996. "Sin, Sickness, Crime: Queer Desire and the American State." Identities 2(3): 273-300.

Hill, Jane H. 1993. "Hasta La Vista, Baby: Anglo Spanish in the American Southwest." Critique of Anthropology 13(2):145-176.

Tsing, Anna L. 1992. "Monster Stories: Women Charged with Perinatal Endangerment." In Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture, ed. F. Ginsburg and A. L. Tsing. Boston: Beacon.

Wagner-Pacifici, Robin. 2000. Theorizing the Standoff. New York: Cambridge U. Press.

Woolard, Kathryn. 1989. "Sentences in the Language Prison: The Rhetorical Structuring of an American Language Policy Debate." American Ethnologist 16:268-278.

Week 12: Rules of Co-residence

**Perin, Constance. 1977. Everything in Its Place: Social Order and Land Use in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Anderson, Elijah. 1990. Street Wise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Street Wise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

http://faculty.cua.edu/chock/ethnogra1.htmGregory, Steven. 1999. Black Corona:  Princeton: Princeton University Pr.

Perin, Constance. 1988. Belonging in America: Reading Between the Lines. Madison:U. of Wisconsin Press.

**Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1996. Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences…. Boulder CO: Westview Press.

Chock, Phyllis P. 1995. "Culturalism: Pluralism, Culture, and Race in The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups." Identities 1(4): 301-323, a special issue "Critiquing Multiculturalism."

Dominguez, Virginia. 1986. White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Frankenberg, Ruth. 1993. The Social Construction of Whiteness: White Women, Race Matters. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.

Gregory, Steven. 1993. "Race, Rubbish, and Resistance." Cultural Anthropology 8:24-48.

Henze, Rosemary C. and Lauren Vanett. 1993. "To Walk in Two Worlds, Or More: Challenging a Common Metaphor of Native Education." Anthropology and Education Quarterly 24:116-134.

Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1997. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. New York: Routledge.

Segal, Daniel and Richard Handler. 1995. "U.S. Multiculturalism and the Concept of Culture." Identities 1(4):391-407.

Week 14: Producing and Consuming Images

**Handler, Richard and Eric Gable. 1997. The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg. Durham NC: Duke U. Pr.

Caton, Steven. 1999. Lawrence of Arabia: A Film's Anthropology. U. California Press.

Coombe, Rosemary J. 1996. "Marking Differences in American Commerce: Trademarks and Alterity at Century’s End." PoLAR (Political and Legal Anthropology Review) 19(1): 105-115.

Coutin, Susan B. and Phyllis P. Chock. 1995. "Your Friend, the Illegal": Definition and paradox in Newspaper Accounts of U.S. Immigration Reform. Identities 2: 123-148.

Beeman, William. 1986. "Freedom to Choose: Symbols and Values in American Advertising." In Symbolizing America, ed. H. Varenne. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska Pr.

Drummond, Lee. 1996. American Dreamtime: A Cultural Analysis of Popular Movies, and Their Implications for a Science of Humanity. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Landsman, Gail H. 1987. "Indian Activism and the Press: Coverage of the Conflict at Ganienkeh." Anthropological Quarterly 60:101-113.

Lutz, Catherine and Jane Collins. 1993. Reading National Geographic. Chicago IL:University of Chicago Press.

Strong, Pauline Turner. 1996. "Animated Indians: Critique and Contradiction in Commodified Children’s Culture." Cultural Anthropology 11(3):405-424.

Traube, Elizabeth G. 1992. Dreaming Identities: Class, Gender, and Generation in1980s Hollywood Movies. Boulder CO: Westview Press.

**Chock, Phyllis P. 1999. "'A Very Bright Line': Kinship and Nationality in U.S. Congressional Hearings on Immigration." POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 22(2): 42-52.

**Herrell, Richard. 1994. "Gay Americans: In the (National) Life." POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 17(2):37-44.

**Rosaldo, Renato. 1994. "Cultural Citizenship in San Jose, California." POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 17(2):57-64.

**Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1994. "Acceptable Difference: The Cultural Evolution of the Model Ethnic American Citizen." POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 17(2):19-36.

Chock, Phyllis P. 1998. "Porous Borders: Discourses of Difference in Congressional Hearings on Immigration." In Democracy and Ethnography, ed. C. Greenhouse. Albany: SUNY Press.

Newman, Katherine. 2000.  No Shame to My Game.

Adams, Jane. 1993. "Resistance to 'Modernity': Southern Illinois Farm Women and the Cult of Domesticity." American Ethnologist

Fischer, M.K.J. 1986. "Ethnicity and the Postmodern Arts of Memory." In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography

Gable, Eric, Richard Handler, and Anna Lawson. 1992. "On the Uses of Relativism: Fact, Conjecture, and Black and White Histories at Colonial Williamsburg." American Ethnologist

Ong, Aihwa. 1992. "Limits to Cultural Accumulation: Chinese Capitalists on the American Pacific Rim." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Rodriguez, Sylvia. 1989. "Art, Tourism, and Race Relations in Taos: Toward a Sociology of the Art Colony." Journal of Anthropological Research

Rose, Dan. 1991. Elite Discourse of the Market and Narrative Ethnography. Anthropological Quarterly

Newman, Katherine. 1988. Falling From Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class. New York: Free Press.