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ANTHROPOLOGY 500D

Theory and Method in Sociocultural Anthropology

Spring 2001

David Sutton

Faner 3542

453-3298

Questions or Comments--Send email to dsutton@siu.edu

Required Books (available at 710 bookstore):

Bruce Knauft Genealogies for the Present in Cultural Anthropology (also available at University Bookstore)

James Clifford & George Marcus Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Anthropology

Gananath Obeyesekere The Apoetheosis of Captain Cook

Marshall Sahlins How Natives Think

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

2 Mid-Term Take-Home Exams (each worth 25% of your grade)

2 Book Reviews (each worth 10% of your grade)

1 Final 8-10 page paper (worth 25% of your grade)

Class Participation (worth 10% of your grade!!!!)

Week 1: Introduction

Read:

R. Rosaldo "Subjectivity in Social Analysis"

R. Rosaldo "The Erosion of Classical Norms"

B. Knauft Ch. 1

Weeks 2-3 Texts and other symbols

Review "Notes on the Balinese Cockfight."

Read:

C. Geertz "Thick Description."

P. Ricoeur "The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as Text."

M. Herzfeld "Closure as Cure: Tropes in the Exploration of Bodily and Social Disorder."

J. Fernandez "Exploded Worlds"

W. Roseberry "Balinese Cockfights and the Seduction of Anthropology."

R. Keesing "Anthropology as Interpretive Quest"

J. Nash "Interpreting Social Movements: On Bolivian Resistance to economic conditions imposed by the IMF."

Week 4 The Post-Modern Critique

Read:

Writing Culture chapters by Clifford (2), Crapanzano, Marcus, Tyler

Michael Jackson "On Ethnographic Truth."

Bruce Knauft Genealogies Ch. 3

Week 5: Meaning, Theory and Method

Read:

Clifford Geertz "From the Native's Point of View."

Bruce Knauft Ch. 2

James Fernandez and Michael Herzfeld "In Search of Meaningful Methods."

Victor Turner and Edward Bruner "The Anthropology of Experience"

Judith Okely "Anthro & Autobiography: Participatory Experience and Embodied Knowledge"

NEW APPROACHES TO OLD TOPICS

Weeks 6-7 Gender & Kinship

Read:

Michelle Rosaldo "Public/Private"

Sherry Ortner "Nature/Culture"

Eleanor Leacock "Women's Status in Egalitarian Societies."

J. Collier & S. Yanagisako "Theory in Anthropology Since Feminist Practice."

Jane Adams "Resistance to Modernity: So. Illinois Farmworkers and the Cult of Domesticity."

S. Franklin "Conception among the Anthropologists

Yanagisako and Delaney "Introduction to Naturalizing Power."

David Sutton "Local Names, Foreign Claims."

John McCall "Rethinking Ancestors in Africa."

Bruce Knauft Ch. 7

Weeks 8-9 Money, Gifts and Commodities

Read:

Pierre Bourdieu "Marginalia"

Annette Weiner "Inalienable Possessions" & "Reconfiguring Exchange Theory: The Maori Hau"

Michael Taussig "The Genesis of Capitalism Amongst a South American Peasantry."

Maurice Bloch & Jonathan Parry "Money and the Morality of Exchange"

Maurice Bloch "Symbolism of Money Among the Imerina"

James Carrier "Abstraction in Western Economic Practice."

David Graeber "Beads and Money: Notes Toward a Theory of Wealth and Power."

Igor Kopytoff "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commodification as Process."

Week 10 Ritual, Belief, "Modernity."

Read:

Paul Connerton "How Societies Remember" ch. 1.

Robert Parkin "Ritual as Spatial Division."

J & J. Comaroff "Modernity and its Malcontents" Intro.

J & J. Comaroff "Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction."

Mark Auslander "Open the Wombs!"

Weeks 11-12 Power, Resistance, Practice

Pierre Bourdieu The Logic of Practice chs. 3-4

Jackson Lears "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony."

H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow "Toward a Theory of Discursive Practice," in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism & Hermeneutics.

Eric Wolf "Envisioning Power" Chs. 1-2.

Sidney Mintz "Time, Sugar and Sweetness."

Deborah Reed-Danahay "Talking about Resistance."

Michael Brown "On Resisting Resistance"

Bruce Knauft Chs. 4-5

Week 13 Rethinking Nature and Culture

Anna Lowenhaupt-Tsing "Reflections on Bee Culture."

Descola & Pallson "Nature & Culture" Intro.

Biersack "Ecologies for Tomorrow." Articles by Biersack, Gezon, Ernst.

Weeks 14-15 Structure, History and Post-colonialism

Read:

David Scott "Aftermaths of Sovereignty: Postcolonial Criticisms and the Claims of Political Modernity."

Bruce Knauft Ch. 8

Jonathan Hill "Rethinking Myth & History" Intro.

Marshall Sahlins "Captain James Cook, or, the Dying God," and "Structure and History."

Gananath Obyeskere "Western Mythmaking and the Understanding of the Other," and "The Apotheosis of Captain Cook" (selections)