History of Anthropology Theory

syllabus for

History of Anthropological Theory

Professor Daniel Segal

Daniel A. Segal

Bernard 225

UNIT 1: QUESTIONING SOCIAL EVOLUTIONARY SCHEMAS

Week 0 (Jan 16)

Segal, Daniel, "Civilization, Barbarism, and Savagery," pp. 358-363 in Encyclopedia of World History (2005).

Extra Session: January 18 (Wed) at 4:15, Job Talk by Candidate 1 for the open position in cultural-social anthropology at Scripps College.

Week 1 (Jan 23)

Stocking, George, “The Dark-Skinned Savage: The Image of Primitive Man in Evolutionary Anthropology,” ch. 6 in in Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (1968).

Boas, Franz, “On Alternating Sounds,” The American Anthropologist (1889).

Boas, Franz, “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology” (1896), pp. 270-280 in F. Boas, Race, Language, and Culture (1982[1940]).

Extra Session: January 23 (Mon) at 4:15, Job Talk by Candidate 2 for the open position in cultural-social anthropology at Scripps College.

Week 2 (Jan 30)

Levi-Strauss, C., “Science of the Concrete” (1966[1962]), ch. 1 of The Savage Mind (1966[1962]).

Levi-Strauss, C., ch. 5 from Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969 [1949]).

Sahlins, Marshall, “The Original Affluent Society”, Stone Age Economics (1972).

Extra Session: January 30 (Mon) at noon, Job Talk by Candidate 3 for the open position in cultural-social anthropology at Scripps College.

Extra Session: Feb 1 (Wed) at 4:15: Job Talk by Candidate 4 for the open position in cultural-social anthropology at Scripps College.

UNIT 2: QUESTIONING RACE

Week 3 (Feb 6)

Stocking, George, “The Critique of Racial Formalism,” ch. 8 in Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (1968).

Stocking, George, “Franz Boas and the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective,” ch. 9 in Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (1968).

Baker, L. “The Location of Franz Boas within the African-American Struggle” (1994), Critique of Anthropology 14(2): 199-217.

Liss, Julie , “Diasporic Identities: The Science and Politics of Race in the Work of Franz Boas and W.E.B. DuBois, 1894-1919,” Cultural Anthropology (1998).

Week 4 (Feb 13)

Domìnguez, Virginia, White By Definition (1994).

AAA Statement on Race (1998).

Wade, Nicholas, “Race,” ch. 9 in Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (2006).

UNIT 3: QUESTIONING FUNCTIONALISM

Week 5 (Feb 20)

Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., “On the Concept of Function in Social Science” (1935), pp. 178-187 in A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1952).

Malinowski, Bronislaw, “The Group and the Individual in Functional Analysis,” (1938), American Journal of Sociology, 44: 938-64.

Lee, Dorothy, “Are Basic Needs Ultimate?” Journal of Abnormal and Social Pyschology (1948).

Segal, D. “Always Faithful to Humankind: In Homage to Levi-Strauss.” [English version of “Sempre fesele al genere umano,” pp. 360-364 in Contemporanea. Rivista di storia dell

'800 e del '900 (2011).]

Study guide questions for this week.

UNIT 4: QUESTIONING FAMILIAR DOMAINS, BOUNDARIES, AND IDENTITIES

Week 6 (Feb 27 and Feb 28)

Gough, K., “The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage” (1959), Man: 23-34.

Schneider, D., American Kinship (1976[1968]).

AAA Statement on Marriage and the Family (2004).

Irvine, J. “Shadow Conversations: The Indeterminacy of Participant Roles,” pp. 131-159 in G, Urban and M. Silverstein, eds., Natural Histories of Discourse (1996).

Tuesday the 28^th at 4:15 pm: Akhil Gupta, “Democratic Politics and Capitalism in Contemporary India,” in Benson Auditorium.

Week 7 (Mar 5)

Ardener, E. “Language, Ethnicity, and Population” (1972).

Handler, R. and D. Segal, “Cultural Approaches to Nationalism,” in G. Delanty & K. Kumar eds., The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (2006).

Handler, Richard, “Is ‘Identity’ a Useful Cross-Cultural Concept?” in J. Gillis, ed. Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, pp. 27-40 (1994).

Irvine, J. and S. Gal, “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation” (2000), in P. Kroskrity, ed. Regimes of Language (2000).

DISRUPTION OF LEARNING – March 12

UNIT 5: QUESTIONING THE FOUR FIELDS

Week 8 (Mar 19)

Stocking, George, “The Scientific Reaction against Cultural Anthropology, 1917-1920,” ch. 11 in Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (1968).

Stocking, George, “Guardians of the Sacred Bundle: The American Anthropological Association and the Representation of Holistic Anthropology” (1988), Learned Societies and the Evolution of the Disciplines (American Council of Learned Societies Occasional Paper).

S. Yanagisako and D. Segal, “Introduction,” in S. Yanagisako and D. Segal, eds. Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Thoughts on the Disciplining of Anthropology (2005).

S. Yanagisako, “Flexible Disciplinarity,” in Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Thoughts on the Disciplining of Anthropology (2005).

H. Lewis, review of Yanagisako and Segal’s Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle (2006).

Wade, Nicholas, “Anthropology a Science: Statement Deepens a Rift” in NY Times (9 December 2010).

Jaschik, Scott, “Not Feeling the Kinship,” in Inside Higher Education (November 18, 2011).

UNIT 6: SOME WORK BY SOME OF YOUR FACULTY (continued into week 10 as well)

Week 9 (March 26)

Chao, Emily, Ch. 4 in Lijiang Stories (in press).

Deeb, Lara, Excerpt from An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon (2006) and Intro to new book project (ms).

Martins, Leda, Ch. 1 and Ch. 6, from Macuxi Politics (ms).

Mahdavi, P. “But We Can Always Get More: Deportability, the State and Gendered Migration in the the United Arab Emirates,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal (2011).

UNIT 7: RETHINKING CLASS, CAPITALISM, HISTORY, AND GLOBALIZATION

Week 10 (Apr 2)

Strauss, C. “Conventional Discourses, Public Opinion, and Political Culture,” from Making Sense of Public Opinion: American Discourses about Immigration and Social Programs (in press).

Talmor, R. “Possible Cities: Africa in Photography and Video” (catalog of an exhibit from 2010; be sure to look at the images in color).

Marx, Karl, Capital, excerpt 1, excerpt 2, and excerpt 3.

Ortner, S. (1998). “Generation X: Anthropology in a Media-Saturated World,”Cultural Anthropology

Week 11 (Apr 9)

Feierman, S. “African Histories and the Dissolution of World History,” from Africa and the Disciplines (1993).

Segal, D. “ ‘Western Civ’ and the Staging of History in American Higher Education,” in American Historical Review (2005).

Pomeranz, K., “Political Economy and Global Ecology on the Eve of Industrialization: Europe, China, and the Global Conjuncture,” American Historical Review 107, no. 2 (April 2002): 425-46.

Week 12 (Apr 16)

Tsing, Anna, Friction (2004).

Week 13 (Apr 23)

Robbins, Joel, Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (2004).

Week 14 (Apr 30)