History of Anthropological Theory
Professor Daniel Segal
Office Hours:
R & F 8:15-9:45 & by appointment
Course Assignments and Grading
There will be a study guide for each week's reading assignments, plus one final assignment. For graduating seniors, the final assignment will be an oral examination, given during the last week of the semester (date to be determined). For all other students, the final assignment will be a 15-20 page paper due on the 13th of May at noon. For more information about this paper, click here.
Course Calendar (tentative reading assignments)
I. Anthropology at its Victorian Outset and Before
Week 1
Stocking, G., Victorian Anthropology (1987), prologue through ch. 3
For the study guide for this reading, click here.
Week 2
Stocking, G. Victorian Anthropology (1987) , ch. 4-6, first two paragraphs of chapter seven, and epilogue
Boas, F., “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology” (1896), pp. 270-280 in F. Boas, Race, Language, and Culture (1982[1940]).
Segal, D., "Civilization,
Barbarism, and Savagery" (2005), in
For the study guide for this reading, click here.
II. Anthropology at its Boasian Outset and After
Week 3
Stocking, G., Race, Culture, and Evolution (1968), chs.8 and 9.
Boas, F., “On Alternating Sounds,” The American Anthropologist (1889).
Jacknis,
For the study guide for this week's readings, click here.
Week 4
Stocking, G., “Anthropology as Kulturkampf: Science and Politics in the Career of Franz Boas” (1978), pp. 92-113 in G. Stocking, The Ethnographer’s Magic and Other Essays in the History of Anthropology (1992).
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. Du Bois, 1894-1919” (1998), Cultural Anthropology 13(2): 127-166.
AAA Statement on Race (1998). See also the website for the new AAA sponsored museum exhibit, Race.
For the study guide for this week's readings, click here.
III. British Social Anthropology: Taking the Discipline to the Field or Into the Ground?
Week 5
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).
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., “On Social Structure” (1940), pp. 188-204 in A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1952).
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., “The Mother’s Brother in South Africa” (1924) in A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1952).
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., “On Joking Relationships” (1940) in A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1952).
For the study guide for this week's readings, click here.
IV. Structuralism at its Levi-Straussian Outset and Before
Week 6
Culler, J. Ferdinand de Saussure (1986).
Levi-Strauss, C., “Science of the Concrete” (1966[1962]), ch. 1 of The Savage Mind (1966[1962]).
For the study guide for this week's reading, click here.
Week 7
Levi-Strauss, C., The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969[1949], chapters 1 and 2; chapters 3; chapter 4; chapter 5; chapter 6; chapter 7; chapter 8; and chapter 9.
For the study guide for this week's reading, click here.
V.
Further Rejections of Functionalism and Positivism
Week 8
Sahlins, M, “The Original Affluent Society” (1972), in The Original Affluent Society (1972).
Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), chs. 1, 2, and 4.
For the study guide for this week's readings, click here.
Week 9
Marx, K. excerpts from Capital (1867).
Sahlins, M, Culture and Practical Reason (1976), preface and ch. 1.
The study guide for these readings is in two parts. For the first part, on the Marx reading, click here. For the second part, on the Sahlins reading, click here.
Week 10
Sahlins, M., Culture and Practical Reason (1976), chs. 2-end. For the study guide for this week's reading, click here.
VII.
Unfolding Reconsiderations...of Kinship, Culture, History, and Anthropology
Week 12
Gough, K., “The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage” (1959), Man: 23-34.
Schneider, D., American Kinship (1976[1968]), excerpt.
Yanagisako, S and J. Collier, “Toward a Unified Analysis of Gender and Kinship,” pp. 14-52 in J. Collier and S. Yanagisako eds., Gender and Kinship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis (1987).
Handler, R. and D. Segal, Jane Austen and the Fiction of Culture (1999[1990]), excerpt.
McKinnon, S., “American Kinship/American Incest: Asymmetries in a Scientific Discourse,” pp. 25-46 in S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney eds., Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis (1995).
McKinnon, S., “On Kinship and Marriage: A Critique of the Genetic and Gender Calculus of Evolutionary Psychology,” pp. 106-131 in S. McKinnon and S. Silverman, eds., Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nature (2005).
AAA Statement on Marriage and the Family
For the study guide for this cluster of readings, click here.
Week 12 (April 10)
Handler, R., “On Having a Culture,” in G. Stocking, ed. Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture. History of Anthropology, vol. 3. [handout].
Handler, R., "On Dialogue and Destructive Analysis," Journal of Anthropological Research, pp, 171-182, vol, 41(2). 1985
Handler, R. and D. Segal, “Cultural Approaches to Nationalism,” in G. Delanty and K. Kumar eds., The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism. [handout]
For the study guide for this cluster of readings, click here.
Week 13
Feierman, S., “African Histories and the Dissolution
of World History,” from
Segal, D., “‘Western Civ’ and the Staging of History in American Higher Education,” American Historical Review (2001).
Robbins, J., excerpt (read through first full paragraph on p. 16), from Becoming Sinners (200?).
For the assignment for this cluster of readings, click here.
Week 14
Stocking, G. “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. Yanigasako and D.
Segal, “Introduction,”
Lewis, Herb, review of Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle.
For the study guide for the readings for this week, click here.
The following reading is recommended, but not required:
Stocking, G., Race, Culture, and Evolution (1968), ch. 11
Week 15
Sahlins, M. "Jungle Fever," review of P. Tierney's Darkness of El Dorado, first printed in The Washington Post, Dec. 20, 2000.
Clifford, J., "On Ethnographic Allegory," from Writing Culture.
For the study guide for this week, click here.