Theories of Culture and Society Ward Keeler
Ant 330C (30400) EPS 1.146 471-8520
TTh 11 – 12:30 office hours: Tues 2 - 4
Spring, 2010 ward.keeler@mail.utexas.edu
The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with some of the most important theoretical contributions made to the study of culture and society since the nineteenth century. The first half of the course is devoted largely to reading the great systems builders of the social sciences: Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Freud. All of their ideas have been under attack for decades, but their thinking still pervades the social sciences and must be reckoned with. We then turn to figures influential primarily in the history of anthropology, and finally, to recent and contemporary writers in the social sciences whose ideas fuel ongoing debates in anthropology today. The course is conceived primarily for majors but above all for students who are committed to working with difficult, influential, and fascinating texts.
The course combines both lecture, on Thursdays, and seminar discussion, on Tuesdays. Seminar discussion will be based in most cases on short written assignments submitted before class. Attending lectures and seminar discussion is required, and absences must be explained.
The course integrates an intense and demanding regime of reading and discussion with an equally intense and demanding program of writing. In order to assist students with their writing, a portion of every Tuesday class will be devoted to discussing writing. The aim is to encourage students to develop the habit of writing clear and concise prose, organized in such a way that a reader is aware of the overall structure of each sentence, paragraph, and essay.
Requirements:
Final grades will be based on the following requirements: eight short assignments, two longer essays, plus attendance and participation. The short assignments, no more than one page in length, will be worth five points each, for a total of forty points. (Ten short assignments will be made: students can choose not to submit one before spring break, and one after. If a student submits all ten short assignments, the two lowest grades will be dropped.) Each of the two longer essays, about five pages in length, will be worth twenty-five points, for a total of fifty points. Attendance and participation will count for ten points.
Readings:
All readings are available on reserve at the Perry-Castañeda Library. They are also available for purchase. The following books are available at the University Coop Bookstore:
Anderson, Benedict. 1990. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Durkheim, Emile. 2008 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Tr. C. Cosman. New York: Free Press. (Other translations are acceptable, but the new translation is preferable.)
Foucault, Michel. 1979 [1975]. Discipline and Punish. Tr. A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage.
Foucault, Michel. 1990 [1976]. The History of Sexuality. Tr. R. Hurley. New York: Vintage.
Freud, Sigmund. 1966 [1920]. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Tr. James Strachey. New York: Norton. Tucker, Robert, ed. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. Second edition. New York: Norton.
Weber, Max, 2002 [1920]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Tr. P. Baehr and G. Wells. New York: Penguin.
Week 1
Tucker, Robert, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 101-05, 146-217, 473-491, 499-500.
The first short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, January 21, and will be due on Tuesday, January 26.
Week 2
Spencer, Herbert. 1973 [18 ]. "What is a Society?" In, Paul Bohannan and Mark Glazer eds., High Points in Anthropology. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 6-28.
Tylor, Edward. 1958 [1871]. Chapter 1, “The Science of Culture,” and Chapter 4, “Survival in Culture.” Primitive Culture. NewYork: Harper Torchbooks, pp. 1-25, 112-59.
Boas, Frans. 1974 [1889]. “On Alternating Sounds.” In, George W. Stocking, Jr., ed., The Shaping of American Anthropology 1883-1911: a Franz Boas Reader. New York: Basic Books, pp. 72-77.
Boas, Frans. 1940. "The Limitations of the Comparative Method in Anthropology." Race, Language and Culture. New York: The Free Press, pp. 270-80.
The second short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, January 28, and will be due on Tuesday, February 2.
Week 3
Durkheim, Emile. Introduction; Book 1, Ch. 1 Definition of religious phenomena and of religion; Bk 2, Ch. 7 Origins of these beliefs; Bk 3, Ch. 5 Piacular Rites and the ambiguity of the notions of sacredness; Conclusion. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. (Since different editions of this book are in circulation, providing page numbers would only cause confusion.)
The third short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, February 4, and will be due on Tuesday, February 9.
Week 4
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
The fourth short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, February 11, and will be due on Tuesday, February 16.
Week 5
Freud, Sigmund. 1966 [1920]. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Tr. James Strachey. New York: Norton & Co. Lectures 16 - 23, 27-28, pp. 243-377, 412-63.
The first longer writing assigned on Tuesday, February 16. A draft will be due on Tuesday, February 23. Final versions will be due on Tuesday, March 9.
Week 6
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1961 [1922], "Introduction," Chapter 3, “The Essentials of the Kula.” Argonauts of the Western Pacific. New York: E.P. Dutton, pp. 1-25, 81-104.
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1965 [1952]. "Introduction;" "The Mother's Brother in South Africa." Structure and Function in Primitive Society. New York: The Free Press, pp. 1-31.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1975 [1940]. “The Nuer of the Southern Sudan.” In, M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, eds. African Political Systems. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 272-96.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1988 [1950]. "Social Anthropology: Past and Present." In, Paul Bohannan and Mark Glazer eds., High Points in Anthropology. Second edition. New York: McGraw Hill, pp. 407-21.
The fifth short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, February 25, and will be due on Tuesday, March 2.
Week 7
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963 [1945]. Chapter 2, "Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology." Structural Anthropology, v. 1. New York: Basic Books, pp. 31-54.
Douglas, Mary. 1966. "Introduction,"; Chapter 7, "External Boundaries." Purity and Danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, pp. 11-16, 137-153.
Turner, Victor. 1967. "Symbols in Ndembu Ritual." The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, pp. 19-47.
Turner, Victor. 1969. Chapter 3, “Liminality and Communitas.” The Ritual Process. Chicago: Aldine, pp. 95-130.
Week 8
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, pp. 412-454.
Crapanzano, Vincent. 1986. "Hermes' Dilemma." In, George Marcus and Michael Fisher, eds., Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 51-76.
Rosaldo, Renato. 1989, “Grief and a Headhunterís Rage.” Culture and Truth: the remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press, pp. 1-21.
The sixth short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, March 11, and will be due on Tuesday, March 23.
Week 9
Ortner, Sherry B. 1984. "Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.” In, N. Dirks, G. Eley, and S. Ortner, eds. Culture/Power/History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 372-411.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Pp. 25-65, 98-134
Note: Bourdieu's writing is notoriously difficult. Be sure to allow yourself a good deal of time to do this reading.
The seventh short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, March 25, and will be due on Tuesday, March 30.
Week 10
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Pp. 3-31, 135-228.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, v. 1. Pp. 1-49, 135-159.
The eighth short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, April 1, and will be due on Tuesday, April 6.
Week 11
Di Leonardo, Micaela. 1991. Introduction: Gender, Culture and Political Economy: Feminist anthropology in historical perspective. In, M. di Leonardo, ed., Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 1-48.
Crowley, Helen. 1996. Women and the Domestic Sphere. In, Stuart Hall et al., eds., Modernity: an Introduction to Modern Societies. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 344-362.
Stoler, Ann. 2002. Gender and Morality in the Making of Race. Carnal Knowledg and Imperial Power. University of California Press. Pp. 41-59.
Weeks, Jeffrey. 1996. The Body and Sexuality. In, Stuart Hall et al., eds., Modernity: an Introduction to Modern Societies. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 363-394
The ninth short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, April 8, and will be due on Tuesday, April 13.
Week 12
Anderson, Benedict. 1990. Imagined Communities. Revised Edition. London: Verso.
The tenth short assignment will be assigned on Thursday, April 15, and will be on Tuesday, April 20.
Week 13
Clifford, James. 1986. “Introduction: Partial Truths.” In James Clifford & George Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: The University of California Press. Pp. 1-19.
Rosaldo, Renato. 1986, “From the Door of His Tent: the Fieldworker and the Inquisitor.” In, eds. George Marcus and Michael Fisher, Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 77-97.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1991. “Writing Against Culture.” In, Richard Fox, ed., Recapturing Anthropology. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Pp. 137-60.
Marcus, George. 1998. “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography.” Ethnography Through Thick and Thin. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 79-104.
Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 2002. The Natives are Gazing and Talking Back. American Anthropologist 104(3):791-804.
Week 14
Mamdani, Mahmood. Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: a Political Perspective on Culture and Terrorism. American Anthropologist 104(3): 766-775.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” American Anthropologist 104(3):783-790.
Atran, Scott. 2009. “To Beat Al Qaeda, Look to the East.” NY Times December 13, 2009.
The second longer essay will be assigned on Thursday, April 29. It will be due on Thursday, May 13, by 4 p.m.
Week 15
No additional reading.