Culture, History and Power.  In a cross cultural and inter-disciplinary perspective, the course will critically engage with historiographical debates in on issues related to narrative, the history and politics of the archives, the politics of representation and the construction of facts. We will read works by Hayden White, E. P. Thompson, Reinhart Koselleck, Fernand Braudel, Marshall Sahlins, Carlo Ginzburg and Michel-Rolph Trouillot among others. Over the course of the semester we will also follow the debates in Subaltern Historians by scholars like Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gyan Pandey and Partha Chatterjee. Regionally, the course will be broad. While most of the monographs will be on South Asia and the Middle East, there will be ample discussion of European, Latin American and African cases.

This course focuses on "classic" themes in anthropology such as ethnicity, language, adaptation, marriage, kinship, gender, religion, and social stratification.  We will consider anthropological theory from its 19th-century origins to the present.  The course also explores the nature of ethnographic field work, especially the relationship between the anthropologist and the field community.  
The lectures, readings, and films for this course have been selected with the objective of exploring the social meanings with which diverse groups invest their life.  By comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between "us" and "others," both within the borders of the U.S. and abroad, the anthropological perspective can expose some of our own cultural assumptions and enable us to better understand diverse cultures.

The class will focus on how recent scholarship on cities has concentrated on the informal sector, rural-urban migration and peri-urban spaces. During the course of the semester the students will engage with material from the different regions of the world to address some of the following questions: Does the city represent a site of personal autonomy and political possibilities for women/men? At different moments public discourse in distinct societies has produced the city as both site of modern citizen-making and site of corruption/ pollution. How have different classes of people in distinct temporalities/spatialities negotiated these tensions? How do urban politics and policies reshape households and communities' relationship to the city? What political space is provided for subjects to resist or renegotiate state sponsored attempts to re-order the urban landscape?

This course seeks to make the students critical of dominant bio-medical assumptions of health and illness by exposing the historical, social, political , economic and cultural foundations of Western Medicine. The readings will critically discuss the historical construction on of the modern medicalized body by looking at some nineteenth century debates on anatomy, physiology, psychiatry, and anthropology. The issue of race and gender inherent in these debates will be explored by linking them to the expansion of the colonial enterprise and the rise of capitalism. Material will be introduced to help students evaluate the contemporary emphasis on the biomedical model of health and illness in relation to the plurality of health systems in different parts of the world. The course seeks to further evaluate the linkage between modern medicine and the construction of modern subjectivity and personhood.  

The class will focus on how recent scholarship on cities has concentrated on the informal sector, rural-urban migration and peri-urban spaces. During the course of the semester the students will engage with material from the different regions of the world to address some of the following questions: Does the city represent a site of personal autonomy and political possibilities for women/men? At different moments public discourse in distinct societies has produced the city as both site of modern citizen-making and site of corruption/ pollution. How have different classes of people in distinct temporalities/spatialities negotiated these tensions? How do urban politics and policies reshape households and communities' relationship to the city? What political space is provided for subjects to resist or renegotiate state sponsored attempts to re-order the urban landscape?

This course introduces doctoral students to major texts in sociocultural theory that have been central to the development of the discipline of anthropology from its colonial roots in North America and Western Europe to the contemporary period. While not a comprehensive history of anthropological theory, this course provides a chronological and contextualized perspective as it explores and interprets the relationships between varying and, at times, competing theoretical, epistemological, and ethical claims on anthropology and related disciplines. Based on classical scholarship by some of the “founding fathers” of modern social science, this course traces parts of the genealogical trajectories taken by the anthropological study of culture and society. Following that intellectual legacy, this course asks a central question: How can we make sense of sociocultural anthropology as an academic discipline today? Problematizing the role the concept of “culture” has played in shaping the idea of the “field,” we will look at “location” as a principal site of epistemological limitation and possibility for anthropological research.

THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS FROM THE LAST CLASS OFFERING IN 2010. DESCRIPTION & SYLLABUS WILL BE UPDATED IN LATE AUGUST 2014.

Requirements: I would expect you to come to class regularly and participate equally in the discussion. There would be presentations of the material and we will decide the modalities in class. Please come on time and attend all classes.

1. Each student will hand in a paragraph on the readings for every session. These response papers will not be returned. 

2.  A research paper on a topic of your choice due at the end of the semester. The paper should reflect your engagement with the texts and discussions in the class. We can discuss the exact topics during the course of the semester.

The following texts have been ordered at the COOP.

Javier Auyero: Poor People’s Politics. Duke University Press, 2000.

Ananya Roy: City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty. University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

Partha Chatterjee: The Politics of the Governed. Columbia University Press, 2004

Giorgio Agamben: State of Exception. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Michael Taussig: Law in a Lawless Land. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

There is also a course-pack at Speedway Copies (Dobie Mall), this has most of the readings.

Week 1: Introduction and Overview.

January 20

Week 2: Cities and Citizenship

January 27

James Holston and Arjun Appadurai, “Cities and Citizenship” (Public Culture 8(2), 1996), 187-204.

Saskia Sassen, “Whose City is it? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims” (Public Culture 8(2), 1996), 205-223.

Jean and John Comaroff. Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction (AE 26(2), 1999), 279-303.

AbdouMaliq Simone, For the City Yet to Come. Chapters, Introduction, 2, 3, 6 and 7.

Week 3: The Historical Construction of Space and Spatiality

February 3

Frederick Jameson.  Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1-54

Frederick Jameson. Future City. New Left Review 21 May-June 2003.

David Harvey. The Urban Experience, chapter 9.

Kamran Asdar Ali and Martina Rieker: Urban Margins. Social Text, 2008.

Susan Buck-Morris, The Dialectics of Seeing, Chapter 8.

Week 4: The Postmodernist City

February 10

Nigel Thrift. But Malice Afterthought: Cities and the Natural History of Hatred

Nigel Thrift. Intensities of Feeling: Toward  a Spatial Politics of Affect

Achille Mbembe and Janet Roitman. Figures of the Subject in Times of Crisis. In the Geographies of Identities.

Arjun Appadurai. “Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politic”

(Public Culture 14(1), 2002), 21-47.

Week 5:

February 10

Film: The Blade Runner.

David Harvey. The Condition of Postmodernity, chapter 18.

Simon Cole. “Do Androids Pulverize Tiger Bones to Use as Aphrodisiacs”, (Social Text 42, Spring 1995), 173-193.

Week 6: The City Modern or Postmodern

February 17

D. Massey. “Flexible Sexism”. ((Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 9, 1991). 31-57.

Mike Davis. Planet of Slums. New Left Review 26 March-April 2004.

David Scott. Refashioning Futures. Chapter 8.

Mathew Gandi. Learning from Lagos New Left Review 33 May-June, 2005

Rem Koolhas. Fragments of a Lecture on Lagos. In Under Siege Four African Cities

Week 7: Citizenship Debates

February 24

Wendy Brown. States of Injury. Chapters 5.

Karl Marx. On the Jewish Question

Carole Pateman. The Disorder of Women, 71-89, 118-140, 179-209.

Uday Mehta. The Anxiety of Freedom, Chapters 3-4.

Week 8: Citizenship Debates Continued

March 3

Chantal Mouffe. The Return of the Political,  Chapters 2-4 and 9.

Charles Taylor. “Modern Social Imaginaries” (Public Culture 14(1), 2002) 91-124.

Partha Chaterjee.  “Community in the East” (Economic and Political Weekly, Feb. 7, 1998) 277-282.

Uday Mehta. Liberalism and Empire. Chapters 2-3.

John and Jean Comaroff. Criminal Justice. Cultural Justice (American Ethnologist 31(2), 2004), 188-204.

Week 9: The State of Exception. 

March 10

Giorgio Agamben. State of Exception.

Georgio Agamben. Mean Without End.

Foucault, Michel. Society Must be Defended. 238-263.

Achille Mbembe. Necropolitics (Public Culture 15(1), 2003) 11-40

SPRING BREAK

Week 10:  Remapping the City and Rethinking Citizens.

March 24

Humphrey Caroline. Rethinking Infrastructure. Siberian Cities and the Great Freeze of January 2001.

Thomas Blom Hansen. Race, Security and Urban Anxieties in the Post-Apartheid City. Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

AbdouMaliq Simone. Remaking Urban Socialities. Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

Jean and John Comaroff. Criminal Obsessions After Foucault.

Week 11:

March 30

Partha Chatterjee. The Politics of the Governed.

Week 12:

April 7

Javier Auyero: Poor People’s Politics.

Week 13:

April 14

Ananya Roy. City Requiem. Calcutta.

Week 14:

April  21.

Michael Taussig: Law in a Lawless Land

Week 15: Review

April 29

Week 16.

May 5

Last Day of Class. Paper due on May 5th before 5 pm in my office.

Papers Due on May 4th before 5 pm.

This course introduces doctoral students to major texts in sociocultural theory that have been central to the development of the discipline of anthropology from its colonial roots in North America and Western Europe to the contemporary period. While not a comprehensive history of anthropological theory, this course provides a chronological and contextualized perspective as it explores and interprets the relationships between varying and, at times, competing theoretical, epistemological, and ethical claims on anthropology and related disciplines. Based on classical scholarship by some of the “founding fathers” of modern social science, this course traces parts of the genealogical trajectories taken by the anthropological study of culture and society. Following that intellectual legacy, this course asks a central question: How can we make sense of sociocultural anthropology as an academic discipline today? Problematizing the role the concept of “culture” has played in shaping the idea of the “field,” we will look at “location” as a principal site of epistemological limitation and possibility for anthropological research.

Culture, History and Power.  In a cross cultural and inter-disciplinary perspective, the course will critically engage with historiographical debates in on issues related to narrative, the history and politics of the archives, the politics of representation and the construction of facts. We will read works by Hayden White, E. P. Thompson, Reinhart Koselleck, Fernand Braudel, Marshall Sahlins, Carlo Ginzburg and Michel-Rolph Trouillot among others. Over the course of the semester we will also follow the debates in Subaltern Historians by scholars like Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gyan Pandey and Partha Chatterjee. Regionally, the course will be broad. While most of the monographs will be on South Asia and the Middle East, there will be ample discussion of European, Latin American and African cases.

Please check back for updates.

The course seeks to make the students critical of dominant bio-medical assumptions of health and illness by exposing the historical, social, political, economic and cultural foundations of Western Medicine. The readings will critically discuss the historical construction of the modern medicalized body by looking at some nineteenth century debates on anatomy, physiology, psychiatry and anthropology. The issue of race and gender inherent in these debates will be explored by linking them to the expansion of the colonial enterprise and the rise of capitalism. Material will be introduced to help students evaluate the contemporary emphasis on the biomedical model of health and illness in relation to the plurality of health systems in the different parts of the world. The course seeks to further evaluate the linkage between modern medicine and the construction of modern subjectivity and personhood.

The City in South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Anthropology 324 L. Spring 2010

Tuesday and Thursday: 11 am - 12.15 pm

Kamran Asdar Ali.

Office: EPS 1.116

Phone: 471 7531

Email: asdar@mail.utexas.edu

Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 1 pm -2 pm and by appointment.

The class will focus on how recent scholarship on cities has concentrated on the informal sector, rural-urban migration and peri-urban spaces. During the course of the semester the students will engage with material from the three regions of the world to address some of the following questions: Does the city represent a site of personal autonomy and political possibilities for women/men? At different moments public discourse in distinct societies has produced the city as both site of modern citizen-making and site of corruption/ pollution. How have different classes of people in distinct temporalities/spatialities negotiated these tensions? How do urban politics and policies reshape households and communities' relationship to the city? What political space is provided for subjects to resist or renegotiate state sponsored attempts to re-order the urban landscape?

Grading Policy and Requirements: The students will be required to regularly attend the class. I shall also expect students to have read the assigned material, as I shall run the class as a seminar rather than a lecture course. I shall intervene and explain where necessary, but the onus will be on the student(s) to lead and engage in discussions.. More than three absences without notice shall reflect on your final grade. There shall be no exams. Instead I shall expect one class presentation, two papers and a final group project. The paper and research topics will be discussed and elaborated upon during the course of the semester.

Grades Distribution:

Attendance and Participation:    15 points

Class presentation:                      10   points             

First paper:                                  25 points

Second paper:                             25 points

Group Project:                            25 points

Books Ordered at the CO-OP.

Alaa Al Aswany. The Yacoubian Building. Harper Press.

Christopher Davidson. Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success. Columbia University Press

Mike Davis: Planet of the Slums. Verso Press.

Naguib Mahfouz: Midaq Alley. Anchor Books

Laura Ring: Zenana. University of Indiana Press.

There is also a course pack available at Speedway (Dobie Mall) that has additional readings.

Week One: January 19 and 21

Introduction

Saskia Sassen: Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims. In Course Pack.

Kamran Asdar Ali and Martina Rieker: Urban Margins. In Course Pack

Week Two:  January 26 and 28

Timothy Mitchell: An Appearance of Order. In Course Pack

Driss Maghraoui: Gendering Urban Colonial Casablanca. In Course Pack

Zeynep Celik: An Outline of Urban Structure. In Course Pack

Week Three: February 2 and 4

William Glover: Changing Houses. In Course Pack

Achille Mbembe: Aesthetics of Superfluity. In Course Pack

AbdouMaliq Simone: People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg. In Course Pack

Week Four: February 9 and 11

Derek Gregory:  Defiled Cities. In Course Pack

Danny Hoffman: The City as Barracks. In Course Pack

Week Five:  February 16 and 18

Thomas Blom Hansen: Race, Security and Spatial Anxieties in the Post Apartheid City. In Course Pack.

AbdouMaliq Simone: Remaking Urban Socialities. In Course Pack.

Week Six: February 23 and 25

Film: District Nine.

First Paper Due on February 25, 2010.

Week Seven: March 2 and 4

Mike Davis: Planet of the Slums.

Week Eight: March 9 and 11

Planet of Slums, Continued.

Mathew Gandy: Learning from Lagos

Rem Koolhass: Fragments of  a Lecture on Lagos.

Spring Break: March 15-20, 2010.

Start Reading Midaq Alley and Yacoubian Building.

Week Nine: March 23 and 25

Asef Bayat: Cairo Cosmopolitan. In Course Pack.

Naguib Mahfouz: Midhaq Alley

Week Ten:  March 30 and April 1.

Alla Al Aswany: Yacoubian Building

Second Paper Due April 6, 2010.

Week Eleven: April 6 and 8

Film: Q2P by Paromita Vohra

Paromita Vohra: No Man’s Land: A Visual Essay (to be distributed)

Thomas Blom Hansen: Sovereigns Beyond the State: On Legality and Authority in Urban India. In Course Pack.

Week Twelve: April 13 and 15

Arjun Appadurai:  Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial Mumbai. In Course Pack.

Laura Ring: Zenana

Week Thirteen: April 20 and 22

Zenana Continued.

Norma Moruzzi: Tied up in Tehran: A Metaphor

Ahmed Kanna and Arang Keshavarzian: The UAE’s Space Race

Christopher Davidson: Dubai.

Week Fourteen: April 27 and 29

Dubai Continued

Presentations.

Week Fifteen: May 4 and 6.

Presentations

Final Paper/Group Project Due on Thursday May 6^th, 2010. Before 5 pm in my office.

ANTHROPOLOGY 391.  Spring 2010

CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP

Wednesday 2-5 pm.

Kamran Asdar Ali

EPS 1-116           

471-7531

asdar@mail.utexas.edu

Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 1-2 pm or by appointment.

Requirements: I would expect you to come to class regularly and participate equally in the discussion. There would be presentations of the material and we will decide the modalities in class. Please come on time and attend all classes.

 1. Each student will hand in a paragraph on the readings for every session. These response papers will not be returned.  

 2.  A research paper on a topic of your choice due at the end of the semester. The paper should reflect your engagement with the texts and discussions in the class. We can discuss the exact topics during the course of the semester.

The following texts have been ordered at the COOP.

Javier Auyero: Poor People’s Politics. Duke University Press, 2000.

Ananya Roy: City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty. University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

Partha Chatterjee: The Politics of the Governed. Columbia University Press, 2004

Giorgio Agamben: State of Exception. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Michael Taussig: Law in a Lawless Land. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

There is also a course-pack at Speedway Copies (Dobie Mall), this has most of the readings.

Week 1: Introduction and Overview.

January 20

Week 2: Cities and Citizenship

January 27

James Holston and Arjun Appadurai, “Cities and Citizenship” (Public Culture 8(2), 1996), 187-204.

Saskia Sassen, “Whose City is it? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims” (Public Culture 8(2), 1996), 205-223.

Jean and John Comaroff. Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction (AE 26(2), 1999), 279-303.

AbdouMaliq Simone, For the City Yet to Come. Chapters, Introduction, 2, 3, 6 and 7.

Week 3: The Historical Construction of Space and Spatiality

February 3

Frederick Jameson.  Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1-54

Frederick Jameson. Future City. New Left Review 21 May-June 2003.

David Harvey. The Urban Experience, chapter 9.

Kamran Asdar Ali and Martina Rieker: Urban Margins. Social Text, 2008.

Susan Buck-Morris, The Dialectics of Seeing, Chapter 8.

Week 4: The Postmodernist City

February 10

Nigel Thrift. But Malice Afterthought: Cities and the Natural History of Hatred

Nigel Thrift. Intensities of Feeling: Toward  a Spatial Politics of Affect

Achille Mbembe and Janet Roitman. Figures of the Subject in Times of Crisis. In the Geographies of Identities.

Arjun Appadurai. “Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politic”

(Public Culture 14(1), 2002), 21-47.

Week 5:

February 10

Film: The Blade Runner.

David Harvey. The Condition of Postmodernity, chapter 18.

Simon Cole. “Do Androids Pulverize Tiger Bones to Use as Aphrodisiacs”, (Social Text 42, Spring 1995), 173-193.

Week 6: The City Modern or Postmodern

February 17

D. Massey. “Flexible Sexism”. ((Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 9, 1991). 31-57.

Mike Davis. Planet of Slums. New Left Review 26 March-April 2004.

David Scott. Refashioning Futures. Chapter 8.

Mathew Gandi. Learning from Lagos New Left Review 33 May-June, 2005

Rem Koolhas. Fragments of a Lecture on Lagos. In Under Siege Four African Cities

Week 7: Citizenship Debates

February 24

Wendy Brown. States of Injury. Chapters 5.

Karl Marx. On the Jewish Question

Carole Pateman. The Disorder of Women, 71-89, 118-140, 179-209.

Uday Mehta. The Anxiety of Freedom, Chapters 3-4.

Week 8: Citizenship Debates Continued

March 3

Chantal Mouffe. The Return of the Political,  Chapters 2-4 and 9.

Charles Taylor. “Modern Social Imaginaries” (Public Culture 14(1), 2002) 91-124.

Partha Chaterjee.  “Community in the East” (Economic and Political Weekly, Feb. 7, 1998) 277-282.

Uday Mehta. Liberalism and Empire. Chapters 2-3.

John and Jean Comaroff. Criminal Justice. Cultural Justice (American Ethnologist 31(2), 2004), 188-204.

Week 9: The State of Exception. 

March 10

Giorgio Agamben. State of Exception.

Georgio Agamben. Mean Without End.

Foucault, Michel. Society Must be Defended. 238-263.

Achille Mbembe. Necropolitics (Public Culture 15(1), 2003) 11-40

SPRING BREAK

Week 10:  Remapping the City and Rethinking Citizens.

March 24

Humphrey Caroline. Rethinking Infrastructure. Siberian Cities and the Great Freeze of January 2001.

Thomas Blom Hansen. Race, Security and Urban Anxieties in the Post-Apartheid City. Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

AbdouMaliq Simone. Remaking Urban Socialities. Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

Jean and John Comaroff. Criminal Obsessions After Foucault.

Week 11:

March 30

Partha Chatterjee. The Politics of the Governed.

Week 12:

April 7

Javier Auyero: Poor People’s Politics.

Week 13:

April 14

Ananya Roy. City Requiem. Calcutta.

Week 14:

April  21.

Michael Taussig: Law in a Lawless Land

Week 15: Review

April 29

Week 16.

May 5

Last Day of Class. Paper due on May 5^th before 5 pm in my office.

Papers Due on May 4th before 5 pm.

Introduction to Graduate Social Anthropology

Anthropology 392M (30860, 30865)

Fall 2009

Professor James Brow                                                                        Professor Kamran Asdar Ali

Office: EPS 2.208                                                                              Office EPS 1.116

Office Hours: M 1:30 to 3:00 and W 2-4                                                   Tuesday 1-3

Office Phone: 471-0058                                                                        Office Phone: 471-7531

jbrow@mail.utexas.edu            `                                                            asdar@mail.utexas.edu

Description

This course introduces students to theory in sociocultural anthropology from its colonial roots to the contemporary period. This course is not a history of anthropological theory, but will provide a chronological and contextualized perspective as we explore and interpret the relationships between varying and, at times, competing theoretical, epistemological, and ethical claims on anthropology.

There are two sections of the course, both of which are co-taught by Professors Ali and Brow.  The sections meet together on Wednesdays from 10:30 to 11:45 A.M. in EPS 1.128 for a common lecture that introduces the assigned readings for the week.  Each section meets separately in a seminar to discuss the week’s readings, Seminars will be held on Mondays in EPS 1.130KA, one at 9:00 and the other at 10:30.  Both seminars will be led by the professor who introduced the week’s topic the previous Wednesday.

Requirements

Students will be expected to write four papers of 5 to 6 double-spaced pages (approximately 1250 to 1500 words) over the span of the semester. Two papers will be submitted to each of the two instructors. Papers are to be concise and cogent discussions of the readings, and are based on a focus questions provided for each assignment. Late papers will be marked down substantially, and papers more than two days late will ordinarily not be accepted. Each paper will be worth 15% of the overall grade.

Each student will be expected to lead the discussion, and to write a discussion paper of one to one-and-a-half pages, for four seminars, two for each of the instructors. These papers, copies of which are to be distributed to all members of your seminar group, should address significant issues raised by the readings and provide a focus for the seminar discussion.

Class participation is absolutely essential. Students are expected to attend class regularly, and to be ready to participate in the seminar discussion.  Unexcused absences will lower a grade. Attendance, participation in class discussions, and discussion papers will comprise 40% of the final grade.

Grading Summary

Four papers, each worth 15% of the overall grade……………………………….60% of overall grade                       

Discussion papers and leadership, class participation and attendance…………...40% of overall grade

                                                                                                  TOTAL                      100%

Books

The following books are available at the University Co-op Bookstore:

Tucker, Robert C., ed., The Marx-Engels  Reader (2^nd ed).New York: Norton,1978

Wolf Heydebrand, ed., Max Weber: Sociological Writings. New York: Continuum, 1994.

E.R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma. London: Berg, 1954.

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Williams, Raymond., Marxism and Literature.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977

              Marshall Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1981.

Giorgio Agamben, Means Without End. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2000

Course Packets

Apacket of readings assigned by Brow will be available at Abel’s Copy Shop, 715-D West 23rd Street (Ground Floor, University Towers Garage), 472-5353.  The readings assigned by Ali will be available at Speedway Copies in Dobie Mall. Please notify the instructors immediately if you have difficulty securing a book or packet.

Class Topics and Reading Assignments

Wed. Aug. 26 (10:30)                                    Introduction (KA)

            Mintz, Sidney. Culture: An Anthropological View. The Yale Review. 1982.

              Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The Poetics and Politics of Otherness. In             Recapturing Anthropology. Richard Fox, ed. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1991.

            Clifford, James. On Ethnographic Authority. In The Predicament of Culture. James Clifford ed.             Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.

            Foucault, Michel. What is an Author. In the Foucault Reader. Paul Rabinow ed. New York: Panthoen             Books, 1984.

            Said, Edward. Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors. Critical Inquiry 15(2):205-            225, 1989.

            Geertz, Clifford. Being There: Anthropology and the Scene of Writing. In Works and Lives.  Stanford:             Stanford University Press, 1988.

            Asad, Talal. Ethnographic Representation, Statistics and Modern Power. Social Theory 61(1):55-88.             1994.

Mon. August 31             (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion

Wed. Sept. 2 (10:30)                                    Marx (JB)

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels,The Marx-Engels Reader  (2^nd ed.), edited by Robert Tucker, pp. 3-6, 136-75, 203-26, 294-384, 431-42, 473-83, 586-617, 760-68. New York: Norton, 1978.

Eric Wolf, “The Mills of Inequality: A Marxian Approach. “ In Gerald Berreman, ed., Social Inequality Comparative and Developmental Approaches, pp.41-57. New York; Academic Press, 1981.

Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, part 1 chapter 2 (“Determination”), pp.83-89. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Mon. Sept. 7                                                 Labor Day

Wed. Sept. 9 (10:30)                                    Weber (JB)

Max Weber, Sociological Writings, edited by Wolf Heydebrand, chapters 11-13, 15-16, 18-19, 21-22, 27-31, pp. 28-46, 59-122, 151-73, 179-204, 228-303. New York: Continuum, 1994.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, ch.5 (“Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism”), pp. 155-83. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1958.

Mon. Sept. 14 (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion sections (JB)

Wed. Sept. 16 (10:30)                                    Boas: Culture and Race (KA)

            Boas, Franz. A Year Among the Eskimo. In The Shaping of American Anthropology 1883-1911: A Franz             Boas Reader. George Stocking ed.

            --------. The Mind of a Primitive Man. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan. Chapters 8 (Race Language and             Culture), 10 (The Interpretation of Culture) and 13 (The Race Problem in Modern Society.

            Bashkow, Ira. A Neo Boasian Conception of Cultural Boundaries. American Anthropologist                                     106(3):443-459, 2004.

             Trouillot, Michel Rolph. Culture, Color and Politics in Haiti. In Race. Stephen Gregory and Roger             Sanjek eds. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994.

                      Du Bois, W.E.B. ‘The Conservation of Races’ in Theories of Race and Racism, edited by Les Back and J. Solomos. Pp. 79-86.

Hall, Stuart ‘Old and new Identities, old and new Ethnicities’ in Theories of Race and Racism, Pp. 144-153.

Young, Robert. ‘White Power, White Desire. The Political Economy of Miscegenation’ in Colonial Desire. Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge.

Mon. Sept. 21 (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion sections (KA)

Wed. Sept. 23 (10:30)                                    Structure and Function (JB)

            Emile Durkheim, “The Field of Sociology” and “Methods of Explanation and Analysis,” chs. 1 & 2 of his             Selected Writings, Anthony Giddens, ed., pp. 51-88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, “Introduction: The Subject, Method and Scope of this Enquiry,” pp. 1-25, and ch. 3 (“The Essentials of the Kula”), pp. 81-104. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1961 (1922).

A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, “Introduction,” pp. 1-14, ch. 6, (“The Sociological Theory of Totemism”), pp. 117-32,  ch.9 (“On the Concept of Function in Social Science”), pp. 178-187, and ch. 10 (“On Social Structure”), pp. 188-204. New York: The Free Press, 1965 (1952).

E.E. Evans-Pritchard, “Social Anthropology: Past and Present.” Reprinted in Paul Bohannan & Mark Glazer, eds. High Points in Anthropology  (2^nd ed.), pp. 410-21. New York: McGraw Hill, 1988.

E.R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma, “Introduction” and chs.1-4, pp. 1-100. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964 (1954).

J. Van Velsen, “The Extended-Case Method and Situational Analysis.” In A.L. Epstein, ed., The Craft of Social Anthropology, pp. 129-49. London: Tavistock, 1967.

Mon. Sept. 28 (9:00 and 10:30)                         Discussion sections (JB)

Wed. Sept. 30 (10:30)                                    Structuralism (KA)

            Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Illionois: Open Court, 1986.

            Levi-Strauss, Claude. History and Anthropology, Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology             and The Sorcerer and his Magic. In Structural Anthropology. Basic Books, 1963.

            Volosinov V.N. Sections from Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (Harvard University Press:1973).

            Sahlins, Marshall. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan             Press.

            Geertz, Clifford. The World in a Text: How to Read Tristes Tropiques. In Works and Lives. Stanford:             Stanford University Press, 1988.

            Geertz, Clifford. The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Levis Strauss. In The Interpretation of             Culture. Basic Books, 1973.

Mon. Oct. 5 (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion sections (KA)

Wed. Oct. 7 (10:30)                                     Political Economy (JB)

Sherry Ortner, “The Seventies: Marx,” part of “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.” Comparative Studies in Society and History  26 (1): 138-44, 1984.

William Roseberry, “Political Economy.” Annual Review of Anthropology 17 (1988), pp. 161-85.

Neil Smelser, “Towards a Theory of Modernization.” In Wilbert Moore & Bert Hoselitz, eds., The Impact of Industry. Paris: International Social Science Council, 1963. Reprinted in George Dalton, ed., Tribal and Peasant Economies , pp. 29-48. Garden City: Doubleday, 1967.

Karl Polanyi, excerpt from “The Economy as Instituted Process.” In Polanyi et al. eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires, pp. 243-56. Chicago: Regnery, 1971 (1957).

E. R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma, ch. 5, pp. 101-95 (skim pp. 108-36, 172-94). Boston: Beacon Press, 1964 (1954).

Eric Wolf, “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Central Java.” The Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13:1-18, 1957. And “The Vicissitudes of the Closed Corporate Peasant Community.”  American Ethnologist  13:325-29, 1986. Both reprinted in Eric Wolf, Pathways of Power: Building an Anthropology of the Modern World, pp. 147-65. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, ch.1 (“Introduction”), pp. 3-23, and ch. 12 (“The New Laborers”), pp. 354-83. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.

Eric Wolf, “Incorporation and Identity in the Making of the Modern World.” Suomen Antropologi  3: 82-92, 1984. Reprinted in Wolf, Pathways of Power, pp.353-69.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, excerpt from “Introduction: Tropical Sadness,” pp. 1-21, and  ch. 1 (“O Nordeste: Sweetness and Death”), pp. 31-64. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

Mon. Oct. 12 (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion sections (JB)

Wed. Oct. 14 (10:30)                                    Culture, Power and History (KA)

            Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Introduction, Silencing the Past. Boston: Beacon Press. 1995

            Comaroff, John and Jean. Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Introduction. Boulder:             Westview Press. 1992.

            N. Abu El-Haj 1998 "Translating truths: Nationalism, the practice of archaeology, and the remaking      of past and present in contemporary Jerusalem, American Ethnologist 25(2):166-188.

               White, Hayden. The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory. In  The Content of             Form. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

            --------. Chapters 1 (The Burden of History), 2 (Interpretation of History), 3 (The Historical Text as             Literary Artifact) and 5 (The Fictions of Factual Representation). In Tropics of Discourse. Baltimore:             The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978

            Thompson, E. P. Folklore, Anthropology and Social History. The Indian Historical Review 1977.

            Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Chapters 1 (Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History) and 3 (Translating Life-            Worlds into Labor and History). In Provincializing Europe. Princeton University Press, 2000.

            Feeley-Harnik, Gillian. The Political Economy of Death: Communication and Change in Malgasy             Colonial History. American Ethnologist 1191):1-19. 1984

Mon. Oct. 19 (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion sections (KA)

Wed. Oct. 21 (10:30)                                    Structure and Agency (JB)

Sherry Ortner, “Into the Eighties: Practice” and “Conclusions and Prospects,” parts of “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (1): 144-65, 1984.

E.R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma, chs. 6-10, pp. 197-292 (skim ch. 8). Boston: Beacon Press, 1964 (1954).

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, “Section 1: Analyses,” part of ch. 1 (“The Objective Limits of Objectivism”), pp. 1-30, ch.2 (“Structures and the Habitus”), pp. 72-95, ch. 3 (“Generative Schemes and Practical Logic: Invention Within Limits”), pp. 96-158, and ch. 4 (“Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power”), pp. 159-97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Anthony Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory, ch. 3 (“Action, Structure, Power”), pp. 28-39. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Mon. Oct. 26 (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion sections (JB)

Wed. Oct. 28 (10:30)                                     Feminism and Anthropology (KA)

            Strathern, Marilyn. An Awkward Relationship: The Case of Feminism and Anthropology. Signs             12(2):276-292. Winter, 1987.

            Stacey, Judith. Can there be a Feminist Ethnography. Women’s Studies International Forum 11(1):21-            27. 1988.

            Mahmood, Saba. Feminist Theory, Embodiment and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the             Egyptian Islamic Revival. Cultural Anthropology 16(2):202-236. 2001

            Stoler, Ann.  Gender and Morality in the Making of Race. Chapter 3,  Pp. 41-59. In  Carnal Knowledge     and Imperial Power.University of California Press.  2002.          

              Mohanty, Chandra Talpode. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and the Colonial Discourses.             In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres             eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1991.

            Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural             Relativism and its Others. American Anthropologist 104(3):783-790. 2002.

            Visweswaran, Kamala. Histories of Feminist Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:591-621.             1997.

Mon, Nov. 2 (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion sections (KA)           

Wed. Nov. 4 (10:30)                                    Culture and Hegemony (JB)

Antonio Gramsci, “Culture,” “Hegemony,” “Ideology, Popular Beliefs and Common Sense,” “The Intellectuals,” and “the State.” In Tony Bennett et al., eds., Culture, Ideology and Social Process, pp. 191-218. London: The Open University Press, 1981.

Stuart Hall, “Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 10 (2): 5-27, 1986.

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, “Preface,” pp. 9-15. Harmonsworth: Penguin Books, 1968 (1963).

E.P. Thompson, “Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture.” Journal of Social History, Summer 1974, pp. 382-405.

Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, “Introduction,” pp.1-7, Part One (“Basic Concepts”), chs. 1, 2 & 4 (pp.11-44, 55-71), and Part Two (“Cultural Theory”), chs. 1-10, pp. 75-141. Oxford: OUP, 1977.

James Brow, “Notes on Community, Hegemony, and the Uses of the Past.” Anthropological Quarterly  63 (1): 1-6, 1990.

James Brow, “The Incorporation of a Marginal Community Within the Sinhalese Nation.” Anthropological Quarterly 63 (1): 7-17, 1990.

            Paul Willis, “Class and Institutional Form of Counter-School Culture.” In Tony Bennett et al., eds.,             Culture, Ideology and Social Process, pp. 81-109. London: The Open University Press, 1981.

            Paul Gilroy, “”’Race’, Class and Agency.” Ch 1 of his There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, pp. 15-42             & 251-66. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Mon. Nov. 9 (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion sections (JB)

Wed. Nov. 11 (10:30)                                    The Foucauldian Turn (KA)

            Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish (Part 3, Chapters 1-2). New York: Vintage Books. 1979.

            --------. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. pp.77-159. New York: Vintage. 1980

            -------- Governmentality. In the Foucault Effect. Graham Burcell et.al eds. Chicago: University of             Chicago Press. 1991.

            ----- -- Society Must be Defended pp.239-264. New York: Picador. 2003

            Brown, Wendy. The States of Injury (Chapter five: Rights and Losses). Princeton: Princeton University             Press. 1995. 

            Chatterjee, Partha. Community in East. Economic and Political Weekly. February 7, 1998.

            Mbembe, Achille. Necropolitics. Public Culture 15(1)11-40. 2003.

              Agamben, Giorgio, Means Without End. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000

            Scott, David. Refashioning Futures (Chapter 8: Fanonian Futures). Princeton: Princeton University             Press. 1999.

            Ghosh, Kaushik. Between Global Flows and Local Dams: Indigenousness, Locality and the             Transnational Sphere in Jharkand, India. Cultural Anthropology 21(4):501-534. 

Mon. Nov. 16 (9:00 and 10:30)                        Discussion sections (KA)

Wed. Nov. 18 (10:30)                                    Questions of Difference and other Ways of Being (KA)

            Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Chapters 2 (The Two Histories of Capital) and 3 (Translating Life-Worlds into             Labor and History). In Provincializing Europe. Princeton University Press, 2000.

            Asad, Talal. Chapter 4 (Redeeming the “Human” through Human Rights). In Formations of the             Secular. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2003.

            Mehta, Uday. The Anxiety of Freedom. Chapters 3 and 4. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1992.

            Lipuma, Edward. Modernity and Forms of Personhood in Melanesia. In Bodies and Persons, Michael             Lambeck and Andrew Strathern eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998.

            Boddy, Janice. Afterward: Embodying Ethnography. In Bodies and Persons, Michael Lambeck and             Andrew Strathern eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998.

              Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in 19th century Bali, 1980. Pp. 11-25

               Alan Klima. The Funeral Casino. Mediation, Massacre and Exchange with the dead in Thailand. Princeton University Press. 2002 Pp. 29-52.

Mon. Nov. 23 (9:00 and 10;00)                        Discussion sections (KA)

Wed. Nov. 25 (10:30)                                     Globalization, Culture and Identities (JB)

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (revised edition), ch. 1 (“Introduction”), pp.1-7, and ch. 2 (“Cultural Roots”), pp. 9-36. London: Verso, 1991 (1983). <str

Study of various subjects with Asian studies-related content.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Some topics are offered on the letter-grade basis only; these are identified in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Graduate standing; additional prerequisites vary with the topic and are given in the Course Schedule.

This course focuses on "classic" themes in anthropology such as ethnicity, language, adaptation, marriage, kinship, gender, religion, and social stratification.  We will consider anthropological theory from its 19th-century origins to the present.  The course also explores the nature of ethnographic field work, especially the relationship between the anthropologist and the field community.  
The lectures, readings, and films for this course have been selected with the objective of exploring the social meanings with which diverse groups invest their life.  By comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between "us" and "others," both within the borders of the U.S. and abroad, the anthropological perspective can expose some of our own cultural assumptions and enable us to better understand diverse cultures.

Study of various subjects with Asian studies-related content.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Some topics are offered on the letter-grade basis only; these are identified in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Graduate standing; additional prerequisites vary with the topic and are given in the Course Schedule.

Please check back for updates.

This course introduces doctoral students to major texts in sociocultural theory that have been central to the development of the discipline of anthropology from its colonial roots in North America and Western Europe to the contemporary period. While not a comprehensive history of anthropological theory, this course provides a chronological and contextualized perspective as it explores and interprets the relationships between varying and, at times, competing theoretical, epistemological, and ethical claims on anthropology and related disciplines. Based on classical scholarship by some of the “founding fathers” of modern social science, this course traces parts of the genealogical trajectories taken by the anthropological study of culture and society. Following that intellectual legacy, this course asks a central question: How can we make sense of sociocultural anthropology as an academic discipline today? Problematizing the role the concept of “culture” has played in shaping the idea of the “field,” we will look at “location” as a principal site of epistemological limitation and possibility for anthropological research.

This course focuses on "classic" themes in anthropology such as ethnicity, language, adaptation, marriage, kinship, gender, religion, and social stratification.  We will consider anthropological theory from its 19th-century origins to the present.  The course also explores the nature of ethnographic field work, especially the relationship between the anthropologist and the field community.  
The lectures, readings, and films for this course have been selected with the objective of exploring the social meanings with which diverse groups invest their life.  By comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between "us" and "others," both within the borders of the U.S. and abroad, the anthropological perspective can expose some of our own cultural assumptions and enable us to better understand diverse cultures.

Study of various subjects with Asian studies-related content.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Some topics are offered on the letter-grade basis only; these are identified in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Graduate standing; additional prerequisites vary with the topic and are given in the Course Schedule.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Study of various subjects with Asian studies-related content.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Some topics are offered on the letter-grade basis only; these are identified in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Graduate standing; additional prerequisites vary with the topic and are given in the Course Schedule.

This course focuses on "classic" themes in anthropology such as ethnicity, language, adaptation, marriage, kinship, gender, religion, and social stratification.  We will consider anthropological theory from its 19th-century origins to the present.  The course also explores the nature of ethnographic field work, especially the relationship between the anthropologist and the field community.  
The lectures, readings, and films for this course have been selected with the objective of exploring the social meanings with which diverse groups invest their life.  By comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between "us" and "others," both within the borders of the U.S. and abroad, the anthropological perspective can expose some of our own cultural assumptions and enable us to better understand diverse cultures.

Please check back for updates.

Study of various Asian studies-related topics that do not focus on any single geographic region.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Graduate standing; additional prerequisites vary with the topic and are given in the Course Schedule.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please contact the graduate coordinator for more information.

This course focuses on "classic" themes in anthropology such as ethnicity, language, adaptation, marriage, kinship, gender, religion, and social stratification.  We will consider anthropological theory from its 19th-century origins to the present.  The course also explores the nature of ethnographic field work, especially the relationship between the anthropologist and the field community.  
The lectures, readings, and films for this course have been selected with the objective of exploring the social meanings with which diverse groups invest their life.  By comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences between "us" and "others," both within the borders of the U.S. and abroad, the anthropological perspective can expose some of our own cultural assumptions and enable us to better understand diverse cultures.

Please contact the graduate coordinator for more information.