Course Schedule

Week 1: Introduction

17-21 September

Read:

Nader; Laura. 2011. “Ethnography as Theory.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1(1):211. (http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/hau1.1.008).

Lederman, Rena and Rena Lederman. 2017. “Remapping ‘Magic’: Extending the Terrain of an Already Capacious Category.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7(3):373–375. (https://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/1275).

Jones, Graham M. 2017. “Magic, an Appreciation.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7(3):399–407. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.14318/hau7.3.026).

Introduce individual research projects and student/instructor interests

Course Objectives; AACE reading;

Week 2: Cultural Relativism, Function, and Structure

26 September – 5 October

Beyond Phenology

            Boas, Franz. 1938. The Mind of Primitive Man. Preface and Introduction (Read)

Durkheim, E. 1964. “Individual and collective representations”. In Sociology and philosophy, 1–34. New York: Harper & Row. (Skim for discussion)

Moving Beyond, same time-different place

Malinowski, B. 1932. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: George Routledge & Sons. Introduction. (Read)

Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1935. “On the Concept of Function in Social Science”. American Anthropologist 37 (3):394–402. (skim for discussion)

Week 3: Symbols and Interpretations

8 - 12 October

Beyond Structure and Function

Geertz, Clifford. Interpretation of Cultures. The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man; Thick Description (read)

Significant Symbols

Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. (selections) (skim for discussion)

Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. (selections) (Read)

Week 4: Ritual and Magic

15-19 October

Ritual:

Bell; C. M. 1992. Ritual Theory; Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press (Selections)

Magic:

Mauss; Marcel. 1972. A General Theory of Magic. Oxon and New York: Routledge. (Selections).

Week 5: Structure Unbound

22-26 October

Symbols and Structures

Lévi-Strauss, C. 1963. The Structural Study of Myth. In Structural Anthropology. New York, London: Basic Books. (Skim for discussion)

Habitus

Bourdieu, P. 1999. Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field. In State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn, ed. G. Steinmetz. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. (Read)

Embodiment

Mauss; M. 1973. “Techniques of the Body ∗.” Economy and Society 2(1):70–88. (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085147300000003). (read)

Week 6: Reflexivity, Writing, and Subjects

29 October – 2 November

Cultural Critique

Marcus, George and Michael M.J. Fischer. 1996. Anthropology as Cultural Critique. Chapter 3, Conveying Other Cultural Experience: The Person, Self, and Emotions

Author as Subject

Narayan, Kirin. 2012. Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. University of Chicago Press. (selections)

Week 7: Post and Multi

5-9 November

Post-Structural

Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books.            (skim for discussion)

Post-Colonial

Spivak, G. C. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 271–312. University of Illinois Press.  (read)

Multi-Genders and Species

Haraway, D. J. 1991. “Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic: A Political Physiology of Dominance”. In, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. (Read)

In-class Performance/Video

Golden Snail Opera: The More-than-Human Performance of Friendly Farming on Taiwan’s Lanyang Plain

By Yen-Ling Tsai, Isabelle Carbonell, Joelle Chevrier, and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.

https://culanth.org/articles/851-golden-snail-opera-the-more-than-human

Week 8: Midterm Examination

12-16 November

Take-home exam

Open-book

Short Essay answers

Week 9: Ontologies

19-23 November

Visit journal website and Read:

The Politics of Ontology

by Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen

https://culanth.org/fieldsights/461-the-politics-of-ontology

Read: Elizabeth Povinelli, Annemarie Mol, Mario Blaser, Holbraad, Pedersen, and Vivieros de Castro, Edwardo Kohn, and Ghassan Hage

Week 10: Medical Ethnography

26-30 November

Read

Kleinman, Arthur. 1980. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the Borderland between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry. University of California Press.

Read: Chapter 1: Orientations 1: The Problem, the Setting, and the Approach; Chapter 2: Orientations 2: Culture, Health Care Systems, and Clinical Reality; Chapter 4: The Cultural Construction of Illness Experience and Behavior, 1: Affects and Symptoms in Chinese Culture; and, skim Chapter 9: The Healing Process

Week 11: Environmental Ethnography

3-5 December

Read:

Hathaway, Michael. 2013. Environmental Winds: Making the global in southwest China. University of California Press.

Introduction and Chapters 1 and 3, skim the rest of the book for discussion.

Week 12: Ethnography of Place

10-14 December

Read:

Dell’Orto, Alessandro. 2002. Place and Spirit in Taiwan: Tudi Gong in the stories, strategies, and memories of everyday life. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Read Part III: Telling Stories about Tudi Gong (Chapters 4 and 5). Skim Introduction and Chapter 1.

Week 13: Urban Ethnography

17-21 December

Read:

Fassin, Didier. 2013. Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Read through chapter 3

Week 14: Historical Ethnography

24-28 December

Read:

Fassin, Didier. 2013. Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Read chapter 4 through Epilogue.

Week 15: Multi-Ethnography

2-9 January (4 class periods)

Read:

Tsing; Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Read Part I: What’s Left?, and Part III: Disturbed Beginnings: Unintentional Design

Review:

            Final Exam review and Prep

            Take-home, open-book exam



*Students should pre-study and review the course to read and complete the assignment before and after class. It takes about 6 hours.

Course Requirements

Class Participation                                                      25%

Mid-term short essay exam                                         25%

Final short essay exam                                                25%

Weekly Reading Summary                                         25%

Texts:

Bell, Catherine M. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. (optional)

Dell’Orto, Alessandro. 2002. Place and Spirit in Taiwan: Tudi Gong in the stories, strategies, and memories of everyday life. London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Fassin, Didier. 2013. Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Hathaway, Michael. 2013. Environmental Winds: Making the global in southwest China. University of California Press.

Kleinman, Arthur. 1980. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the Borderland between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry. University of California Press. (optional)

Mauss; Marcel. 1972. A General Theory of Magic. Oxon and New York: Routledge. (Optional)

Tsing; Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Additional Readings in Ethnographic Theory:

Asad, T. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Biehl, Joao, Byron Good, and Arthur Kleinman. 2007. “Introduction: Rethinking Subjectivity,” in Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1-23.

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

Press.

Carey, Matthew. 2017. Mistrust: An Ethnographic Theory. Hau Books and Matthew Carey. https://haubooks.org/mistrust/

Clifford, James. 1983. “On Ethnographic Authority,” Representations 2: 118-146.

Das, Veena and Ranendra K. Das. 2007. “How the Body Speaks: Illness and the Lifeworld of the Urban Poor,” in Joao Biehl, Byron Good, and Arthur Kleinman, eds., Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 66-97

Daniel, E. Valentine. 1996. “Crushed Glass, or, Is There a Counterpoint to Culture?,” in E. Valentine Daniel and Jeffrey M. Peck, eds., Culture/Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Studies, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 357-375.

Fabian, J. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Objects. New York: Columbia University Press.

Favret-Saada, Jeanne. 2012. “Death at your heels: When ethnographic writing propagates the force of witchcraft,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2(1): 45-53.

Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality, Volume I. New York: Vintage.

Foucault, Michel. 1994[1966]. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Vintage. Pp. 3-17, 21-39.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, pp. 310-333.

Herrera; César E. Giraldo. 2018. Microbes and Other Shamanic Beings. Cham; Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jackson, John L., Jr. 2012. “Ethnography Is, Ethnography Ain’t,” Cultural Anthropology 27(3): 480-497.

Laland, K. N. 2011. Cause and context in the biological sciences. Behavioral Ecology,

22(2):233-234.

Lambek, Michael, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, and Webb Keane. 2017. Four Lectures on Ethics: Anthropological Perspectives. Hau Books. https://haubooks.org/four-lectures-on-ethics/

Lansing, J. S. 2003. Complex adaptive systems. Annual Review of Anthropology, 32:183-204.

McGranahan, Carole. 2014. “What is Ethnography? Teaching Ethnographic Sensibilities Without Fieldwork,” Teaching Anthropology 4: 23-36.

McGranahan, Carole. 2012. “Mao in Tibetan disguise: History, ethnography, and excess,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2(1): 213-245.

Moore, J. D. (2012). Visions of culture: An introduction to anthropological theories and theorists. Fourth Edition. Rowman, Alta Mira.

Nader, Laura, 2011. “Ethnography as Theory,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1(1): 211-219.

Netting, R. M. 1993. Smallholders, householders: Farm families and the ecology of intensive,

sustainable agriculture. Stanford University Press.

Ortner, Sherry. 2005. “Subjectivity and Cultural Critique,” Anthropological Theory 5(1): 31-52.

O’Neill, Bruce. 2017. The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the slowing global order. Duke University Press.

Rabinow, P., and Sullivan, W. M. (Eds.). 1987. Interpretive social science: A second look.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Rutherford, Danilyn. 2012. “Kinky Empiricism,” Cultural Anthropology 27(3): 465-479.

Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth : The Remaking of Social Analysis. Beacon Press.

Ruse, M. 1999. Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.

Severi, Carlo. 2015. The Chimera Principle: An anthropology of memory and imagination. Hau Books and Carlo Severi. https://haubooks.org/viewbook/the-chimera-principle/01_fm01

Smith, Adam. 2009[1776]. An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations.

Lawrence, KS: Digireads.com Publishing.

Strathern, Marilyn. 1993. “One-Legged Gender,” Visual Anthropology Review 9(1): 42- 51.

Tainter, J. A. 2011. Energy, complexity, and sustainability: A historical perspective. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 1(1):89-95.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1991 “Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The Poetics and Politics of Otherness,” in Richard G. Fox, Recapturing Anthropology, Santa Fe: SAR Press, pp. 17-44.

Wagner, Roy. 1995. “Fighting Over Pigshit,” Anthropology and Humanism 20(1): 3-8.