SemesterFall Semester, 2023
DepartmentMA Program of Ethnology, First Year PhD Program of Ethnology, First Year MA Program of Ethnology, Second Year PhD Program of Ethnology, Second Year
Course NameThe Research Theory of Ethnology
InstructorWORK COURTNEY KATHERINE
Credit3.0
Course TypeRequired
Prerequisite
Course Objective
Course Description
Course Schedule

Week 1: Introduction



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; ACE-FA reading;



 



Week 2: Cultural Relativism, Function, and Structure



Beyond Phenology



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



 



Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1939. “The Group and the Individual in Functional Analysis.” American Journal of Sociology 44(6):938–64.



Further reading



Boas, Franz. 1974. “On Alternating Sounds.” Pp. 72–77 in A Franz Boas Reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.



Boas, Franz. 1940. “The Ethnological Significance of Esoteric Doctrines.” in Race, Language and Culture. New York: The Macmillan Co.



 



Week 3: Symbols and Interpretations



Beyond Structure and Function



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



Significant Symbols



Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. Introduction, Chapter 1, Religious Uncleanness, Chapter 2, Secular Defilement.



 



Csordas, Thomas J. 2013. “Morality as a Cultural System?” Current Anthropology 54(5):523–46.



 



Week 4: Ritual and Habitus



Ritual:



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



Magic:



Taussig, Micheal. 2003. “Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism: Another Theory of Magic.” in Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment, edited by B.Meyer andP.Pels. Stanford: Stanford University Press.



Habitus



Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge. U.K.: New York: Cambridge University Press.   Section 2. Structures and the Habitus; Section 4. Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power



 



Week 5: Myths and Frames



Symbols and Structures



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



Levi-Strauss, C. (1973). Structuralism and ecology. Social Science Information, 12(1), 7–23.



Frame Analysis



Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper & Row. Introduction and Chapter 7: Out-of-Frame.



 



Week 6: Anti-Structure and Post-Structural



Liminality and Anti-Structure



Turner, Victor Witter. 2008. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New Brunswick, N.J: Aldine Transaction.



Chapter 3: Liminality and Communitas; Chapter 4: Model and Process



Post-Structural



Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books.



 



Week 7: Gender and Ontologies



Gender



Strathern, M. (1988). The Gender of the Gift. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.  Introduction (pp. 1-40).



Ontologies



Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Introduction, Chapters 1- 3 (p.1-88)



 



Week 8: Midterm Examination- No Class



Take-home exam; Open book; Short Essay answers



 



Week 9: Economic Anthropology



Read



        Graeber, D. (2011). Debt: the first 5,000 years. Melville House.



      Chapts 1, 2, and 7



 



Week 10: Medical Ethnography



Read



Karchmer, Eric I. "Prescriptions for Virtuosity: The postcolonial struggle of Chinese Medicine." In Prescriptions for Virtuosity. Fordham University Press.



 



Week 11: Feminist Ethnography



Read:



Mahmood, Saba (2005). Politics of Piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.



 



Yueh,



 



Week 12: Ethnography of Place



Read:



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



Introduction, Chapter 1, 2, 4, 6.



 



Week 13: Urban Ethnography



Read:



Fassin, Didier. 2013. Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Prologue, Chapter 1-3,5,7.



 



Yonucu, Deniz. 2022. Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul. Cornell University Press.



 



Week 14: Networks and Multi-Species



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 II: After Progress: Salvage Accumulation



 



Week 15: Networks and Multi-Species



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 III: Disturbed Beginnings: Unintentional Design and Part IV: In the Middle of Things.



 



Week 16: Final Exam – No class



      Take Home, Open Book



      Due 5pm on the last day of finals week



 


Teaching Methods
Teaching Assistant
Requirement/Grading

Course Requirements



Class Participation 25%



Mid-term short essay exam 25%



Final short essay exam 25%



Weekly Reading Summary 25%



Course Time commitment 



This will be a difficult course for most students and will require the maximun number of hours per credit. Plan to spend 9 hours per week attending class, doing the readings, and writing short (max 2-page) essays each week outlining the main points of the week's readings. Hopefully, you will enjoy the work. 



Learning Outcomes:



Students will have a strong grasp of the intellectual and political history of ethnographic investigations, as well as an understanding of the foundational and current theories of ethnography.



Critical analysis is key to this course and students will be able to apply it to all kinds of documents using the Elements of Critical Assessment and Analysis (ACE-A).



 



Exams:



Exams are designed for learning, not testing. Take-home, open-book exams will consist of 4-6 short essay questions. Exams will be evaluated according to the student's ability to demonstrate understanding of relevant theoretical approaches and concepts, and how they work together. 



 



Policy on Absence and Lateness:



Students are expected to attend all classes and to arrive on time. If a class is missed, the student is responsible for making up missed work, for turning in assignments on time, and for getting class lecture notes from other classmates.



 



Academic Integrity



All students are expected to write their own papers. Please read [university policy] and be aware of issues concerning plagiarism.


Textbook & Reference

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.



Mahmood, Saba (2005). Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.



Karchmer, Eric I. "Prescriptions for Virtuosity: The postcolonial struggle of Chinese Medicine." In Prescriptions for Virtuosity. Fordham University Press.



Mauss, Marcel. 1967. [1950] The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: Norton.



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


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