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, Historical Particularism, Function, and Structure

Boas, Franz. 1938. The Mind of Primitive Man.

Preface and Introduction

Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1952). Structure and Function in Primitive Society; essays and addresses. The Free Press.

      Chapters 9 & 10

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. 1973. Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books

Chapter 1 & 2

Significant Symbols

Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger.

Acknowledgements, Introduction, Chapter 1 (only pp. 7-11), Chapter 2

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

   Preface, Introduction, Section III: Ritual and Power

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 and P.Pels. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Habitus

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge. U.K.: New York: Cambridge University Press.   

Section 4

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

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 and Chapter 4

Post-Structural

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

The Body of the Condemned (pp. 3-31); Docile Bodies (pp. 135-169)

Panopticism (pp. 195-230)

Week 7: Gender and Ontologies

Gender

Strathern, M. (1988). The Gender of the Gift. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.  Introduction (p. 1-40); Chapter 7 (p. 171-190).

Ontologies

Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, 5

Week 8: Mid-term Exam – No Class

Week 9:  Economic Anthropology

Read

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

      Chap 1 - 7

Week 10: Medical Ethnography

Read

Stevenson, Lisa. 2014. Life Beside Itself: Imagining care in the Canadian Arctic. Oakland: University of California Press.

Introduction, Chap 1-6.

Week 11: Feminist Ethnography

Read:

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

Preface, Chap 1,3,5 and epilogue

Week 12: Ethnography of Development

Read:

Rock, Joeva Sean. 2024. We are not Starving: The struggle for food sovereignty in Ghana. Michigan State University Press.

Introduction,

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.

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 (Dec 19)

Class Participation                                  25%

Mid-term short essay exam                             25%

Final literature review                           25%

Weekly Reading Summary                             25%

All course material will be made available through Moodle