W	Date	Topics	Assignments Due
1	9/4	Course Overview	In-class Reflection
2	9/11	Salvage Ethnography
3	9/18	Race and Ethnicity
4	9/25	Gender and Sexuality	Unit Test (1)
5	10/2	Exchange
6	10/9	Ritual and Symbol	Unit Test (2)
7	10/16	Participant Observation
8	10/23	Interpretation
9	10/30	Production	Thick Description Plan
10	11/6	Colonialism	Unit Test (3)
11	11/13	Power
12	11/20	State and Violence	Field Trip
13	11/27	Media and Technology
14	12/4	Indigenous Anthropology	Thick description paper
15	12/11	Life and Being
16	12/18	Final Presentation	Poster Gallery

 

Unit 1: How did anthropological knowledge emerge?

9/4 Week 1: Course Overview and Introduction

• Morgan, Lewis Henry 1985 (1877). “Ethnical Periods.” In Ancient Society. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/morgan-lewis/ancient-society/ch01.htm 


• In-class screening and reflection: Nanook of the North (1922, 79 min., B&W, silent, Dir: Robert Flaherty)

9/11 Week 2: Salvage Ethnography

• Malinowski, Bronislaw 1960 (1922). “The Subject, Method and Scope of this Inquiry” and “Conclusion.” In Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: EP Dutton, pp 1-25 and 516-518.

Supplementary readings:

• Rony, Fatimah Tobing. 1997. Ch. 4 “Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography,” in The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, pp. 99-126.

• Grimshaw, Anna 2001. “The Innocent Eye: Flaherty, Malinowski and the Romantic Quest,” in The Ethnographer’s Eye, pp. 44-57.

 

Unit 2: How to think like an anthropologist?

9/18 Week 3: Race and Ethnicity

• Boas, Franz 1889. On Alternating Sounds. American Anthropologist. 2(1): 47-54

Supplementary readings:

• Boas, Franz 1920. The Methods of Ethnology. American Anthropologist. 22(4): 311-321

9/25 Week 4: Gender and Sexuality

• Mead, Margaret. Introduction, in Coming of Age in Samoa: A Study of Adolescence and Sex in Primitive Societies.

Supplementary readings: 

• Benedict, Ruth 1934. “The Integration of Culture” and “The Individual and the Pattern of Culture.” In Patterns of Culture. Boston: Mariner, pp 45-56 and 251-278. Focus on 259-267.


• Mead, Margaret 1935. Introduction, Chapters 2 and 3. In Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Pp. v-xiv,15-39. New York: William Morrow and Company.


• Benedict, Ruth. Chapter 1, in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture.

📝 In-Class Unit Test 1

 

Unit 3: How does society hold together?

10/2 Week 5: Exchange

• Mauss, Marcel. Chapter 1 (focus on pp. 13-16), in The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W. D. Halls. London; New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.

10/9 Week 6: Ritual and Symbol

• Turner, Victor 1970. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage (focus on pp. 93-97).” In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp 94-111.

Supplementary reading:

• Levi-Strauss, Claude, “The Sorcerer and his Magic,” 167-185. In Structural Anthropology. Revised ed. edition. New York: Basic Books, 1974.


• Saussure, F. 1959. “Nature of the Linguistic Sign” and “Immutability and Mutability of the Sign” in Course in General Linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill Book.

📝 In-Class Unit Test 2

 

Unit 4: How to work in the field?

10/16 Week 7: Participant Observation

• Geertz, Clifford 1973. “Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight.” In The Interpretation of Cultures, pp 412-453. 


• Ethnographies TBD.

10/23 Week 8: Interpretation

• Geertz, Clifford 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture (focus on pp. 5-10).” In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, pp 3-30.

 

Unit 5: What are the foundations of the economy?  

10/30 Week 9: Production

• Mintz, Sidney 1985. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin Books. “Food, Sociality and Sugar " Pp. 3-18.

Supplementary reading:

• Marx, Karl. “Section 4 - The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof,” In Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Ben Fowkes. New York: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1990. (Chinese edition available).


• Srnicek, Nick. 2017. Platform Capitalism. Theory Redux. Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity Press.

 


 

11/6 Week 10: Colonialism

• Frantz Fanon, Chapter 1 “Concerning Violence,” in The Wretched of the Earth (focus on pp. 1-13).

Supplementary reading:

• Amin, Samir. 2010. Preface and Chapter 1. In Eurocentrism. 2nd ed. edition. Monthly Review Press.


• Asad, Talal 1973. “Introduction,” in Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, pp 9-19


• Mercy A. Kuo. 2025. The Decolonization of Hong Kong: Insights from Ching Kwan Lee. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2025/08/the-decolonization-of-hong-kong/ 

📝 In-Class Unit Test 3

 

Unit 6: Why do human rights matter?

11/13 Week 11: Power 

• Foucault, Michel 1995 (1975). “Docile Bodies.” In Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage, pp 135-170 (focus on pp. 135-141).

Supplementary reading:

• Foucault, M. 2003 “Lecture 11” in Society Must Be Defended. New York: Picador. pp. 239- 264.


• Ortner, Sherry B. “Dark Anthropology and Its Others: Theory since the Eighties.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6, no. 1 (2016): 47–73.


• Foucault, M. 2007 “Lectures 1” in Security, Territory and Population. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-27

• Bonus grade: Fieldwork with SNU students (Seoul National University) on 11/10 (Mon) and 11/11 (Tue), presentation on 11/12 (Wed) at NCCU

11/20 Week 12: State and Violence (Field Trip)

• Field trip to Losheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院) details TBD

Supplementary reading: 

• Losheng Sanatorium: The Price of Preservation, Taiwan Panorama


• Brian Hioe, Losheng Residents Demonstrate Outside Executive Yuan Against Broken Government Promises, New Bloom Magazine 

 

Unit 7: How do we live in lifeworlds?

11/27 Week 13: Media and Technology

• Marwick, Alice Emily. Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Focusing on pages 1-13.

Supplementary reading:

• Seaver, Nick. 2018. “What Should an Anthropology of Algorithms Do?” Cultural Anthropology 33 (3): 375–385. 

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/scenes-of-attention/9780231211192#

• Nardi, Bonnie. My Life As a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft. Technologies of the Imagination: New Media in Everyday Life Ser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.

 

12/4 Week 14: Indigenous anthropology

Guest speaker: Professor Dana Powell

• Ranco, Darren J. “Toward a Native Anthropology: Hermeneutics, Hunting Stories, and Theorizing from Within.” Wicazo Sa Review 21, no. 2 (2006): 61–78.

Supplementary reading:

• Powell, Dana E. “Landscapes of Power: Politics of Energy in the Navajo Nation.” Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.

 


 

12/11 Week 15: Life and Being

• Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. “Part Two. After Progress: Salvage Accumulation,” pp. 55-148. In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Supplementary reading:

• Stevenson, Lisa. “Introduction,” in Life beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2014.


• Kohn, Eduardo. “Introduction,” in How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. First edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013


• Escobar, Arturo. 2008 Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Duke University Press.


• Bruno Latour, pp.1-16, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (Polity, 2018).

 

12/18 Week 16: Final Presentation: Poster Gallery

• 🎭 Poster gallery session in class