Week 1
Tuesday, August 28 - Introductions: What is theory and what can it do?
No readings due.
Thursday, August 30 - Proto-Anthropologists and the Creation of the Discipline
Mary Kingsley. 1897 / 1993. Travels in West Africa. New York: Everyman Paperbacks. Pages: ix -17, 33-51.
E.B. Tylor. 1871. Primitive Culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom. London: John Murray. PDF includes required chapters: Preface, The Science of Culture, and The Art of Counting. Pages: v-23; 218-246.
Saturday, September 1
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 2
Tuesday, September 4 - Anthropology’s Original Sin
Lewis Henry Morgan. 1877 / 1971. Ancient Society: Researches in the lines of human progress from savagery, through barbarism to civilization. New York: Henry Holt. PDF includes required chapters: Preface, Chapter 1 “Ethnical Period,” and Chapter 4 “The Iroquois Tribe.”
James Frazer. 1890 / 1985. The Golden Bough: A study in magic and religion. New York: Macmillan. PDF includes required chapter section: Chapter 3, “Sympathetic Magic.” Pages 12-43.
Talal Asad. 1973. “Introduction.” In Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. Talal Asad, ed. Amherst: Humanity Books. PDF includes required chapter section: Begin reading at my note. Pages: 11-19.
Thursday, September 6 - Masters and Slaves, Literal and Figurative
Georg Wilhelm Hegel. 1807 / 1977. Phenomenology of the Spirit. Excerpted in “Hegel: The Essential Writings.” Frederick Weiss, ed. PDF includes required section: “Self-Certainty and the Lordship and Bondage of Self-consciousness.” Pages: 64-85.
Susan Buck-Morss. 2000. “Hegel and Haiti.” Critical Inquiry 26(4): 821-865.
Saturday, September 8
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 3
Tuesday, September 11 - Dialectics
Marx, Karl. 1837. “Discovering Hegel.” Page 7-8.
Marx, Karl. 1843. “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” Pages 16-25.
Marx, Karl. 1844. “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.” Pages 66-93.
All the above readings are from: Tucker, Robert, ed. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd Edition. New York: Norton.
Thursday, September 13 - Capitalism and its Discontents
Smith, Adam. 1776 / 1976. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. Chicago: U of C Press. PDF includes required chapters: Chapter 1 “Of the Division of Labour” and Chapter 7 “Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities.” Pages: 7-16; 62-71.
Marx, Karl. 1859. “Preface” in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: Kerr.
Marx, Karl. 1867. “Capital, Vol. 1.” In, Tucker, Robert, ed. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd Edition. New York: Norton. PDF includes required chapters: Chapter 1 “Commodities,” Chapter 4 “The General Formula for Capital,” Chapter 6 “The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power,” Chapter 7 “The Labour-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value.” Pages 302-351.
Saturday, September 15
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 4
Tuesday, September 18 - When Religion Met Capital
Weber, Max. 1904 / 2001. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge Classics. PDF includes required chapters: Chapter 1 “Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification” and Chapter 2 “The Spirit of Capitalism.” Pages 1-38.
Film: The Protestant Revolution: No Rest for the Wicked. 2007. BBC. 60 minutes. * This film must be watched before class. You can stream it from google video here.
Thursday, September 20 - Social Solidarity
Durkheim, Emile. 1893 / 1997. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press. PDF includes required sections: “Introduction” 1-8, Chapter 1 “The Method of Determining this Function” 16-24, Chapter 4 “Another Proof of the Preceding Theory” 83-86, Chapter 6 “The Increasing Preponderance of Organic Solidarity and its Consequences, 126-139; Book II, Chapter 2 “The Causes” 200-205; Chapter 3 “Secondary Factors” 229-233; Conclusion 329-340.
Saturday, September 22
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 5
Tuesday, September 25 - First In-class Exam
No additional reading due.
Thursday, September 27 - How Gifts Make Society
Mauss, Marcel. 1950 / 1990. The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. New York: Norton. Read pages 1-20; 33-83.
Saturday, September 29
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 6
Tuesday, October 2 - Boas and his Students
Boas, Franz. 1896, “The Indians of British Columbia.” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York 28(3): 229-243.
Boas, Franz. 1903. “Heredity in Head Form.” American Anthropologist 5(3): 530-538
Hurston, Zora-Neale. 1935 / 1990. Mules and Men. New York: Harper & Row.
Thursday, October 4 - Participant Observation and Functionalism
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922 / 1960. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melannesian New Guinea. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. PDF includes required chapters: Introduction “The Subject, Method and Scope of this Enquiry” and Chapter 3 “The Essentials of the Kula.” Pages 1-25, 81-104.
Saturday, October 6
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 7
Tuesday, October 9 - Fall Reading Days
No new reading due
Thursday, October 11 - Popularizing Anthropology
Mead, Margaret. 1928 / 2001. Coming of Age in Samoa: A psychological study of primitive youth for Western civilization. New York: William Marrow.
Saturday, October 13
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 8
Tuesday, October 16 - Structures of Language
de Saussure, Ferdinand. 1916 / 2007. Course in General Linguistics. Chicago: Open Court. PDF includes required chapters: Chapter 1 “Nature of the Linguistic Sign” and Chapter 2 “Invariability and Variability of the Sign.” Pages 97-113.
Thursday, October 18 - Structuralism
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1958 / 1963. “Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology.” In his, Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Pages 31-54.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1958 / 1963. “The Structural Study of Myth.” In his, Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Pages 206-231.
Saturday, October 20
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 9
Tuesday, October 23 - Symbolic Anthropology
Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca: Cornell UP. PDF includes required chapters: Introduction and Chapter 1 “Symbols in Ndembu Ritual.” Pages 1-47.
Douglas, Mary. 1966 / 1996. Purity and Danger: An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge. PDF includes required chapters: Introduction and Chapter 2 “Secular Defilement.” Pages 1-6, 30-41.
Thursday, October 25 - Return to Kinship
Dumont, Louis. 1953. “The Dravidian Kinship Terminology as an Expression of Marriage (including correspondence with Radcliff-Brown).” Man 53: 176-186.
Schneider, David. 1968 / 1980. American Kinship: A cultural account. Chicago: U of C Press. PDF includes required chapters: Introduction and Chapter 3 “The Family.” Pages 1-18, 30-54.
Saturday, October 27
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 10
Tuesday, October 30 - Class cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy
Thursday, November 1 - Second In-class Exam
No additional reading due
**NO sections meet this week because we’ve got no new reading to discuss. Feel free to contact us if you have particular things you’d like to talk through.
Saturday, November 3
NO writing due this week
Week 11
Tuesday, November 6 - Practice Theory
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. PDF includes required chapters: Introduction and Chapter 1 “Objectification objectified.” Pages 25-41.
Thursday, November 8 - Theorizing Power
Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks. PDF includes required reading, pages xvii-xviii, and “The State” pages 257-264.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. PDF includes required chapter: “Panopticism.” Pages 195-228.
Saturday, November 10
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 12
Tuesday, November 13 - The Nature of Gender
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. London: Routledge. PDF includes required chapters: “Preface (1990)” and “Subjects of Sex / Gender / Desire.” Pages xxvii - 44.
Thursday, November 15 - Sexuality
No class meeting - listen to lecture via iTunesU in Collab
Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality, vol. 1. PDF includes required chapters “We ‘Other Victorians,’” “The Repressive Hypothesis” and “The Deployment of Sexuality - Method, Domain, and Periodization.” Pages 3-49, 92-131.
** No section meetings this week. Instead, be sure to complete the short section assignment by 11am on Friday.
Saturday, November 17
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 13
Tuesday, November 20 - Critical Race Theory
Fanon, Frantz. 1953. Black Skin, White Masks. PDF includes the required chapter “The Fact of Blackness.” Pages: 109-140.
Williams, Patricia. 1992. The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor. Cambridge: Harvard UP. PDF includes required chapters “The Brass Ring and the Deep Blue Sea” and “On Being the Object of Property.” Pages: 3-14 and 216-236.
Thursday, November 22 - Thanksgiving Break
No class meeting
** No section meetings this week. Instead, be sure to complete the short section assignment by 11am on Friday.
Saturday, November 24
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 14
Tuesday, November 27 - Queer Theory
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press. PDF includes required chapter “Epistemology of the Closet.” Pages: 67-90.
Thursday, November 29 - Anthropology’s Reflexive Turn
Malinowski, Bronislav. 1967. A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. Stanford: Stanford University Press. PDF includes short selections from “Sunday 11.18” “Monday 11.19” “12.18.18 [sic]” and “12.19.17.” Pages: 120-123, 155-157.
Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture & Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. PDF includes required chapters “Grief and the Headhunters Rage” and “The Erosion of Classic Norms.”
Kondo, Dorrine. 1990. “The I / Eye.” In her, Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: U of C Press.
Saturday, December 1
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Week 15
Tuesday, December 4 - Third In-class Exam
No additional reading due.
Wednesday, December 5 ** Notice the unusual day **
Short writing assignment due at 5pm in dropbox
Thursday, December 6 - Final Reflections and Future Questions
No additional reading due.