D S A

DEPARTMENT OF
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
2ND YEAR BOOKLET
2008/9
1
INTRODUCTION
The Second Level Modules in Social Anthropology are in a unique position in the department's
programme. For some students they are the pathway to the Social Anthropology Honours
Programme; for other students they represent a completion of a quite intensive and sophisticated
Sub-Honours anthropology experience. The department therefore considers that Second Level
anthropology constitutes a comprehensive grounding in all basic areas of the discipline. Added
to the First Level modules students who accomplish Second Level will have a thorough
understanding of Social Anthropology. They will appreciate its historical roots, its utilization of
a range of theories of human societies and cultures, and the holistic vision by which it explores
the relations between economic, political and ideological domains of human life.
The learning outcomes of Second Level Anthropology will extend those already specified for
First Level. In addition, students who take Second Level will appreciate:
(i)
The relevance of historical thinking to the discipline of social anthropology, and the
relation between theory and 'fact'.
(ii)
The relevance of social anthropology in relation to other academic disciplines.
(iii)
The fact that a theoretical understanding of 'other cultures' is highly relevant to the
practical accomplishment of life in one's own society, especially in the world of work.
2
SA2001
THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN SOCIAL LIFE
This module examines the historical conditions in which modern anthropological practice, concepts and
categories have emerged. This includes a look at the intellectual development of the discipline and the major
shifts between schools of thought. Focus centres on the debates that have animated professional
anthropology since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century, including a look at the most recent
discussions of anthropological theory and practice. As well as considering competing modes of
anthropological analysis, students will be invited to engage with key ethnographic texts. By the end of the
course, you should have a clear sense of the history of ideas within professional anthropology (i.e. the
relationship between notions such as ‘functionalism’, ‘structural functionalism’, ‘structuralism’, ‘Marxist
anthropology’, ‘feminist anthropology’, ‘postcolonialism’ & ‘poststructuralism’), but also a sense of the
shifts and development of ethnographic modes of writing.
A note on course essays: in addition to suggested essay readings, wherever possible, students should refer to
the general texts referred to in each section and also to those cited for the relevant lectures. The more you
read, the better your answer is likely to be.
KEY READINGS FOR THE MODULE
• Barnard, Alan (2000) History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge, University Press.
• Clifford, James & George Marcus [eds.] (1986) Writing Culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Kuper, Adam (1996) Anthropology and Anthropologists. London, Routledge.
Module convener:
Dr Adam Reed (ader). Please address problems to him.
Lecturers:
Prof Peter Gow (pgg2), Dr Huon Wardle (hobw), Dr Will Rollason (wr21),
Dr Mark Harris (mh25), Dr Adam Reed (ader)
Semester:
1
Teaching:
Three lectures per week. Plus one workshop/film per week. Also weekly tutorials.
Attendance in each component is compulsory.
Class hour:
11am Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday in School I
Tutorials:
These are held weekly in the department seminar room
Workshops:
The whole lecture class workshops will be held in School I. These will be held in
one of the class hours of each lecturer’s slot of teaching.
Films:
These will be shown in one of the class hours of each lecturer’s slot of teaching. They
are shown in School I.
Course assessment:
Two assessed essays
Credits:
= 40%
20
Two hour examination = 60%
A Reader Pack is available which contains key readings, all those for tutorials and a core of those needed
for continuous assessment work. These can be bought in the Department Office, cash only. Other readings
are available in Short Loan or via WebCT in some cases.
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SECTION 1
THE EMERGENCE OF SCIENTIFIC ANTHROPOLOGY
WEEKS 1 & 2
Teaching:
Three lectures per week. Plus one workshop/film per week (see further details at end of booklet).
Class hour: 11am Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday (not including hour for weekly tutorials)
Prof. Peter Gow
[email protected]
2nd Floor, 71 North Street
This section of the course will explore the rise of professionalized fieldwork and the development of
theoretical frames within the modern discipline.
LECTURE 1: THE INVENTION OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY
We examine the origin of the concept of "primitive society" in the nineteenth century. This includes the
concern for the origin of religion, evolutionist thinking and the ranking of societies.
• Frazer, James. "The magic art" in The Golden Bough.
• Kuper, Adam. The Invention of Primitive Society.
• Stocking, George. "Animism, Totemism and Christianity: A Pair of Heterodox Scottish
Evolutionists" in After Tylor.
LECTURE 2: RIVERS AND THE BEGINNING OF FIELDWORK
In this lecture we explore the shift towards scientific methodology in anthropology. We look at the
beginnings of fieldwork and its roots in natural science and the naturalistic approach to human thought.
• W.H.R. Rivers. "The Primitive Conception of Death" in Richard Slobodin (ed.) W.H.R. Rivers:
Pioneer Anthropologist, Psychiatrist of the Ghost Road
• Slobodin, Richard. Sections 1-3 from "Work" in Richard Slobodin (ed.) W.H.R. Rivers: Pioneer
Anthropologist, Psychiatrist of the Ghost Road
• George Stocking. "From the Armchair to the Field: The Darwinian Zoologist as Ethnographer" in
After Tylor.
LECTURE 3: MALINOWSKI: FIELDWORK AND FUNCTIONALIST ANALYSIS
We examine the development of ethnographic research by participant observation. Our attention falls on
the density of ethnographic data and on culture as a functional totality.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw. "Baloma" in Magic, Science and Religion.
• Kuper, Adam. "Malinowski" in Anthropologists and Anthropology.
• Stocking, George. "From Fieldwork to Functionalism" in After Tylor.
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LECTURE 4: RADCLIFFE-BROWN AND STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM
This lecture looks at the development of a theory of society; set against history and evolutionism. We
look at how comparison was put forward as the key scientific method.
• Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 'Introduction', in A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and D. Forde (eds.) African
Systems of Kinship and Marriage, Oxford, OUP.
• Kuper, Adam. "Radcliffe-Brown" and "The Thirties and the Forties" in Anthropologists and
Anthropology.
• Fortes, M. 'Introduction', in J. Goody (ed.) The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups.
LECTURE 5: LÉVI-STRAUSS
We look at the move to the human mind, and the examination of nature and culture. This includes
examining what comparison says about the nature of what it is to be human.
• Lévi-Strauss, C. "Race and History" in Structural Anthropology.
• Leach, Edmund. "Rethinking Anthropology" in Rethinking Anthropology.
• Mary Douglas. "If the Dogon ..." in Implicit Meanings.
LECTURE 6: THE ARRIVAL OF CULTURE
Finally, we look at the arrival, from the USA, of the concept of culture. Do all humans have culture?
This includes the shift away from society towards the person and culture.
• Wagner, Roy. "Chapter 1: The assumption of culture" in The Invention of Culture.
• Strathern, M. "No nature, no culture" in C. McCormack and M. Strathern (eds) Nature, Culture and
Gender.
• Fortes, M. "The concept of the person" in Religion, morality and the person.
ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM—STRANGERS ABROAD 3: WH RIVERS- EVERYTHING IS RELATIVES
In this celebration of one of anthropology's foremost ancestors, the life and work of Rivers are clearly
explained. In particular, the documentary outlines his genealogical method for understanding kinship,
returning to the same locations visited by Rivers to test his theories out against contemporary realities.
WORKSHOP
Topic to ponder: Now we all know about, and even celebrate, "cultural differences". This popular
understanding of "culture" has a very long history in anthropology, and makes it hard for us now to
understand just how difficult it was to move from racist evolutionism to modern anthropology.
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SECTION 2
SOCIETY AS A DYNAMIC SYSTEM
WEEKS 3 & 4
Teaching:
Three lectures per week. Plus one workshop/film per week (see further details at end of booklet).
Class hour: 11am Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday (not including hour for weekly tutorials)
Dr Huon Wardle
[email protected]
Room 20, United College
WEEK 3: STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION: THE PROFESSIONALISM OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The first lectures for this part of the course deal with the emergence and refinement of the ideas of
structure and function in social anthropology from the 1930s to the mid-1950s. We look at some of the
classic functionalist ethnographies of the 1930s. These texts demonstrate a shared focus on small-scale
(very often island-based) societies and a common aim of showing how social roles, rights,
responsibilities, institutions and behaviours are functionally coordinated in response to basic human
needs. As this analysis of society as a system of interrelating parts becomes more complex in the 1940s,
a more abstract emphasis on social ‘structure’ emerges (the structural functionalist turn). EvansPritchard’s The Nuer represents a high point of this development. Gellner has distinguished function as
the method of assessing social life heuristically in terms of a balance of social interests from function as
a doctrine (that everything in a society has a ‘purpose’ within the whole). He argues that the latter
assumption is suspect, while the former idea has enduring value.
Evans-Pritchard, E. 1940. The Nuer.
Firth, R. 1936. We the Tikopia. (Esp. Chapter VI).
Fortes, M. (et al, eds) 1940. African Political Systems.
[1959]1971. ‘Primitive Kinship’ in Spradley, J. (ed) Conformity and Conflict.
Fortune, R. 1932. Sorcerers of Dobu.
Gay y Blasco, P. and Wardle, H.. 2006. How to read Ethnography. Chapter 3 (‘Relationships and Meanings’).
Gellner, E. 1987. The Concept of Kinship. Chapter 7 (‘Sociology and Social Anthropology’).
Goody, J. 1995. The Expansive Moment.
Grimshaw, A. and K. Hart. 1993. Anthropology and the Crisis of the Intellectuals.
Hsueh-Chin, T. [C.18]1917. Dream of the Red Chamber.
Kuper, A. 1979. Anthropology and Anthropologists. Chapter 3 (‘the 1930s and 1940s’)
Leach, E. The Essential Edmund Leach. Vol. 1, chapter 1.8 (‘Social Anthropology: A Natural Science of
Society?’)
• Lienhardt, G. 1966. Social Anthropology. Chapter 5 (‘Kinship and Affinity’).
• Metcalf, P. 2005. Anthropology: The Basics. Chapters 3 and 4.
• Radcliffe-Brown, A. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Intro. Chap 1.
• Thompson, D. [1917]1994. On Growth and Form.
• Wilson, M. 1951. ‘Witch-beliefs and Social Structure’ American Journal of Sociology, 56(3):307-13. * (Or
chapter 22 in Marwick M. (ed) Witchcraft and Sorcery).
• 1957. Rituals of Kinship Among the Nyakyusa.
N.B. All readings marked * are available electronically through the online catalogue.
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Lecture themes: (1) funtionalism, holism, synchronicism; (2) kinship as an articulating structure; (3) The
‘doctrine’ of structural functionalism – society as an ‘organism’; (4) empiricism and rationalism - relativism
and universalism
6
WEEK 4: THE PROBLEM WITH ‘TIME’: PROCESS, CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATION
While anthropology came to be defined by its fieldwork-based, holistic, synchronic emphases during
1930-1955, criticisms of the functionalist approach appear quite early; from, amongst others, Gregory
Bateson whose early affiliations were to Rivers and Haddon in Cambridge. Anthropologists such as
Gluckman and Barth began to build situational and individualistic diversity into their accounts that
challenged the ‘social organic’ view of Radcliffe-Brown. Firth’s work on ‘social organisation’ also
critiques the rigidity of social structure as explanation. Edmund Leach’s Political Systems of Highland
Burma is a key moment in this revision of structural functionalist orthodoxy, marking the opening up,
from the 1960s onwards, of a more intellectualist, less empirically focused movement – structuralism.
Achebe, C. 1958. Things Fall Apart.
Barth, F. 1953. Principles of Social Organization in Southern Kurdistan.
Bateson, G. 1936. Naven.
Burridge, K. 1960. Mambu.
Evans-Pritchard, E. 1950. ‘Social Anthropology: Past and Present’ Man, L(198):118-124. *
Firth, R. 1955. ‘Some Principles of Social Organization’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, 85(1/2):1-18. *
• Fortes, M. [1957]1983. Oedipus and Job in West African Religion.
• Fortune, R. 1935. Manus Religion.
• Gay y Blasco, P. and Wardle, H. 2006. How to read Ethnography. Chapter 8 (‘Big Conversations’)
• Gellner, E. 1958. ‘Time and Social Theory’. Mind, 67:182-202. * (or The Concept of Kinship,
chapter 6)
• Gluckman, M. [1940]1958. Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand.
• Goody, J. (ed). 1971. The Developmental Cycle of Domestic Groups. (Introduction by Meyer
Fortes).
• Leach, E. 1954. Political Systems of Highland Burma.
• Lipset, D. 1982. Gregory Bateson: Legacy of A Scientist.
• Nadel, S.F. 1942. A Black Byzantium.
• _______1951. The Foundations of Social Anthropology. (ch. VI, ‘Institutions’).
• Sahlins, M. 1963. ‘Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief’. Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 5:285-303. *
• Schapera, I. 1962. ‘Should Anthropologists be Historians? Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, 92(2):143-56. *
• Wardle, H. 1999. ‘Gregory Bateson’s Lost World’. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,
35(4):379-389. *
N.B. All readings marked * are available electronically through the online catalogue.
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Lecture themes: (1) the problem of the time factor; (2) radical change; (3) cyclical and processual
change; (4) enduring legacies
ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM
Lecture and discussion by Meyer Fortes, chaired by Jack Goody
WORKSHOP
Workshop will discuss the continuing relevance of ‘functional’ and ‘structural’ accounts.
7
SECTION 3
MEANING AND RATIONALITY OF SOCIAL LIFE
WEEKS 5 & 6
Teaching: Three lectures per week. Plus one workshop/film per week (see further details at end of booklet).
Class hour: 11am Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday (not including hour for weekly tutorials)
Dr Will Rollason
[email protected]
Room 57, United College
WEEK 5: MAKING SENSE OF RITUAL. FROM FUNCTION TO MEANING
For a general discussion of issues raised in this two-week course of lectures, see B. Morris,
Anthropological Studies of Religion, Cambridge U. P. 1987*. In addition, two useful collections of
articles and chapters on relevant themes: see M. Lambek (ed.), A Reader in the Anthropology of
Religion (2002)*, and W. Lessa & E. Vogt (eds), Reader in Comparative Religion (1979)*.
* means the book is on short loan in the University Library
** means the article is available electronically through JSTOR
The series of lectures in Week 5 will outline a selection of developments in anthropological thought that
took the discipline beyond the functionalist paradigm of the 1930s and 1940s. We start off by looking at
the classic issue of rites of passage, but instead of regarding them as mechanisms for the management of
the transition of persons from one social status to another, they are now viewed as sites for the
negotiation of conflict, dissent and rebellion. The idea of the primary human experience of those
undergoing ritual transformation is also examined. By contrast, structuralist approaches to ritual are
presented next, and these attempt to locate an underlying cultural logic that is the basis for their social
organisation. This perspective is, however, critically examined in the final lecture, in which the problem
of native knowledge and understanding of ritual activity is raised. This approach is contrasted with
those views that seek a logic in social organisation which links ritual symbols and action into an
overarching conceptual structure.
LECTURE 1. RITES OF PASSAGE: BEYOND FUNCTIONALISM
• A. van Gennep. The Rites of Passage [1908], London: RKP 1965
• V. Turner. The Ritual Process [1969], Harmondsworth: Penguin 1974*
Schism and Continuity in an African Society, Manchester U.P. 1957*
• M. Gluckman (ed.). Essays on the Ritual of Social Relations, Manchester U. P. 1962*
LECTURE 2. STRUCTURALIST APPROACHES TO RITUAL
• L. de Heusch, ‘Heat, Physiology and Cosmogony: Rites de Passage among the Thonga’ in I Karp and C. Bird
(eds) Explorations in African Systems of Thought, Washington DC 1980, pp. 27-43.*
• E. Leach. Culture and Communication, Cambridge U. P. 1976*
• C. Lévi-Strauss. Structural Anthropology, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1963*
LECTURE 3. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE PERFORMANCE OF RITUAL
• C. Bell. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, esp. chp. 2, Oxford U.P. 1992.*
• G. Lewis. Day of Shining Red: An Essay on Understanding Ritual, Cambridge U. P. 1980*
• S. Tambiah, ‘A Performance Approach to Ritual’, Proceedings of the British Academy, LXV (1979), pp113-69.
8
WEEK 6: THE RATIONALITY OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
INTELLECTUALIST, CONTEXTUALIST AND SYMBOLIST APPROACHES
The lectures in Week 6 examine the problem of how anthropologists deal with religious thought in other
societies. Expressions of such religious thought are manifested in types of social activity or in
statements made by local actors, the meaning or sense of which is not obviously apparent to the outside
observer. These lectures investigate the ways in which anthropologists have sought to give sense to
religious thought and practice. How can they be seen to intelligible, or even rational? Varying views
on such questions give rise to a debate amongst anthropologists about the extent to which religious
thought could be seen to be akin to our own conceptions of science on the one hand, or of art, poetry
and literature on the other. Three different approaches to this debate will be outlined over the course of
the week’s lectures.
LECTURE 4. THE INTELLECTUALIST APPROACH
• E. B. Tylor ‘Religion in Primitive Culture’ [1871], reprinted in M. Lambek (ed.), A Reader in the
Anthropology of Religion, 2002*
• L. Lévy-Bruhl. How Natives Think, London: Allen & Unwin 1926
• R. Horton. ‘Ritual Man in Africa’, in Africa Vol. 34 [1964], also reprinted in W. Lessa & E. Vogt
(eds), Reader in Comparative Religion, 1979*/**
• ‘African Traditional Thought and Western Science’, in Africa Vol. 37 [1967], also reprinted in B.
Wilson (ed.) Rationality, Oxford: Blackwell 1970*/**
See also, J. Skorupski, Theory and Symbol [1976], in which he discusses this and other approaches
from a philosopher’s viewpoint.
LECTURE 5. THE CONTEXTUALIST APPROACH
• E. Evans-Pritchard - ‘The Problem of Symbols’, chp 5. of Nuer Religion [1956], reprinted in M.
Lambek (ed.), A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, 2002*
- ‘The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events’, Part 1, Chp 4,
Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande[1937] (Chp 2 in abridged
edition, 1976), also reprinted in W. Lessa & E. Vogt (eds), Reader in
Comparative Religion, 1979*
- Theories of Primitive Religion, Oxford U.P. 1965
• E. Gellner ‘Concepts and Society’, in B. Wilson (ed.) Rationality, Oxford: Blackwell 1970*
LECTURE 6. THE SYMBOLIST APPROACH
• J. Beattie
- ‘Ritual and Social Change’, in Man [JRAI], Vol 1 (N.S.), 1966, 60-74**
- ‘On Understanding Ritual’, in B. Wilson (ed.) Rationality, Oxford: Blackwell 1970,
pp.240-68.*
- ‘Objectivity and Social Anthropology’, in S. Brown (ed.), Objectivity and Social
Divergence, Cambridge U. P. 1984.*
• G. Lienhart - ‘The Control of Experience: Symbolic Action’, chp 7 of his book Divinity and
Experience, reprinted in M. Lambek (ed.), A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion,
2002*
ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM – THE RED BOWMEN (CHRIS OWEN WITH ALFRED GELL
The film shows part of the Umeda Ida ceremonial, centered on the masquerade of the ‘Red Bowman’.
How is this figure to be understood, and who is qualified to make the interpretation? These questions
lead us to a central issue of this section of the course: from whose perspective can anthropological
interpretations be made? The film also lays the foundation for the workshop session for this section.
9
WORKSHOP
In the workshop, we shall be looking at a debate over how to understand religion in Melanesia, which
erupted in the 1980s and 90s. After Brunton suggested that Melanesian religions might not be ‘orderly’
(read comprehensible) as such, Alfred Gell and Bernard Juillerat put forward their own, conflicting
interpretations of how certain rituals in Papua New Guinea might be interpreted. In this session, we will
deal with material related to the Umeda Ida and Yafar Yangis ceremonials which were the subject of
last week’s film. The session will be an opportunity to compare a broadly interpretive or contextual
approach (Gell) with a more structuralist one (Juillerat), to debate their relative merits, and to develop
critiques of both.
Relevant readings:
• Brunton, R. (1980). Misconstrued order in Melanesian religion. Man (NS), 15(1), 112-128.
• Gell, A. (1975). Metamorphosis of the cassowaries: Umeda society, language and ritual. London:
Athlone Press.
• Gell, A. (1992). Under the sign of the cassowary. In B. Juillerat (Ed.), Shooting the sun: ritual and
meaning in West Sepik (pp. 125-143). Washington DC; London Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Gell, A. (1999). Style and meaning in Umeda dance. In E. Hirsch (Ed.), The art of anthropology:
essays and diagrams (pp. 136-158). London: Athlone Press.
• Juillerat, B. (1992a). Introduction. In B. Juillerat (Ed.), Shooting the sun: ritual and meaning in West
Sepik (pp. 1-19). Washington DC; London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Juillerat, B. (1992b). 'The mother's brother is the breast': incest and its prohibition in the Yafar
Yangis. In B. Juillerat (Ed.), Shooting the sun: ritual and meaning in West Sepik (pp. 20-124).
Washington DC; London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Juillerat, B. (1996). Children of the blood: society, reproduction, and cosmology in New Guinea.
Oxford; New York: Berg.
• Juillerat, B., Strathern, A., Brunton, R., & Gell, A. (1980). Correspondance: Order or disorder in
Melanesian relgions? Man (NS), 15(4), 732-737.
WEEK 7: READING WEEK FROM 10-14 NOVEMBER– NO TEACHING
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SECTION 4
COLONIALISM AND POSTCOLONIALISM
WEEKS 8 & 9
Teaching: Three lectures per week. Plus one workshop/film per week (see further details at end of booklet).
Class hour: 11am Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday (not including hour for weekly tutorials)
PLEASE NOTE:
- Classes will take place on Raisin Monday as usual (24/11/08)
- There will be no classes on St Andrews Day Graduation (27/11/08)
Dr Mark Harris
[email protected]
2nd Floor, 71 North Street
Many scholars have commented that the birth of anthropology was associated with colonial domination.
The implication is that the very objects, methods and concepts of the discipline are infused with colonial
power. But does this situation continue to characterise anthropology and does it in fact accurately
describe its past? What is colonialism? Do colonialists seeks to conquer not just lands but also minds,
and if so how? This section will explore the significance of colonialism and postcolonialism for
anthropological work. We will consider (1) the intellectual aspects of the complicity of anthropology in
the culture of imperialism; (2) the interest of colonial processes and situations as cultural phenomena
studied by anthropologists; (3) the culture of colonialism and how it has been understood. As a whole
the section will show how anthropologists have addressed the economic, social and cultural inequalities
of the world in the lives of others and in their own work. We will end by asking what are the ethical
responsibilities of anthropologists; and should it be confined to the study of people in far away places.
LECTURE 1: ANTHROPOLOGY AND COLONIALISM
• Talal Asad. 2002 ‘From the History of Colonial Anthropology to the Anthropology of Western
Hegemony’, pp. 133-142, in Joan Vincent (ed.). The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in
Ethnography, Theory, and Critique, (Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology).
Oxford: Blackwell.
• Talal Asad (ed.). 1973. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. London: Ithaca Press. (Read
‘Introduction’)
• Adam Kuper. 1983. Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School. London:
Routledge (Chapter 4: Anthropology and Colonialism and Chapter 6 An end and a beginning).
• Michael Taussig. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
• Peter Pels. 1997. ‘The anthropology of colonialism: culture, history and the emergence of
governmentality’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, 163-183
LECTURE 2: RESPONSES TO COLONIALISM
• Franz Fanon. 1969. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin. (especially the Preface by Jean
Paul Sartre).
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• David Lan. 1985. Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
• Michael Taussig. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.
• David Sweet and Gary Nash (eds). 1981. Struggle and Survival in Colonial America, Berkeley,
University of California Press. (See especially essay by Frederick Fausz. 1981. ‘Opechancanough:
Indian resistance leader’, pp. 21-37 and David Sweet. 1981. ‘Francisca: Indian slave’, pp. 274-291.)
• Dipesh Chakrabarty. 2000. Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
LECTURE 3: IMPERIAL CULTURES: ORIENTALISM AND EDWARD SAID
• Edward Said. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge
• Edward Said. 1989. ‘Representing the colonised: anthropology’s interlocuters’, Critical Inquiry, 15,
2, 205-225.
• Richard G. Fox. 2002 ‘East of Said’, pp. 143-152, in Joan Vincent (ed.). The Anthropology of
Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique, (Blackwell Anthologies in Social and
Cultural Anthropology). Oxford: Blackwell.
LECTURE 4: ANTHROPOLOGY AND MARXISM
• Maurice Bloch. 1983. Marxism and Anthropology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Maurice Bloch (ed.). 1975. Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology. London: Academic Press.
• Bridget O'Laughlin. 1974. ‘Mediation of Contradiction: Why Mbum Women Do Not Eat Chicken’,
in Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (eds) Women, Culture, and Society.
• Michael Taussig. 1977. ‘The Genesis of Capitalism amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil's
Labor and the Baptism of Money’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 1977, 19, 2, 130-155.
LECTURE 5: ANTHROPOLOGY, HISTORY AND THE WORLD SYSTEM
• Eric Wolf. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• June Nash. 2002. ‘Ethnographic Aspects of the World Capitalist System’, pp. 234-54, in Joan
Vincent (ed.). The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique,
(Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology). Oxford: Blackwell.
• Donald Donham. 1999. History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
LECTURE 6: COLONISING THE IMAGINARY AND THE MESTIZO MIND
• Eric Wolf. 2001. ‘The virgin of Gaudalope: A Mexican National symbol’, pp. 139-146, in Eric Wolf,
Pathways of Power: Building an Anthropology of the Modern World. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
• Serge Gruzinski. 2002. The Mestizo Mind: the Intellectual dynamics of colonization and
globalization. London: Routledge (read Chapter 4: Westernisation)
• Jean and John Comaroff. 2002. ‘Of Revelation and Revolution’, pp. 203-212, in Joan Vincent (ed.).
The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique, (Blackwell
Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology). Oxford: Blackwell.
• Olivia Harris. 1995. ‘Knowing the Past: Plural Identities and the Antinomies of Loss in Highland
Bolivia’, in Richard Fardon, (ed.), Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge. New York:
Routledge.
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FILM
You will watch selections from interviews with anthropologists who were particularly important in the
theoretical developments associated with postcolonial theory (e.g. Sidney Mintz, Edward Said, Keith
Hart). Some of these will be selected from Alan Macfarlane online video archive which can be found at
http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/
WORKSHOP
Has anthropology been able to move beyond its colonial heritage? Does studying non-traditional
subjects make any difference? How can anthropologists act ethically and responsibly? Should they be
bothered about doing so?
• John Gledhill. 2002. ‘Anthropology and Politics: Commitment, Responsibility and the Academy’,
pp. 438-51, in Joan Vincent (ed.). The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory,
and Critique, (Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology). Oxford: Blackwell.
• Olivia Harris. 1995. ‘Knowing the Past: Plural Identities and the Antinomies of Loss in Highland
Bolivia’, pp. 105-123, in Richard Fardon, (ed.), Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of
Knowledge. New York: Routledge.
• Arturo Escobar. 1994. ‘Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture’. Current
Anthropology 35, 3, 211-231.
13
SECTION 5
ANTHROPOLOGY’S REFLEXIVE TURN
WEEKS 10, 11 & 12
Teaching: Three lectures per week. Plus one workshop/film per week (see further details at end of booklet).
Class hour: 11am Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday (not including hour for weekly tutorials)
Dr Adam Reed
[email protected]
Room 56, United College
This section explores more recent developments in anthropology and ethnographic writing. It begins by
examining the contribution of feminist anthropology to the discipline. Then the course examines what is
known as the ‘reflexive turn’, the increasing attention paid since the 1980s to the mediating role of text,
which includes a new awareness of the responsibilities of anthropologists as text-producers. These
debates centre round issues of representation. How does language structure description? Which voices
and what aspects of the fieldwork experience are typically left out of ethnography? Attention focuses
here as much on the culture of anthropology as on the societies anthropologists describe. One of the
important outcomes of this disciplinary reflection is a whole range of new styles of ethnographic
writing, all of which aim to better capture the nature of social and cultural realities.
LECTURE 1: FEMINIST ANTHROPOLOGY: LOST VOICES
In the 1970s feminist anthropology began to consider why it was that women were marginalized in most
ethnographic accounts. Much of these early debates centred round issues of power and control over
female labour. In response, some anthropologists consciously strove to provide space for female
subjects’ voices and biographies in their ethnographies; we explore some examples.
• Ardener, Edwin. 1972. ‘Belief and the problem of women’, in The Interpretation of Ritual. La
Fontaine [ed]. Tavistock (photocopy on short loan).
• Rosaldo, M & Lamphere, L. 1974. [eds]. Women, Culture and Society. Stanford University Press
[especially introduction (book on short loan)].
• Ortner, S & Whitehead, H [eds]. 1981. Sexual Meanings: the cultural construction of gender and
sexuality. Cambridge University Press (book on short loan).
• Shostak, Marjorie. 1981. Nisa: the life and words of a !Kung woman. Allen Lane [especially
Introduction & chp 4 (book on short loan)]
LECTURE 2: FEMINIST ANTHROPOLOGY: NATURE & CULTURE
Here we examine the move within feminist anthropology away from straightforward recovering of the
position of women in cultures and towards broader critique of anthropological knowledge practice. In
particular, attention falls on a series of dualities or oppositions: Nature/Culture, Individual/Society,
through which categories such as ‘male’ and ‘female’ are typically understood and constrained.
Cultures and societies are revealed to not necessarily share these dominant gendered assumptions.
• Strathern, Marilyn. 1980. ‘No Nature, No Culture: the Hagen Case’. In C. MacCormack & M.
Strathern (eds.). Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge University Press (book on short loan &
14
•
•
•
•
Readers Pack).
Moore, Henrietta. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology. Polity [especially chps 1 & 2 (book on short
loan & Readers Pack)].
Strathern, Marilyn. 1988. Gender of the Gift. California University Press [especially chapters 3 & 4)
(book on short loan).
Moore, Henrietta: 1986. Space, Text and Gender : an anthropological study of the Marakwet of
Kenya. Cambridge University Press [especially chps 1, 4 & 9 (book on short loan)].
Gillison, Gillian. 1980. ‘Images of Nature in Gimi Thought’. In C. MacCormack & M. Strathern
(eds.). Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge University Press (book on short loan).
LECTURE 3: FEMINIST ANTHROPOLOGY: THIRD SEX & BEYOND
Here we discuss the development of performance theories of gender and in particular the rise of
challenges to the male/female positioning of sexuality in anthropological studies. Ideas such as ‘third
sex’ are explored in conjunction with illustrative ethnographic accounts. After the emergence of women
as fully developed ethnographic subjects, we now get studies of gay, lesbian and transsexual
subjectivities.
• Herdt, Gilbert. 1993. Third sex, third gender: beyond sexual dimorphism in culture and history. Zone
books [especially Introduction & chps 5 & 10 (book on short loan & Readers Pack)].
• Kulick, Don. 1998. Travesti : sex, gender, and culture among Brazilian transgendered prostitutes.
University of Chicago Press [especially Introduction & chps 2 & 5 (book on short loan)].
• Boellstorff, Tom. 2005. The Gay Archipelago : Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia. Princeton
University Press [especially chapter chps 1, 4 & 8 (book on short loan)].
• Green Sarah. 1997. Urban amazons : lesbian feminism and beyond in the gender, sexuality, and
identity battles of London [especially Introduction & chps 1 & 6 (book on short loan)].
• Sullivan, Nikki. 2003. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. Edinburgh University Press
[especially chps 1, 3 & 5 (book on short loan)].
• Laqueur, Thomas. 2003. Solitary Sex. Zone Books [especially chps 1 & 6 (book on short loan)].
LECTURE 4: THICK DESCRIPTION
Here we discuss the rise of ‘interpretive anthropology’. Led by Geertz, this movement aimed to shift
anthropological attention from social structure to social meaning. At its heart was a desire to get beyond
the surface level of human behaviour in order to examine the webs of significance that underlay it.
Geertz is concerned to look at the ways in which people make sense of themselves and the world around
them. The task of the anthropologist is to interpret the interpretations of a culture, to capture in writing
the depth of context and layers of meaning behind events.
• Geertz, Clifford. 1973. ‘Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of ‘culture’, in The
Interpretation of Cultures. Basic. (book on short loan)
• Geertz, Clifford. 1973. ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight’, in The Interpretation of
Cultures. Basic. (photocopy & book on short loan)
LECTURE 5: DIALOGIC ANTHROPOLOGY
We examine the emergence of quasi-journal style ethnographies, which may include rich memoirs of
fieldwork and long quoted dialogues between anthropologist and favoured informant. These are
produced to critique the authority of scientific description and fieldwork practice, to question the basis
on which anthropologists claim to know the peoples they work with. Anthropology is presented as
suffering a crisis of confidence.
• Rabinow, Paul. 1977. Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco. Berkley: University of California Press
[especially chp 4: ‘Entering’ & Conclusion (book on short loan & Readers Pack)]
• Crapanzano, Vincent. 1980. Tuhami, portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
15
[especially Introduction & Part One (book on short loan)].
• Dwyer, Kevin. 1982. Moroccan dialogues : anthropology in question. Waveland Press [especially
chps 1, 12 & 13 (book on short loan)]
• Geertz, Clifford. 1988. Works and Lives: the Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge, Polity [chp 4:
(photocopy & book on short loan)]
LECTURE 6: WRITING CULTURE
In this lecture, we look at the culmination of all these critiques: the ‘writing culture’ debates of the late
1980s. Anthropologists turned to examine their own practices as text-producers and the mediatory role
of language in acts of ethnographic description. This included examining the textual strategies by
which anthropologists in the past persuaded readers of their authority to describe other cultures and the
identification of conventional stories or allegories in anthropological texts. The discipline appeared to
suffer a crisis of representation.
• Marcus. George & Clifford, James 1986 (eds) Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography. University of California Press [especially Clifford ‘Introduction: partial truths’ & ‘On
ethnographic allegory’ (book on short loan & Readers Pack))
• Marcus, G & Fisher, M. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: an Experimental Moment in the
Human Sciences. University of Chicago Press [especially chp 1: ‘A crisis of representation in the
human sciences’ (book on short loan)].
• Geertz, Clifford. 1988. Works and Lives: the Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge, Polity [chp 1:
‘Being There’ (book on short loan & Readers Pack].
• Behar, Ruth & Gordon, Deborah. 1995. (eds). Women Writing Culture. University of California
Press [especially Introduction (book on short loan)].
LECTURE 7: NEW ETHNOGRAPHY 1: AMBIGUITY
While the reflexive turn highlighted the limits of the anthropological project, it also provided an
impetus to new modes of ethnographic writing. Using the insights of the ‘writing culture’ debates,
anthropologists devised new textual strategies for better capturing cultural realities. In this lecture, we
focus on attempts to depict the fluid, dynamic and ambiguous qualities of cultures and societies.
• Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth Century ethnography, literature and
art. Harvard University Press [Introduction & chps: 1 & 4 (book on short loan)].
• Stewart, Kathleen. 1996. A Space on the Side of the Road: cultural poetics in an ‘Other’ America.
Princeton University Press [chps: 1 & 3 (book on short loan)].
• Taussig, Michael. 1992. The Nervous System. Routledge [chps: 1 & 3 (book on short loan)].
• Pratt, M. 1992. Imperial Eyes. Routledge [Introduction (book on short loan)].
LECTURE 8: NEW ETHNOGRAPHY 2: INTERSECTIONS
This lecture looks at a different outcome of the reflexive turn. It explores the attempt to critique the
pervasiveness of idioms of dwelling in anthropological description. New ethnographies arise which seek
to depict the fieldwork location as a site of transience or comings and goings as well as a site of
residence. Both the anthropologist and the people he/she works with are recognised to travel as well as
dwell.
• Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century. Harvard
University Press [chps 1 & 3 (book on short loan & Readers Pack)].
• Tsing, Anna. 1993. In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: marginality in an out-of-the-way place.
Princeton University Press [Opening & chps: 4, 5 & 6 (book on short loan & Readers Pack)].
• Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth: the remaking of social analysis. Routledge [chp: 1 (book
on short loan)].
16
• Reed, Adam. 2003. Papua New Guinea’s Last Place: experiences of constraint in a postcolonial
prison. Berghahn: Oxford [especially chp: 2 (book on short loan)].
LECTURE 9: ANTHROPOLOGY NOW
This last lecture will look back over the various debates covered across the weeks of the module and
ask: where is anthropology now? A few examples of recent developments in the discipline will be
explored: the turn to radical empiricism & to phenomenological modes of analyses. Students will be
invited to air their own reflections on developments in anthropological thought over the last century.
• Jackson, Michael. 1989. Paths Towards a Clearing: radical empiricism and ethnographic inquiry.
Indiana University Press [especially chps 1 & 11 (book on short loan)].
• Ingold, Tim. 2007. Lines: a brief history. Routledge [especially Introduction (book on short loan)].
ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM—CANNIBAL TOURS
One of the most important documentaries of recent years, this film gives an eye-opening account of
tourism on the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. It raises important questions about how 'we' encounter
the Other and the uncomfortable link between anthropology and tourism and between observation and
voyeurism.
WORKSHOP
In this workshop we will be exploring further the issues surrounding anthropology’s reflexive turn. In
particular, students will break into small working groups to debate the arguments & select the response
to the crisis of representation that they favour. Each group will then present their views to the workshop.
Students are asked to come prepared to answer two questions:
1. Is the task of anthropological description & representation hopeless?
2. What kind of ethnographic writing strategies would YOU adopt?
17
ETHNOGRAPHIC FILMS
Films are chosen to accompany the lecture themes.
WEEKS 1 & 2
Strangers Abroad 3: WH Rivers: Everything is Relatives
In this celebration of one of anthropology's foremost ancestors, the life
and work of Rivers are clearly explained. In particular, the documentary
outlines his genealogical method for understanding kinship, returning to
the same locations visited by Rivers to test his theories out against
contemporary realities.
WEEKS 3 & 4
Lecture and discussion by Meyer Fortes, chaired by Jack Goody
WEEKS 5 & 6
The Red Bowmen (Chris Owen with Alfred Gell)
The film shows part of the Umeda Ida ceremonial, centered on the
masquerade of the ‘Red Bowman’. How is this figure to be understood,
and who is qualified to make the interpretation? These questions lead us
to a central issue of this section of the course: from whose perspective can
anthropological interpretations be made? The film also lays the foundation
for the workshop session for this section.
WEEKS 8 & 9
You will watch selections from interviews with anthropologists who were
particularly important in the theoretical developments associated with
postcolonial theory (e.g. Sidney Mintz, Edward Said, Keith Hart). Some
of these will be selected from Alan Macfarlane online video archive
which can be found at http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/
WEEK 10, 11 & 12 Cannibal Tours
One of the most important documentaries of recent years, this film gives
an eye-opening account of tourism on the Sepik River, Papua New
Guinea. It raises important questions about how 'we' encounter the Other
and the uncomfortable link between anthropology and tourism and
between observation and voyeurism.
18
TUTORIALS
TUTORIAL 1
"How did Rivers approach ethnographic data?"
Reading:
• Rivers, "The primitive conception of death"
TUTORIAL 2
"How did Malinowski approach ethnographic data?"
Reading:
• Malinowski, "Baloma"
TUTORIAL 3
Norms and structures. This tutorial explores the development of the idea of structure in social
anthropology between the 1930s and 1950s. Read the material by Metcalf, Wilson and Fortes looking at
how social anthropologists built up a normative picture of social behaviour especially around kinship
relationships.
Readings:
• Metcalf, P. 2005. Anthropology the Basics, chapter 3.
• Wilson, M. 1951. ‘Witch-beliefs and social structure’. American Journal of Sociology, 56.
• Fortes, M. ‘Primitive Kinship’ in Spradley (ed) Conformity and Conflict.
TUTORIAL 4
Process and development. The tutorial examines the adjustment and adaptation of social structuralism to
the need to analyse contingent processes of social action, on the one hand, and large scale processes of
development, on the other. In what ways did structural functionalism help/hinder our understanding of
the social?
Readings:
• Firth, R. 1955. ‘Some Principles of Social Organization’. JRAI, 85.
• Sahlins, M. ‘Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief’. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5.
19
TUTORIAL 5
Discussion of the role of ritual in M. Bloch’s analysis of Merina circumcision rites: see ‘From
Cognition to Ideology’ in R. Fardon (ed.) Power and Knowledge (1985). Bloch’s perspective on ritual is
different from the ones we have dealt with in the lectures. Compare and contrast the views you have
learned about in lectures with what Bloch is arguing for here. See also, C. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual
Practice, chp. 8.
For those who are keen to know more about Bloch’s perspective see:
• M. Bloch in 'The Past and the Present in the Present', Man 12 (1977). These two works by Bloch
(1977 & 1985) are also available, in slightly different form, in Bloch Ritual, History and Power
(1989).
TUTORIAL 6
Discussion of the debate between the intellectualists and symbolists over the nature of religious thought.
Read R. Horton’s and J. Beattie’s chapters in B. Wilson’s edited book, Rationality (see above), to gain
an appreciation of the intellectualist and symbolist positions respectively.
TUTORIAL 7 - ON MARXIST ANTHROPOLOGY
This tutorial is concerned with looking at some of the fundamentals of Marxist theory and how
anthropologists have used it in their ethnographic work. You will look in particular at the concept of the
mode of production.
• Eric Wolf. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Maurice Bloch. 1975. Property and the end of affinity. In Maurice Bloch (ed.). 1975. Marxist
Analyses and Social Anthropology. London: Academic Press.
• Michael Taussig. 1977. ‘The Genesis of Capitalism amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil's
Labor and the Baptism of Money’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 1977, 19, 2, 130-155.
TUTORIAL 8 - ON POSTCOLONIAL ANTHROPOLOGY: DECOLONISING THE SUBJECT.
Can anthropology move beyond colonial categories and capture adequately indigenous histories,
experiences and meanings? What are the various ways in which people without writing know their
pasts? What are the differences and similarities between the two readings for this tutorial?
• Dipesh Chakrabarty. 1992. ‘Postcoloniality and the artifice of history: who speaks for ‘Indian’
pasts?’ Representations 37, 1-26.
• Olivia Harris. 1995. ‘The coming of the white people: reflections on the mythologisation of history’.
Bulletin of Latin American Research 14(1): 9-24 (see JSTOR)
20
TUTORIAL 9
This tutorial will focus on the contribution of feminist anthropology to the history of the discipline. In
particular, attention will fall on the feminist critique of classic oppositions in anthropological writing:
male and female, culture and nature, society and individual. Do all societies share these orienting
dichotomies? If not, then what problems does this cause for anthropological modes of knowledge?
• Strathern, Marilyn. 1980. ‘No Nature, No Culture: the Hagen Case’. In C. MacCormack & M.
Strathern (eds.). Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge University Press.
• Moore, Henrietta. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology. Polity [especially chps 1 & 2].
TUTORIAL 10
This tutorial will examine further the reflexive turn in anthropology in the late 1980s. What were the
consequences of anthropologists becoming aware of the autonomy of language and the mediating role
of text? What consequences did this have for ethnographic writing?
• Clifford, James 1986. ‘On ethnographic allegory’, In Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography Clifford & Marcus [eds]. University of California Press.
• Geertz, Clifford. 1988. ‘Being There: anthropology and the scene of writing’, in Works and Lives:
the Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge, Polity.
21
WORKSHOPS
WORKSHOP: FOR WEEKS 1 & 2:
Now we all know about, and even celebrate, "cultural differences". This popular understanding of
"culture" has a very long history in anthropology, and makes it hard for us now to understand just how
difficult it was to move from racist evolutionism to modern anthropology.
WORKSHOP: FOR WEEKS 3 & 4:
Workshop will discuss the continuing relevance of ‘functional’ and ‘structural’ accounts.
WORKSHOP: WEEKS 5 & 6:
In the workshop, we shall be looking at a debate over how to understand religion in Melanesia, which
erupted in the 1980s and 90s. After Brunton suggested that Melanesian religions might not be ‘orderly’
(read comprehensible) as such, Alfred Gell and Bernard Juillerat put forward their own, conflicting
interpretations of how certain rituals in Papua New Guinea might be interpreted. In this session, we will
deal with material related to the Umeda Ida and Yafar Yangis ceremonials which were the subject of
last week’s film. The session will be an opportunity to compare a broadly interpretive or contextual
approach (Gell) with a more structuralist one (Juillerat), to debate their relative merits, and to develop
critiques of both.
Relevant readings:
• Brunton, R. (1980). Misconstrued order in Melanesian religion. Man (NS), 15(1), 112-128.
• Gell, A. (1975). Metamorphosis of the cassowaries: Umeda society, language and ritual. London:
Athlone Press.
• Gell, A. (1992). Under the sign of the cassowary. In B. Juillerat (Ed.), Shooting the sun: ritual and
meaning in West Sepik (pp. 125-143). Washington DC; London Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Gell, A. (1999). Style and meaning in Umeda dance. In E. Hirsch (Ed.), The art of anthropology:
essays and diagrams (pp. 136-158). London: Athlone Press.
• Juillerat, B. (1992a). Introduction. In B. Juillerat (Ed.), Shooting the sun: ritual and meaning in West
Sepik (pp. 1-19). Washington DC; London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Juillerat, B. (1992b). 'The mother's brother is the breast': incest and its prohibition in the Yafar
Yangis. In B. Juillerat (Ed.), Shooting the sun: ritual and meaning in West Sepik (pp. 20-124).
Washington DC; London: Smithsonian Institution Press.
• Juillerat, B. (1996). Children of the blood: society, reproduction, and cosmology in New Guinea.
Oxford; New York: Berg.
• Juillerat, B., Strathern, A., Brunton, R., & Gell, A. (1980). Correspondance: Order or disorder in
Melanesian relgions? Man (NS), 15(4), 732-737.
22
WORKSHOP: WEEKS 8 & 9:
Has anthropology been able to move beyond its colonial heritage? Does studying non-traditional
subjects make any difference? How can anthropologists act ethically and responsibly? Should they be
bothered about doing so?
• John Gledhill. 2002. ‘Anthropology and Politics: Commitment, Responsibility and the Academy’,
pp. 438-51, in Joan Vincent (ed.). The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory,
and Critique, (Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology). Oxford: Blackwell.
• Olivia Harris. 1995. ‘Knowing the Past: Plural Identities and the Antinomies of Loss in Highland
Bolivia’, pp. 105-123, in Richard Fardon, (ed.), Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of
Knowledge. New York: Routledge.
• Arturo Escobar. 1994. ‘Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture’. Current
Anthropology 35, 3, 211-231.
WORKSHOP: WEEKS 10, 11 & 12:
In this workshop we will be exploring further the issues surrounding anthropology’s reflexive turn. In
particular, students will break into small working groups to debate the arguments & select the response
to the crisis of representation that they favour. Each group will then present their views to the workshop.
Students are asked to come prepared to answer two questions:
1. Is the task of anthropological description & representation hopeless?
2. What kind of ethnographic writing strategies would YOU adopt?
23
ESSAYS
Students must write two assessed essays for the module. The first essay question must be chosen from
the list below under Essay 1 (DEADLINE: 4pm, Monday 10th November). The second essay
question must be chosen from the list below under Essay 2 (DEADLINE: 4pm, Monday 22nd
December).
ESSAY 1
DUE 4PM MONDAY 10TH NOVEMBER
The office is open during Reading Week
1.
Why was evolutionary theory important to the making of anthropology in the nineteenth
century?
• Frazer, James “The magic art” in The Golden Bough
• Kuper, Adam, The Invention of Primitive Society
• Stocking, George, “Animism, Totemism and Christianity: A Pair of Heterodox Scottish
Evolutionists” in After Tylor
2.
How did the definition of anthropology as a science lead to the rise of ethnograpic
fieldwork?
• W.H.R. Rivers, “The Primitive Conception of Death” in Richard Slobodin (ed.) W.H.R.
Rivers: Pioneer Anthropologist, Psychiatrist of the Ghost Road
• Malinowski, Bronislaw, “Baloma” in Magic, Science and Religion
• Kuper, Adam, “Malinowski” in Anthropologists and Anthropology
3.
Why was it necessary for Social Anthropologists to elaborate the idea of social structure
beyond Malinowski's functionalism?
4.
How did Social Anthropologists try to reintroduce time and social change vis-a-vis static
social structure?
5.
Locals’ experience is the most significant aspect of religion. Discuss.
Suggested reading:
• G. Lewis. Day of Shining Red: An Essay on Understanding Ritual, Cambridge U. P. 1980
• S. Tambiah, ‘A Performance Approach to Ritual’, Proceedings of the British Academy, LXV
(1979)
• V. Turner. Schism and Continuity in an African Society, Manchester U.P. 1957
• C. Lévi-Strauss. Structural Anthropology, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1963
• L. de Heusch, ‘Heat, Physiology and Cosmogony: Rites de Passage among the Thonga’ in I
Karp and C. Bird (eds) Explorations in African Systems of Thought, Washington DC 1980, pp.
27-43.
24
6.
Does religion ‘make sense’? How and for whom?
Suggested reading:
• M. Bloch 'The Past and the Present in the Present', Man 12 (1977).
• ‘From Cognition to Ideology’ in R. Fardon (ed.) Power and Knowledge (1985)
• ‘The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events’, Part 1, Chp 4, Witchcraft, Oracles
and Magic among the Azande[1937] (Chp 2 in abridged edition, 1976), also reprinted in W.
Lessa & E. Vogt (eds), Reader in Comparative Religion, 1979
• ‘On Understanding Ritual’, in B. Wilson (ed.) Rationality, Oxford: Blackwell 1970, pp.240-68.
• R. Horton. ‘Ritual Man in Africa’, in Africa Vol. 34 [1964], also reprinted in W. Lessa & E.
Vogt (eds), Reader in Comparative Religion, 1979
ESSAY 2
DUE 4PM MONDAY 22ND DECEMBER
7.
Was anthropology ever ‘the child of Western imperialism’ (Gough)? Do you think
anthropology has managed to throw off its colonial legacy?
• Kathleen Gough. ‘New proposal for anthropologists’, pp. 110-19. In Joan Vincent (ed.). The
Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique, (Blackwell
Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology). Oxford: Blackwell.
• Talal Asad (ed.). 1973. Introduction. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. London:
Ithaca Press.
• Adam Kuper. 1983. Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School. London:
Routledge (Chapter 4: Anthropology and Colonialism and Chapter 6: An end and a beginning).
• John Gledhill. 1996. Power and its disguises. London: Pluto.
• Edward Said. 1989. ‘Representing the colonised: anthropology’s interlocuters’, Critical
Inquiry, 15, 2, 205-225.
• Dipesh Chakrabarty. 1992. ‘Postcoloniality and the artifice of history: who speaks for ‘Indian’
pasts?’ Representations 37, 1-26.
8.
Examine critically Wolf’s use of Marxist ideas in Europe and the people without history. Do
you think his global and historical perspective is a positive one for anthropology.
• Eric Wolf. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
9.
At the heart of feminist anthropology is a shift from ideas of ‘sameness’ to ideas of
‘difference’. Discuss.
• Moore, Henrietta. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology. Polity [especially chps 1 & 2].
• Strathern, Marilyn. 1988. Gender of the Gift. California University Press [especially chapters 3
& 4).
• Herdt, Gilbert. 1993. Third sex, third gender : beyond sexual dimorphism in culture and
history. Zone books [especially Introduction & chps 5 & 10].
• Kulick, Don. 1998. Travesti : sex, gender, and culture among Brazilian transgendered
25
•
•
•
•
10.
prostitutes. University of Chicago Press [especially Introduction & chps 2 & 5].
Strathern, Marilyn. 1980. ‘No Nature, No Culture: the Hagen Case’. In C. MacCormack & M.
Strathern (eds.). Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge University Press (book on short loan
& Readers Pack).
Moore, Henrietta: 1986. Space, Text and Gender : an anthropological study of the Marakwet of
Kenya. Cambridge University Press [especially chps 1, 4 & 9 (book on short loan)].
Rosaldo, M & Lamphere, L. 1974. [eds]. Women, Culture and Society. Stanford University
Press [especially introduction (book on short loan)].
Ortner, S & Whitehead, H [eds]. 1981. Sexual Meanings: the cultural construction of gender
and sexuality. Cambridge University Press (book on short loan).
Is ethnography a straightforward depiction of the events and experience of fieldwork?
• Rabinow, Paul. 1977. Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco. Berkley: University of California
Press [especially chp 4: ‘Entering’ & Conclusion].
• Crapanzano, Vincent. 1980. Tuhami, portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press [especially Introduction & Part One]
• Dwyer, Kevin. 1982. Moroccan dialogues : anthropology in question. Waveland Press
[especially chps 1, 12 & 13]
• Stewart, Kathleen. 1996. A Space on the Side of the Road: cultural poetics in an ‘Other’
America. Princeton University Press [chps: 1 & 3].
• Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century. Harvard
University Press [chps 1 & 3].
• Tsing, Anna. 1993. In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: marginality in an out-of-the-way
place. Princeton University Press [Opening & chps: 4, 5 & 6].
• Ardener, Edwin. 1972. ‘Belief and the problem of women’, in The Interpretation of Ritual. La
Fontaine [ed]. Tavistock (photocopy on short loan).
11.
Anthropological writing is always allegorical. Discuss.
• Marcus. George & Clifford, James 1986 (eds) Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography. University of California Press [especially Clifford ‘Introduction: partial truths’ &
‘On ethnographic allegory’]
• Marcus, G & Fisher, M. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: an Experimental Moment in
the Human Sciences. University of Chicago Press [especially chp 1: ‘A crisis of representation
in the human sciences’].
• Geertz, Clifford. 1988. Works and Lives: the Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge, Polity
[chp 1: ‘Being There’].
• Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth Century ethnography, literature
and art. Harvard University Press [Introduction & chps: 1 & 4 (book on short loan)].
• Taussig, Michael. 1992. The Nervous System. Routledge [chps: 1 & 3 (book on short loan)].
• Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and Truth: the remaking of social analysis. Routledge [chp: 1
(book on short loan)].
26
SA2002
ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS
Module Coodinator: Dr Tony Crook (tc23).
Ethnographic Encounters explores the emergence of fieldwork practice in social anthropology, and
reflexively considers the social, methodological and theoretical relations produced through
ethnography, and the issues of analyzing and translating concepts in ethnographic writing. Students are
guided in preparing, undertaking and writing up their own Ethnographic Encounters project.
Social anthropologists use social relations as the medium as well as the object of their studies, and the
module emphasizes the consideration of a researcher’s own part in a social scenario at every step of an
ethnographic project from formulation, participant-observation to interpretation.
The module follows a narrative of preparing, conducting and analysing a fieldwork project by
considering the development of fieldwork practices, new ethnographic subjects and urban anthropology
before turning to students’ own fieldwork projects and their interpretation.
Assessment: This kind of teaching and learning emphasis on reflexive thinking and integrating discrete
bodies of literature around an important personal experience requires an appropriate form of
assessment. Please note: 100% Continuous Assessment. There is no examination.
Module convener:
Dr Tony Crook (tc23). Please address problems to him.
Lecturers:
Dr Will Rollason (wr21), Dr Adam Reed (ader), Dr Stephanie Bunn (sjb20), Dr
Tony Crook (tc23) & Professor Christina Toren (ct51).
Semester:
2
Teaching:
The module is divided into four Sections: Sections 1, 2 & 3 involve two weeks of
lectures each, whereas Section 4 involves 5 weeks of lectures. Three lectures per
week, supported by weekly tutorials, and a weekly workshop. Attendance in each
component is compulsory.
Venues:
Lectures: School II;
Tutorials: Room 50 United College;
Workshops: Old Union Diner.
Class hour:
11am, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
Tutorials:
Small group discussion focused on set readings and analytical tasks. Held weekly
in the Department seminar room. An attendance register will be taken.
Workshops:
Working in small groups in a large flat-floor teaching space with whole class in
attendance. These may use film excerpts and analytical tasks to discuss and apply
issues raised by each Section, or involve viewing a relevant film. Workshops
begin in Week 2. An attendance register will be taken.
Credits:
27
20
Assessment:
100% continuous assessment.
There are THREE continuous assessment essays for this module, and NO examinations.
Essays 1 and 2 are EACH worth 30% of the overall module assessment, and will assess Sections 1-3.
Students must choose questions from DIFFERENT Sections and may therefore only answer ONE
question per Section.
Essay 3 is worth 40% of the overall module assessment, and will assess Section 4, the Ethnographic
Encounters project.
•
•
•
Essay 1: 2000 word essay, from questions on EITHER Section 1 OR 2 [30%]
o Deadline: 4pm Monday 16th March 2009.
Essay 2: 2000 word essay, from questions on EITHER Section 2 OR 3 (noting the restrictions
outlined above) [30%]
o Deadline: 4pm Monday 13th April 2009.
Essay 3: 3000 word Ethnographic Encounters report for Section 4. [40%]
o Deadline: 4pm Friday 22nd May 2009.
Reader Pack:
A Reader Pack is available which contains key readings, all those for the tutorials
and a core of those needed for continuous assessment work. These can be bought
in the Department Office, cash only. Other readings are available in Short Loan
or via WebCT in some cases.
WebCT:
A WebCT site supports this module. The site includes details of lectures,
readings, links to biography, reference and encyclopaedia resources, learning
support materials and an on-line tutorial discussion facility. The site can be
accessed from the ‘WebCT logon’ page from the ‘Studying at St Andrews’
page on the University website, and then by entering via your username and
password.
Office Hours:
Tutors and lecturers have office hours – these hours will be announced at the first
lecture and posted on the relevant lecturer’s door. The open-door availability
during office hours is provided as a helpful support to discuss any issues arising
from the Module. These may be especially useful during the ‘Ethnographic
Encounters’ project. Please feel free to drop in at these times, or make an
appointment by email.
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SECTION ONE
ENCOUNTERING SOCIAL THEORY:
MARX, DURKHEIM AND WEBER.
WEEK 1 & 2
Dr Will Rollason
[email protected]
Room 57, United College
MARX, DURKHEIM AND WEBER
Three thinkers are often thought of as the figureheads of modern social science: Karl Marx, Emile
Durkheim and Max Weber. Motivated by the upheavals in European social life of the nineteenth
century, each of these three was interested in the question of society and its relation to individual
people. The questions motivating all three thinkers were: ‘What sort of association is society at large,
and what sustains it?’ The different theories that they developed have profoundly influenced our ideas
about the nature of people, social relations, work and exchange. It makes sense to understand these
thinkers because most social theories that ethnographers and anthropologists use to understand other
people and their social lives are derived more or less directly from their work. This is in addition to their
usefulness as theorists in their own right. The aim of this section is, firstly, to outline the key aspects of
each thinker’s writings. Secondly, we shall be thinking through key themes from anthropology to
explore the usefulness of each set of ideas for interpreting ethnographic encounters. We shall be aiming
towards a working knowledge of some foundational ideas in social science and their application in
ethnographic work.
LECTURE 1. INTRODUCING ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS.
Dr Tony Crook
Monday 9th February 2009
This first lecture will outline the module narrative, and arrangements for teaching, learning and
assessment. It will also introduce the Ethnographic Encounters fieldwork project.
Tutorials for this module are held weekly, beginning in Week 1. Please sign up to a tutorial group
immediately after this lecture using the sign up sheets on the Social Anthropology sub-honours noticeboard in the lobby outside School V.
LECTURE 2. TBA
Tuesday 10th February 2009
LECTURE 3. TBA
Thursday 12th February 2009
29
LECTURE 4. TBA
Friday 13th February 2009 - PLEASE NOTE THIS LECTURE WILL BE IN THE OLD UNION DINER
LECTURE 5. TBA
Monday 16th February 2009
LECTURE 6. TBA
Tuesday 17th February 2009
LECTURE 7. TBA
Thursday 19th February 2009
WORKSHOP 1: ENCOUNTERS PAST AND PRESENT I
Friday 20th February 2009
In this workshop, two Honours students who have previously undertaken their own Ethnographic
Encounters project will speak about their experiences, tips for formulating and conducting a successful
project and be available to respond to any questions.
30
SECTION 2
APPROACHING THE CITY
WEEKS 3 & 4
Dr Adam Reed
[email protected]
Room 56
This part of the course considers what an urban anthropology can bring to ‘classic’ theories of the city.
It invites students to consider what an anthropological approach to the city might look like; and whether
there can ever be anthropology of the city as opposed to anthropology in the city. Students will be
introduced to grand urban theory (debates and historical accounts that seek to grasp the nature of the
city as a social phenomenon and describe its processes), but also to urban ethnography and ethnographic
descriptions of particular cities. Attention will be paid to the diverse ways of knowing and seeing the
city, and to the range of strategies that make identification possible. For example, the tendency of
popular and academic commentators to reify the city as a person, to ascribe it with what appears as a
coherent character and atmosphere. The course will draw on anthropological and historical studies from
many different cities, including my own work in London. As well as lecture room teaching and student
reading, the broader implications for students’ upcoming research projects will be explored.
LECTURE 1: THEORIES OF THE CITY
Monday 23rd February 2009
We shall consider some of the ‘classic’ theories of the city, and what an anthropological perspective can
bring to them. Attention will fall on ‘the city’ as abstract category and individuated place; students will
be asked to consider its qualities as an artefact and object of knowledge. This includes examining the
kinds of historical trajectories ascribed to cities and the kinds of anxieties attempts to know the city
produce (such as fears that cities are changing took quickly, that they are too vast and complex ever to
know completely). Participants will be encouraged to read grand urban theory with these kinds of
questions in mind.
• Amin, A & Thrift, N. 2002. Cities: reimagining the urban. Cambridge: Polity Press [Introduction,
chps 1 & 2].
• Simmel, G. 1950. ‘The metropolitan and mental life’, in The Sociology of Georg Simmel. K. Wolff
[ed]. New York: The Free Press. [Reader Pack]
• Mumford, L. 1973. The City in history: its origins, transformations and its prospects. London:
Pelican Books [chp 2].
• Sassen S. 1991. The Global City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
LECTURE 2: ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE CITY
Tuesday 24th February 2009
Here we ask: what defines urban anthropology? Is it merely the fact that anthropologists conduct
fieldwork in cities or can one begin to consider anthropology of cities? The debate is illustrated by
31
looking at a few examples (Athens, Benares, London) where ethnographic descriptions of cities have
been attempted.
• Low, S. 1996. ‘The anthropology of cities: imagining and theorizing the city’. Annual Review of
Anthropology 25: 383-409. [Reader Pack]
• Reed, A. 2002. ‘City of details: interpreting the personality of London’. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute 8: 127-141. [Reader Pack]
• Faubion, J. 1993. Modern Greek Lessions: a primer in historical constructivism. Princeton: Princeton
University Press [chp 2]
• Parry, J. 1994. Death in Banares. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [chp 1].
• Hannerz, U. 1980. Exploring the City: inquiries toward an urban anthropology. New York: Columbia
[chp 3]
LECTURE 3: THE CITY AS PERSON: ANTHROPOLOGY & URBAN SKETCH WRITING
Thursday 26th February 2009
Here we examine the historical relationship between anthropological writing and travel writing, and in
particular the development of urban sketch writing, which seeks to approach to know the city as an
entity that possesses person-like qualities. Sketch writers claim to be able to describe and capture the
city as a whole by paying close attention to what they diagnose as its prevailing personality or character.
Participants are invited to consider what this legacy brings to urban theory and to the development of
anthropology of the city.
• Clifford, J. 1997. Routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century. Cambridge [Mass]:
Harvard University Press. [chp 3]
• Eade, J. 2000. Placing London: from imperial city to global city. Oxford: Berghahn. [Introduction]
• Benjamin, W. 1979. One-way street and other writings [essays entitled ‘Naples’, ‘Moscow’,
‘Marseilles’, ‘A Berlin Chronicle’]. Verso: London.
• Madox, FF. 1905. The Soul of London. A survey of a Modern City. JM Dent: London.
• Schlör J. 1998. Nights in the Big City. Paris, Berlin, London 1840-1930. London: Reaktion Books
[chp 1]
• Reed, Adam. 2008. “Blog This’: surfing the metropolis and the method of London’. Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute 14: 387-402.
• Mehta, Suketu. 2005. Maximum City: Bombay lost and found. London: Review.
WORKSHOP 2: KITCHEN STORIES
Friday 27th February 2009
NB: This films runs for 95mins and will be shown in entirety
Research minus social relations? This film parodies the paradox of a researcher being there but trying
hard not to be part of a social encounter… In post war Sweden it was discovered that every year, an
average housewife walks the equivalent number of miles as the distance between Stockholm and
Congo, while preparing her family meals. So the Home Research Institute sent out eighteen observers to
a rural district of Norway to map out the kitchen routines of single men. The researchers were on
twenty-four-hour call, and sat in special strategically placed chairs in each kitchen. Furthermore, under
no circumstances were the researchers to be spoken to, or included in the kitchen activities.
32
LECTURE 4: THE CITY AND KINSHIP
Monday 2nd March 2009
As well as reifying the city as a being or person, people often use it to draw out kin-type relations. As an
artefact, the city becomes a substitute for persons and for the divisions that define their relationships to
each other. Here we reflect how classical anthropological categories such as gender, personhood and
nationhood are reflected in the ways knowledge of cities is generated.
• Borneman J. 1992. Belonging in the Two Berlins: kin, state and nation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press [chp 1].
• Sennett R. 2002. Flesh and Stone: the body and the city in Western Civilization. London: Penguin
[chp 10].
• Donald J. 1999. Imagining the Modern City. The Athlone Press: London [chp 1].
• Parsons D. 2000. Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City, and Modernity. Oxford: Oxford
University Press [Introduction].
• Williams, Raymond 1973. The Country and the City. Chatto & Windus: London [chp 15].
LECTURE 5: COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL CITIES: PLANNING AND MODERNISM
Tuesday 3rd March 2009
Here we consider the ways in which cities have been explicitly constructed as artifacts to demonstrate
the power and authority of particular colonial and postcolonial state bodies. The notion that cities can
embody political and social ideals, particular knowledge formations, and demonstrate their efficacy is
explored through a range of examples (Brasilia, New Delhi, Cairo, Rabat).
• Holston J. 1989. The Modernist City: an anthropological critique of Brasíla. Chicago: Chicago
University Press [chp 1]. [Reader Pack]
• Mitchell T. 1988. Colonizing Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [chps 2 & 3].
• Metcalf T. 1989. An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj. London: Faber
[introduction].
• Rabinow P. 1989. French Modern: norms and forms of the social environment. Chicago: Chicago
University Press [chp 9].
• Rama A. 1996. The Lettered City. Durham: Duke University Press [chp 1].
LECTURE 6: CITY AS MAP
Thursday 5th March 2009
We consider cartographic expressions of the city. This includes attempts to know the city through
mapping it or through trying to turn it into a map. As well as telling the story of the relationship
between perspective, cities and maps, we examine alternative mapping techniques and attempts to
subvert the kinds of order maps can impose (with particular reference to Morocco). Drawing on the
previous lectures, we also look at the way social memory finds expression in public maps. Finally, we
examine other kinds of artifacts generated by the desire to know the city better.
Auge M. 2002. In the Metro. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press [chp1].
Pandolfo S. 1997. Impasse of the Angels. Chicago: Chicago University Press [chp 1].
Lynch K. 1960. The image of the city. Cambridge: The MIT Press [chp 3].
Olson, David. R. 1994. The World on Paper: the conceptual and cognitive implications of writing
and reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [chp 10].
• Sadler S. 1998 The Situationalist City. Cambridge: The MIT Press [chp 2].
•
•
•
•
33
WORKSHOP 3: MAPPING A CITY
Friday 6th March 2009
In this workshop we will explore further how we come to know cities and develop knowledge about
them. In particular, we will focus on the kinds of encounters that cities seem to promote and the
technologies by which persons seek to grasp or capture these environments.
Students will be broken into smaller groups and work on group tasks designed to draw out these aspects
further. These will focus on:
1] Issues of spatial proximity and distance in cities
2] Mapping
3] Ideas of cities as persons
Of course, the workshop will depend on students covering the readings listed in the course booklet; so
make sure you do some reading. You should come prepared to talk and take part.
34
SECTION 3
ENCOUNTERS THROUGH MATERIAL CULTURE
WEEKS 5 & 6
Dr Stephanie Bunn
[email protected]
Room 58, United College
This series of lectures for SA 2002 will explore how objects and material culture mediate almost every
form of social relationship. We will begin by situating material culture within social anthropology, and
explore the contested ways that objects have been used by anthropologists and archaeologists alike to
tell us about people’s social worlds. We will then take several case studies from both classical and
contemporary anthropology to reveal the kinds of anthropological themes that can be raised by using
objects as a starting point. These will include Boas’ study of North-West Coast ceremonial exchange
and Levi Strauss’ work on masks, along with contemporary studies of technology and consumption.
Finally, we will consider how we might apply material and ideas from the course to forthcoming student
projects.
LECTURE 1. TBA
Monday 9th March 2009
LECTURE 2. TBA
Tuesday 10th March 2009
LECTURE 3. TBA
Thursday 12th March 2009
WORKSHOP 4. FORMULATING AN ENCOUNTERS PROJECT I
Friday 13th March 2009
This is the first of two Workshops devoted to formulating your Ethnographic Encounters project. You
will work in small groups and work through ideas and possibilities for your proposed project. We will
also cover issues of planning the project work, and questions of the scale and scope in formulating a
project. Please come prepared having made some more decisions about what kind of project your
interests and ideas might lead to
See the past encounters projects posted on WebCT
LECTURE 4. TBA
Monday 16th March 2009
LECTURE 5. TBA
Tuesday 17th March 2009
LECTURE 6. TBA
Thursday 19th March 2009
WORKSHOP 5: TBA
Friday 20th March 2009
35
SECTION 4
ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS
WEEKS 7-11
Easter Vacation falls in-between weeks 7 & 8
WEEKS 7, 8 & 11
WEEKS 9 & 10
Dr Tony Crook
[email protected]
2nd Floor, 71 North Street
Professor Christina Toren
[email protected]
1st Floor, 71 North Street
Ethnographic Encounters is a small fieldwork-project, providing the opportunity to put anthropology
into practice. As a rubric, 'Encounters' is open to as many interpretations as you can think of--between
some narratives and what anthropology might make of them; between ideology and practice; between
sides to an issue; between people in a situation; between what people say and do or even between new
fieldworkers and their interests. The Encounters project foregrounds the anthropologist’s place in social
encounters in the field and in the writing of ethnography through supporting referencing to the
literature. The aim is to employ and explore the way anthropologists use fieldwork and ethnography to
approach problems and questions--useful for those pursuing other subjects at honours, and especially so
for those continuing in social anthropology when their own fieldwork experiences will enable an
evaluation of how ethnographic data has been collected and used in the literatures supporting the
honours modules.
Lectures and workshops in support of this Section assume formulation and preparation of a project by
Week 7, fieldwork during the Easter Vacation, and initial analysis of the stories and how to tell them in
Week 8 and 9. As set out below, in Weeks 9 and 10, consideration will be given to interpreting the field
and making sense of your data, whilst Week 11 is designed to reflect on the position of an author and to
support final writing-up.
The project will be assessed by an individually written project-report of around 3000 words. Deadline:
4pm Friday 22nd May 2009.
ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS: I
WEEKS 7 & 8
Dr Tony Crook
GENERAL READINGS:
• Barnard, A and Spencer, J Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London. Routledge.
See entries on Ethnography, Fieldwork, Methodology, Poetics, Postmodernism, Reflexivity and
Translation. [reference]
• Bateson, G ‘Experiments in thinking about ethnological material’, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind,
1973 / 2001 [short loan]
• Bryman, A Ethnography, Four Volumes, London: Sage Publications, 2001. [short loan]
• Ellen, R Ethnographic Research, ASA Research Methods, London: Academic. 1984. [3 day loan]
36
• Eriksen, TH 'Fieldwork and its Interpretation', in Small Places, Large Issues, 1995 [short loan
xerox; Reader Pack]
• Fetterman, D Ethnography, London: Sage Publications, 1998.
• Goffman, E ‘Preface’, in Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction, Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1961 [short loan xerox; Reader Pack]
• Hammersley, M and Atkinson, P Ethnography: Principles in Practice, London: Routledge [Chapters
8 & 9] [short loan]
• Marcus, G and Fischer, M Anthropology as Cultural Critique, Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1986 [Chapter 2] [short loan]
• Sanjek, R Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990 [short
loan]
• Strathern, M ‘Ethnography as Evocation’, in Partial Connections, Savage, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers, 1991. [short loan]
• Woolcott, H Ethnography: A Way of Seeing, Walnut Creek, CA : AltaMira Press, 1999. [short loan]
LECTURE 1: ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS
MONDAY 23RD MARCH 2009
Introduction to the Ethnographic Encounters project. Devising a project, and focusing on what counts as
an Encounter. We will begin to look at what kinds of story these moments of interaction are able to tell
about social life, and how we might capture this through observations and narratives. Boleslavsky says
‘practice counts, and only practice counts’: developing an eye for detail and an ear for a phrase takes
work. La Fontaine says ‘observe, observe, observe’: what are the differences between what people say
and what people do?
• Boleslavsky, R ‘The Fifth Lesson: Observation’, in Acting: The First Six Lessons, 1933 [short loan
xerox; Reader Pack]
• Bryman, A Ethnography, Four Volumes, London: Sage Publications, 2001. [short loan]
• Goffman, E ‘Preface’, in Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction, Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1961 [short loan xerox; Reader Pack]
LECTURE 2: METHODS AND DESIGN
TUESDAY 24TH MARCH 2009
We look at what stages will a project go through and how to go about fieldwork. How to balance an
impulse to use ‘impartial scientific methods’ with the necessity of using our own social and moral
reactions as a key method? The focus will be on how to design a project around a set of questions we
want to ask, and ideas of what kinds of anthropological story we might want to tell about an encounter.
• Hockey, J ‘Interviews as Ethnography? Disembodied Social Interaction in Britain’, in Rapport, N
(ed) British Subjects: An Anthropology of Britain, Oxford: Berg, 2002.
• Spradley, J The Ethnographic Interview, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979 [Especially
Part One]
LECTURE 3: OBSERVATION, NOTE-TAKING & ETHICS
THURSDAY 26TH MARCH 2009
In this lecture you will work in small groups to develop an eye and ear for detail, by considering some
issues of observation and note-taking by studying film excerpts. Secondly, the consideration of the
ethical implications of fieldwork is an important part of researchwe will work through a generic task
called ‘Dropping into Iraq’, and fill in model forms specific to your own planned project.
37
• http://www.theasa.org/ethics.htm
• http://www.aaanet.org/committees/ethics/ethcode.htm
• Sanjek, R Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990 [short
loan]
WORKSHOP 6: FORMULATING AN ENCOUNTERS PROJECT II
FRIDAY 27TH MARCH 2009
This is the second of two Workshops devoted to formulating your Ethnographic Encounters project.
You will work in small groups and develop ideas and possibilities for your proposed project. We will
also cover issues of planning the project work, and questions of the scale and scope in formulating a
project. Please come prepared having made some more decisions about what kind of project your
interests and ideas might lead to.
See the past encounters projects posted on WebCT
2-WEEK VACATION 28TH MARCH – 12TH APRIL
LECTURE 4: TELLING STORIES
MONDAY 13TH APRIL
We look at what kinds of wider story people might be telling in their encountersdo we tell stories
about the world in order to make it a comfortable place to live? What else is going on in these
encounters? Alongside the need to develop and practice our skills in observation and listening is the
need to practice the skill in recognizing and telling anthropological storiesonly by trying more and
more will we narrow down to what really counts.
• Bateson, G ‘Experiments in thinking about ethnological material’, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind,
1973 / 2001 [short loan]
LECTURE 5: PUTTING EXPERIENCE INTO WORDS
TUESDAY 14TH APRIL
We look at the practicalities and difficulties of putting experience into words. How can we convey what
we know? What kinds of details and phrases might make an encounter compelling and generate an
evocative image for a reader? We revisit the balancing of ‘social science’ and personal voicehow
much of each is enough?
• Geertz, C Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1988.
LECTURE 6: SUPPORTING A STORY, REFERENCING & SOURCES OF LITERATURE
THURSDAY 16TH APRIL
Ethnographic stories need supports of different types in order to be convincing, and compelling. Here
we take up our final theme of considering our own part in the stories we wish to tell and our own place
38
in our encounters with the anthropological literature. We also explore the various sources of literature
and references, and consider the means by which references can be found and deployed.
• Gay y Blasco, P and Wardle, H ‘People in Context’, Chapter 2 in How To Read Ethnography,
London: Routledge, 2006 [short loan]
• Davies, C Reflexive Ethnography, London: Routledge [Chapters 10 & 11] [short loan]
A guide to conducting a literature search will be available and discussed at this lecture, and is also
available via WebCT
WORKSHOP 7: STORIES TO TELL
FRIDAY 17TH APRIL 2009
This workshop rounds off this week’s focus on the kinds of anthropological story that we might want to
tell about moments of social encounter and interactions. For this workshop please come prepared:
• bring along three written sketches and / or photographs of ethnographic moments or encounters
observed around St Andrews
• these can be modest or grand, but should provide an insight or evocation of a moment from life here
that might tell a visitor something important about the town, or remind someone familiar with the
town of a distinct flavour
INTERPRETING THE FIELD
WEEKS 9 & 10
Professor Christina Toren
[email protected]
1st Floor, 71 North Street
The strength of your written project depends on the strength of your primary research. Your first task
therefore has been to generate sufficient research material to a) throw up an interesting focus for
investigation in your written project and b) provide for its analysis. The major issue here is how you
move from the raw material derived from participant observation, interviews and other methods, to
analysis.
This series of lectures considers how theories can help us make sense of data from the field. Earlier in
the module, Section 1 examined how fieldwork enhanced theory in the discipline – here approaching
the final weeks, we make the return from the field to see how fieldwork data can be “illuminated” by
theories.
Anthropologists argue with and against data, and with and against each other all the time! We discuss
the position of an anthropologist working “at home” and finding a place between what their informants
and the literature says, and move on to consider issues of interpretation and translation of local concepts
through examples of some major debates in the discipline. In keeping in mind the problems of bringing
fieldwork data back to theory, the lectures for the most part focus on examples of authors that analyse
the same ethnographic case from different theoretical standpoints, and formulate different
interpretations.
39
LECTURE 1. INTERPRETING THE FIELD
MONDAY 20TH APRIL 2009
After a general introduction to this part of the Ethnographic Encounters project, this lecture will
specifically address issues that you, as an anthropologist coming back from your ethnographic
encounter, will face when trying to make sense of what you saw, heard, and experienced.
• “Interpretation”. N. Rapport and J. Overing, Social and Cultural Anthropology. The key
Concepts. 2000. London: Routledge. (Short Loan)
LECTURE 2. ANTHROPOLOGY AT HOME
TUESDAY 21ST APRIL 2009
What happens when anthropologists do not study “other” culture but their own? Is Anthropology better
undertaken in certain geo-physical settings than others? Or is it a general attitude towards social life, a
way of making sense of the peopled world? These are some of the questions that we will be addressing
in this lecture.
• S. Mascarenhas-Keyes, 1987. The native anthropologist: constraints and strategies in research.
In A. Jackson (ed.). Anthropology at Home. ASA Monograph 25. London and New York:
Tavistock Publications (Reader Pack)
• S. Weil. 1987. Anthropology becomes home; home becomes anthropology. In A. Jackson (ed.).
Anthropology at Home. ASA Monograph 25. London and New York: Tavistock Publications
(Short Loan)
• Gillian Evans. 2006 Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain, Palgrave
Macmillan. Chapter 2, Sharon: common as shit.
LECTURE 3. “THE VIRGIN BIRTH” DEBATE.
THURSDAY 23RD APRIL 2009
This lecture discusses one of the key debates in the discipline about whether “certain primitive people”
were, or were not, ignorant of the facts of physiological paternity. The answer to this question gave rise
to a controversy known as “the Virgin Birth debate”, where passionately opposed views were aired in
the pages of Man in an intense correspondence among several scholars who argued against each other’s
positions and against the words of their native informants.
1. Edmund Leach: Virgin Birth. The Henry Myers Lecture 1966. In E. Leach: Genesis as Myth and
other Essays , Jonathan cape: London, pag. 85-115 (Short Loan). You can find it also in
Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 1966: 39-49
(WebCT)
2. Melford Spiro: Virgin Birth, Parthenogenesis and Physiological Paternity: an Essay in Cultural
Interpretation.1968. In : MAN (N.S.) 3(2):242-261 (WebCT).
3. Carol Delaney: The meaning of Paternity and the Virgin Birth Debate. 1986. In : Man (N.S.)
21(3): 494-513 (WebCT).
Further Reading:
• Bronislaw Malinowski, The Sexual life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia, Routledge &
Kegan Paul LTD. London, 1929. Chapter VII and VIII (Short Loan)
• Ashley-Montagu: Coming into Being among the Australian Aborigines. 1937. London: George
Routledge and Sons Ltd. Introduction, Chapter 5 and 10 ( Short Loan)
WORKSHOP 8: ENCOUNTERS PAST AND PRESENT II
FRIDAY 24TH APRIL 2009
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In this workshop, two Honours students who have previously undertaken their own Ethnographic
Encounters project will speak about their experiences, tips for writing up a successful project and be
available to respond to any questions.
LECTURE 4. MANA – A PROBLEM OF TRANSLATION?
MONDAY 27TH APRIL 2009
Anthropologists are still struggling to understand the meaning of the term mana – is it a form of
material or spiritual efficacy or something else entirely? And why should it matter?
• Rodney Needham. 2006 (1972). Introduction to Belief, Language and Experience. In Henrietta
L. Moore and Todd Sanders. Anthropology in Theory. Issues in Epistemology. Oxford.
Blackwell.
• Matt Tomlinson. 2006. Retheorizing Mana. Oceania, Vol. 76 (2).
• Christina Toren. 2007. How do we know what is true? In R.Astuti, J.Parry and C.Stafford, eds.
Questions of Anthropology. London. Berg.
Further Reading:
• Firth, Raymond 1967 [orig. 1940] ‘The analysis of mana: an empirical approach’. In Tikopia
Ritual and Belief, London. George Allen and Unwin.
• A.M. Hocart. 1914. Mana. Man 14: 97-101.
• Bradd Shore. ‘Mana and tapu’ in Alan Howard and Robert Borofsky (eds.), Developments in
Polynesian Ethnology, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
LECTURE 5. SACRIFICE
TUESDAY 28TH APRIL 2009
What counts as a sacrifice? And is sacrifice essential to religion?
• Alan Barnard & Jonathan Spencer. 1996. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology.
London. Routledge. See entry on Sacrifice.
• J. W. Turner, J. W. 1986. ‘The water of life: kava ritual and the logic of sacrifice’, Ethnology 25,
203-14.
• Valerio Valeri. Kingship and Sacrifice. Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii. Chicago and
London. University of Chicago Press. ‘Part 1: Chapter 2, The elements of sacrifice. Chapter 3,
Gods and humans.
Further Reading:
• Marshal Sahlins. 1985 ‘The stranger-king; or Dumezil among the Fijians’. In Islands of History,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Christina Toren. 1998. Cannibalism and compassion: transformations in Fijian notions of the
person. In Verena Keck (ed) Common Worlds and Single Lives: Constituting Knowledge in
Pacific Societies, London, Berg, pp95-115.
LECTURE 6. CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF CHRISTIANITY
THURSDAY 30TH APRIL 2009
What is Christianity? How can we recognize it? And what if the ideas and practices we encounter
appear to be heretical?
• Kaplan, Martha. 1995. Neither Cargo nor Cult. Ritual Politics and the Colonial Imagination in
Fiji. Durham. Duke University Press. See Chapters 5 and 6.
• Peter Gow. 2007. Forgetting conversion. The Summer Institute of Linguistics Mission in the
Piro Lived World. . In Fenella Canell, ed. The Anthropology of Christianity, Duke University
Press.
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Danilyn Rutherford. Nationalism and millenarianism in West Papua: institutional power,
interpretive practice, and the pursuit of Christian truth. In M.Engelke & M.Tomlinson, eds. The
Limits of Meaning. Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity. New York. Berghahn.
• Christina Toren. 2007. The effectiveness of ritual. In Fenella Canell, ed. The Anthropology of
Christianity, Duke University Press.
Further Reading:
• Fenella Canell, ed. 2007. The Anthropology of Christianity, Duke University Press. Introduction.
• Matt Tomlinson. 2004. Perpetual lament: Christianity and sensations of historical decline in Fiji.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10: 653-673.
• Christina Toren. 1988. Making the present, revealing the past: the mutability and continuity of
tradition as process. Man (N.S.), 23, 696-717.
•
WORKSHOP 9: PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION
FRIDAY 1ST MAY 2009
The workshop will work in small groups, we’ll discuss a practical problem of interpretation that you
faced in your “Ethnographic Encounter” project. Please come prepared with an example from your
fieldwork and how you resolved to deal with it.
ETHNOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS: II
WEEK 11
Dr Tony Crook
MAY-DAY HOLIDAY MONDAY 4TH MAY – UNIVERSITY CLOSED
Please note there will be a lecture on Wednesday 6th May instead
LECTURE 1: RELATIVE OBJECTIVITY
TUESDAY 5TH MAY
How do anthropologists deal with the problem of having a culture and values of their own? Here we
discuss several sides to this issue which gets at both what ethnography is for and how it can be done
reflexively such that our own social being is seen a part of the perfection rather than as a flaw.
• Needham, R 'This is a Rose...', in Against the Tranquility of Axioms, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1983 [short loan xerox; GN325.N4; Reader Pack]
• Wagner, R ‘The Assumption of Culture’ in The Invention of Culture, Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1981[1975] [short loan Xerox; Reader Pack]
LECTURE 2: POSITIONING THE AUTHOR
WEDNESDAY 6TH MAY
Having looked carefully at an anthropologist’s place in social encounters in the field we discuss here
what kind of social encounter happens when we read and write ethnographywhat are the aesthetics
we learn by which to make sense of the social relations drawn together by a text? (ie different people’s
words are brought together in the same sentence, some from the field, some from the literature).
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• Crook, T ‘The Textual Person’ [WebCT]
• Gay y Blasco, P and Wardle, H ‘Positioning the Author’, Chapter 6 in How To Read Ethnography,
London: Routledge, 2006 [short loan]
LECTURE 3: POSTER PREPARATION
THURSDAY 7TH MAY
This session will be devoted to preparing a poster for display at tomorrow’s workshop: basic materials
will be supplied but please come prepared with some text and pictures, and having thought about how
you might tell a part of your project’s story in this context. This session, and tomorrow’s workshop, are
also intended to support you in formulating the written text for Essay 3.
WORKSHOP 10: POSTER DISPLAY OF ENCOUNTERS PROJECTS
FRIDAY 8TH MAY
In this final workshop, students have the opportunity to display their own posters, to see how each
other’s projects are turning out and to discuss the findings with teaching staff.
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TUTORIALS
Tutorials are held weekly, beginning in Week 1. Please sign up to a tutorial group immediately after the
Introductory lecture using the sign up sheets on the Social Anthropology sub-honours notice-board in
the lobby outside School V.
TUTORIAL 1
This first tutorial will serve as an introduction to your tutor, to arrangements for tutorials and the 100%
continuous assessment basis of this module, and to the Ethnographic Encounters project. Although
some way off yet, this tutorial will outline how to go about the formulation of a project. Each Tutor
holds weekly office hours, and you will be advised of your tutor’s hours and office location in this
session. In formulating your project over the coming weeks, students are advised to make use of an
opportunity to discuss your ideas on a one to one basis with your tutor. Please take a look at the past
projects on WebCT.
TUTORIAL 2
TBA
TUTORIAL 3
TBA
TUTORIAL 4
In this tutorial we set out to examine further the ways in which cities are approached and known, both
as abstract entities and particular places. Through a discussion of two readings I hope that we can draw
out an anthropological contribution to urban knowledge. Our debate should be grounded in group
reflection upon our own knowledge of individual cities [students should come prepared to talk about
cities they know].
First reading: read the classic essay by Simmel ‘The metropolitan and mental life’. This piece illustrates
a common starting point for urban theory; it is premised on the assumption of a movement from
countryside to city [approaching the metropolis from the outside]. While reading this essay, try to think
about your own entries into cities, in particular those moments when you have approached them for the
first time [perhaps on holiday].
Second reading: read the article by Reed ‘City of details: interpreting the personality of London’. Here,
the author is dealing with subjects [walking tour guides] who already conceive themselves within the
city and seek to know it in a ‘better’ manner than other inhabitants [approaching the metropolis from the
inside]. While reading this piece, try to think about your knowledge of a familiar city [you may not have
lived in a city, but you may visit one regularly or have strong impressions of a place from television,
literature and film] and how it relates to other ways of knowing that place.
• Simmel, G. 1950. ‘The metropolitan and mental life’, in The Sociology of Georg Simmel. K. Wolff
[ed]. New York: The Free Press. [Reader Pack]
• Reed, A. 2002. ‘City of details: interpreting the personality of London’. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute 8: 127-141. [Reader Pack]
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TUTORIAL 5
In this tutorial we will focus on the ways in which cities have been linked to political economy and been
seen to embody social ideals. Students should reflect upon the ideological claims attached to the
practice of urban planning and [re] construction, with particular reference to colonialism and the
emergence of the post-colonial state.
• Holston J. 1989. The Modernist City: an anthropological critique of Brasíla. Chicago: Chicago
University Press [chp 1]. [Reader Pack]
• Mitchell T. 1988. Colonizing Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [chps 2 & 3]. [Reader
Pack]
TUTORIAL 6
TBA
TUTORIAL 7
TBA
TUTORIAL 8
Students are at various stages within their encounters, and the format of this tutorial will make it useful
irrespective of what phase of a project has been reached. It may be useful in this session to work as a
whole group to discuss common issues arising.
This tutorial will provide a chance to voice details, sketches and episodes from your own Encounters
project (or ideas and plans for it), to see in each case what kinds of anthropological story might emerge
and how we might go about telling it.
There is no set reading for this tutorial. Instead, please come prepared to talk about some aspect of
your project and having thought about how anthropologists go about telling stories to describe and
convey the social world encountered around us.
TUTORIAL 9
This tutorial will provide a further chance to voice details, sketches and episodes from your own
Encounters project, to see in each case what kinds of anthropological story might emerge and how we
might go about telling it.
Students are at various stages within their encounters, and the format of this tutorial will make it useful
irrespective of what phase of a project has been reached. It may be useful in this session to work in
smaller groups to discuss common issues arising from the particular stage reached with a project.
There is no set reading for this tutorial. Instead, please come prepared to talk about some aspect of
your project and having thought about how anthropologists go about telling stories to describe and
convey the social world encountered around us.
45
TUTORIAL 10
This tutorial will discuss the issue of interpreting field data by focusing on the Virgin Birth controversy.
Alongside the main readings discussed in the lecture, the tutorial will analyse the correspondence
generated by the Virgin Birth debate, and the positions of each of the scholars who intervened in it.
• Readings by Leach and Spiro listed for Lecture 3.
• Correspondence on the Virgin Birth. In: D. Schneider in: Man (n.S.) vol. 3(1): 126-28, 1968;
Kaberry in Man (N.S.) vol. 3(2): pp. 311-13, 1968; and by Powell, Dixon, Burridge, Leach, and
Spiro in Man (N.S.) vol. 3(4): 651- 656. (WebCT).
TUTORIAL 11
Understanding what is meant by the term mana continues to pose an analytical problem for
anthropologists of the contemporary South Pacific and as such it provides a useful instance of the way
that the past inheres in the present. What happens when Christian beliefs and practices are assimilated to
an idea of effective power as immanent in the world? Use the following texts to consider the problem of
ideas of the person and sociality alongside ideas of power and authority; think about how it comes about
that ideas and practices that we may understand as long-discontinued continue to inform contemporary
lives – how does the past come down to us? Take witchcraft, for example – what is the anthropologist to
make of it? Does the Fijian case differ very much from the African case and if so, how?
• Matt Tomlinson. 2006. Retheorizing Mana. Oceania, Vol. 76 (2).
• P. Geschiere. 1997. ‘Witchcraft and sorcery’. In J. Middleton ed. Encyclopeida of Africa South of the
Sahara.
• Christina Toren. In press. ‘How do we know what is true?’ in Rita Astuti, Jonathan Parry and
Charles Stafford. Eds. Questions of Life and Death. London. Berg.
TUTORIAL 12
This tutorial will provide a final chance to discuss what often proves to be the trickiest stage: combining
your own data and your own thoughts together with ‘theory’. These are encounters with people in a
textual form and framed by specific protocols. How should we position our self, and what we want to
argue, in our encounters with theory? How can we support what we want to say through effective
referencing to the literature?
There is no set reading for this tutorial. Instead, please come prepared to talk about a moment from
your own encounters project that you could support with a reference, and to reflect on just what kind of
social relationship this link to theory draws into your writing up.
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ESSAYS
NB: 100% Continuous Assessment. There are THREE continuous assessment essays for this module,
and NO examinations.
Please treat these deadlines as the latest times by which Essays are due. Please also feel free to
submit your work ahead of these deadlines.
Essays 1 and 2 are EACH worth 30% of the overall module assessment, and will assess Sections 1-3.
Students must choose questions from DIFFERENT Sections and may therefore only answer ONE
question per Section.
Essay 3 is worth 40% of the overall module assessment, and will assess Section 4, the Ethnographic
Encounters project.
Essay 1: Choose one question from questions on EITHER Section 1 OR 2 [30%]. Write an essay of
around 2000 words. Submit two copies of your essay to the Essay Box in the foyer of the Department of
Social Anthropology.
o Deadline: 4pm Monday 16th March 2009.
Essay 2: Choose one question from questions on EITHER Section 2 OR 3 (noting the restrictions
outlined above) [30%]. Write an essay of around 2000 words. Submit two copies of your essay to the
Essay Box in the foyer of the Department of Social Anthropology.
o Deadline: 4pm Monday 13th April 2009.
Essay 3: 3000 word Ethnographic Encounters report for Section 4. [40%] Submit two copies of your
essay to the Essay Box in the foyer of the Department of Social Anthropology.
o Deadline: 4pm Friday 22nd May 2009.
QUESTIONS FOR SECTION 1
TBA
QUESTIONS FOR SECTION 2
1.
What can anthropology contribute to urban theory?
• Low, S. 1996. ‘The anthropology of cities: imagining and theorizing the city’. Annual Review
of Anthropology 25: 383-409. [Reader Pack]
• Amin, A & Thrift, N. 2002. Cities: reimagining the urban. Cambridge: Polity Press
[Introduction, chps 1 & 2].
• Hannerz, U. 1980. Exploring the City: inquiries toward an urban anthropology. New York:
Columbia [chps 3]
• Reed, A. 2002. ‘City of details: interpreting the personality of London’. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute 8: 127-141. [Reader Pack]
But also be sure to cover other readings in relevant sections of course; especially readings set for
tutorial.
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2.
At the heart of the colonial project is the city. Discuss.
• Holston J. 1989. The Modernist City: an anthropological critique of Brasíla. Chicago: Chicago
University Press [chp 1]. [Reader Pack]
• Mitchell T. 1988. Colonizing Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [chp 3].
• Rabinow P. 1989. French Modern: norms and forms of the social environment. Chicago:
Chicago University Press [chp 9].
• Rama A. 1996. The Lettered City. Durham: Duke University Press [chp 1].
•
But also be sure to cover all other readings in relevant sections of course; especially readings for
lectures 5 & 6
QUESTIONS FOR SECTION 3
TBA
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