202A (Proseminar A) The History of Anthropological Theory: Society, Culture, and Disciplinarity Fall, 2011 (course code 60700)

Tom Boellstorff Professor, Department of Anthropology Editor-in-Chief, American

Meets Tuesdays, noon–2:50pm, SBS 3323 Office Hours: Tuesdays, 10am–noon, SBS 3322 First meeting: Tuesday, September 27, noon, SBS 3323

Course Description

This is the first quarter of the three-quarter proseminar sequence required for graduate students in the Ph.D. program in anthropology. In this term, students will explore the history of anthropological theory and ethnographic practice. It is organized around an in-depth discussion of the relation (or lack of one) between notions of culture and notions of society in the formation of anthropology as an academic discipline and mode of inquiry. The course will pay particular attention to the emergence of anthropology out of nineteenth-century concerns over the nature of the “primitive” and evolutionary theory, and continue with the formalization and institutionalization of the discipline throughout the twentieth century. The course will also attend to some of the discipline’s internal and external criticisms and reformulations, as well as the debates over its core analytical concepts.

Traditionally, the history of anthropological theory has been taught in terms of “national traditions,” focusing on the rise of theory in three or four national settings (generally, Britain, France, the United States, and Germany). The rationale of this course is different. Although the course will attend to the major national traditions, it is organized in terms of cross-national debates and dialogues as well as the changing political and economic circumstances in which the discipline has developed. Preoccupations with genealogical reason, gender/, and racial formation cross-cut the “national” traditions, as does anthropology’s liberal humanist philosophical roots. The course will also address feminist theories in anthropology, the problematics of theories as they play out in different seats of intellectual production, and imperial nations’ encounters with, and constructions of, the colonial subjects who were so often the objects of anthropological inquiry.

This course is open only to first-year graduate students in the Ph.D. program in the Irvine Department of Anthropology. It places large demands on graduate students’ time. The course is reading-intensive and writing-intensive, and students will need to learn to skim productively.

1

The course also requires attendance at three Friday evening seminars, at locations to be announced in class, which aim to provide an opportunity to talk in a more relaxed, informal setting, and hopefully to lay the groundwork for future productive collaborations.

You will need to obtain the following books. (Note: some of the older books exist in multiple editions. You do not need to obtain the specific edition listed here. They will also all be placed on course reserves at the library.)

George Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (The Free Press, 1991).

Marcel Mauss, The Gift (W. W. Norton, 1967).

Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (William Morrow & Co, 1988).

Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008).

Bronisław Malinowski, Coral Gardens and Their Magic (Dover Publications, 1978).

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Totemism (Beacon Press, 1963).

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (Penguin USA, 1992).

Tom Boellstorff, Coming of Age in Second Life (Princeton University Press, 2008).

Recommended: Adam Kuper, Anthropology and (Routledge, 1996).

Note: All other course readings (even the ones that are books) will be available either online or as PDF files provided in class.

Course Requirements

Attendance and participation: Weekly attendance is absolutely vital. The class will be run as a seminar, with occasional short introductory lectures. Your attentive and engaged participation in class discussions is required. While the assigned reading will be a challenge (until you understand how to read productively), you should attend class and participate in class discussions regardless of how much of the reading you have finished. I will only accept absences in cases of dire emergency.

There will be three Friday seminars during the quarter, at times and locations to be announced. We will have dinner and you will read the ethnography assigned for that seminar and be prepared to engage in discussion about it.

2

3 short essays (2,500 words maximum, all-inclusive) will be due emailed to [email protected] before the listed course meeting date. I will distribute some suggested prompts or questions each week for the next week’s readings. Your paper can either address one or more of those prompts, or reflect your own critical and analytical questions about the assigned readings. No late papers will be accepted. Each counts for 16% of your final grade.

Course meeting discussion facilitation: Each students will be responsible for helping to facilitate one course meeting. This involves a brief (5 minutes) introduction to the authors and their intellectual biographies, and how they relate to themes from the course. Course meeting discussion facilitation accounts for 10% of your final grade.

Friday seminar discussion facilitation: Teams of students will be responsible for facilitating discussion for one Friday seminar. Facilitators should be prepared with a list of questions designed to generate discussion. Discussion facilitation will account for 10% of your final grade.

Take-home final examination: There will be an essay-format, take-home final examination distributed during Week 9 and due emailed to [email protected] BY 5pm on Friday, December 15. It will account for 32% of your final grade. NO INCOMPLETES WILL BE ACCEPTED FOR THIS CLASS.

Course Schedule Week 1: Orientations Stocking, George W., Jr. 1968 On the Limits of “Presentism” and “Historicism” in the Historiography of the Behavioral Sciences. In Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. Pp. 1–12. New York: The Free Press. 1991 Victorian Anthropology. New York: The Free Press.

Week 2: 19th Century Evolutionary Theories and Armchair Ethnology (OCT 4) Frazer, James George 1922 [1915] “Sympathetic Magic” and “Magic and Religion.” In The Golden Bough. Pp. 12–69. New York: Macmillan and Co.

Maine, Henry Sumner 1916 [1861] Primitive Society and Ancient Law. In Ancient Law. Pp. 123–185. London: John Murray, 1916.

Spencer, Herbert 1864 Progress: Its Law and Cause. In Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions. Pp. 1–16. New York: D. Appleton and Co.

3

Tylor, Edward Burnett 1958 [1871] Chapter 1, “The Science of Culture;” Chapter 2, “The Development of Culture;” Chapter 3, “Survival in Culture;” Chapter 7, “The Art of Counting.” In Primitive Culture, V. I: The Origins of Culture. New York: Harper & Row. 1964 [1865] Chapter I, “Introduction;” Chapter II, “The Gesture Language;” Chapter III, “The Gesture Language, Continued.” In Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization. P. Bohannan, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Friday Seminar: , Sex & Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. (OCT 7)

Week 3: Durkheim, Mauss, and the Category of “the Social”—Essay #1 due (OCT 11) Clifford, James 1981 On Ethnographic Surrealism. Comparative Studies in Society and History 23(4):539–564.

Durkheim, Emile 1973 [1900] Sociology in France in the Nineteenth Century. In Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society. R. Bellah, ed. Pp. 3–22. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1984 [1893] Book I: “Introduction” (pp. 1-8); “Chapter I” (pp. 11–30); “Chapter VI” (pp. 126–148); Book III, “Chapter I” (pp. 291–309); “Conclusion” (pp. 329– 341). In The Division of Labor in Society. New York: The Free Press.

Durkheim, Emile, and Marcel Mauss 1963 [1903] Primitive Classification. London: Cohen and West, Ltd.

Mauss, Marcel 1967 [1924] The Gift. New York: W.W. Norton.

Week 4: The Boasian Revolution (OCT 18) Boas, Franz 1940 [1887] The Study of Geography. In Race, Language, and Culture. Pp. 639–647. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1974 [1906] The Outlook for the American Negro. In The Shaping of American Anthropology 1883–1911: A Franz Boas Reader. G. W. Stocking, Jr., ed. Pp. 310–316. New York: Basic Books. 1974 [1912] Instability of Human Types. In The Shaping of American Anthropology 1883–1911: A Franz Boas Reader. G. W. Stocking, Jr., ed. Pp. 214–218. New York: Basic Books. 1940 [1932] The Aims of Anthropological Research. In Race, Language, and Culture. Pp. 243–259. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

4

Boxwell, D. A. 1992 “Sis Cat” as Ethnographer: Self-Presentation and Self-Inscription in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men. African American Review 26(4):605–617.

Bunzl, Matti 1996 Franz Boas and the Humboldtian Tradition: From Volksgeist and National Charakter to an Anthropological Concept of Culture. In Volksgeist as Method and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition. G. W. Stocking, Jr., ed. Pp. 17–78. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 2004 Boas, Foucault, and the “Native Anthropologist”: Notes toward a Neo-Boasian Anthropology. 106(3):435–442.

Dorst, John 1987 Rereading Mules and Men: Toward the Death of the Ethnographer. 2(3):305–318.

Hurston, Zora Neale 2008 [1935] Mules and Men. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Stocking, George W. Jr. 1974 The Basic Assumptions of Boasian Anthropology. In The Shaping of American Anthropology 1883–1911: A Franz Boas Reader. G. W. Stocking, Jr., ed. Pp. 1–20. New York: Basic Books.

Week 5: British : Varieties of Functional Analysis (OCT 25) Leach, Edmund 1984 Glimpses of the Unmentionable in the History of British Social Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 13:1–23.

Malinowski, Bronisław 1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific (pp. 1–25). New York: E.P. Dutton. 1944 The Functional Theory. In A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays. Pp. 147–176. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1961 [1945] The New Tasks of a Modern Anthropology. In The Dynamics of Cultural Change. Pp. 1–13. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1929 Historical and Functional Interpretations of Culture in Relation to the Practical Application of Anthropology to the Control of Native Peoples. In Method in Social Anthropology. Pp. 39–41. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1935 Anthropology and Indian Administration. American Indian Life 26:7–8. 1940 Preface. In African Political Systems. M. Fortes and E.E. Evans-Pritchard, eds. Pp. xi–xxiii. New York: Oxford University Press. 1952 [1935] On the Concept of Function in Social Science. In Structure and Function

5

in Primitive Society. Pp. 178–187. New York: The Free Press. 1952 [1940] On Social Structure. In Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Pp. 188–204. New York: The Free Press.

Fortes, Meyer, and E.E. Evans-Pritchard 1940 Introduction. In African Political Systems, M. Fortes and E. E. Evans- Pritchard, eds. Pp. 1–23. New York: Oxford.

Week 6: Evolution, Comparison, Ecology: Culture as Adaptive—Essay #2 due (NOV 1) Harris, Marvin 1966 The of India’s Sacred Cattle. Current Anthropology 7(1):51– 66.

Sahlins, Marshall 1960 Evolution: Specific and General. In Evolution and Culture. M. Sahlins and E. Service, eds. Pp. 229–241. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1968 Culture and Environment: the Study of Cultural Ecology. In Theory in Anthropology: A Sourcebook. R. Manners and D. Kaplan, eds. Pp. 367–373. Chicago: Aldine.

Steward, Julian 1968 Multilinear Evolution. In Theory in Anthropology: A Sourcebook. R. Manners and D. Kaplan, eds. Pp. 241–250. Chicago: Aldine.

White, Leslie 1959 Energy and Tools. In The Evolution of Culture. Pp. 33–57. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Friday seminar: Bronisław Malinowski, Coral Gardens and Their Magic, vol. 1. (NOV 4)

Week 7: Structuralism and Its Translations (NOV 8) Doja, Albert 2008 Claude Lévi-Strauss at His Centennial: Toward a Future Anthropology. Theory, Culture & Society 25(7/8):321–340.

Gluckman, Max 1973 The State of Anthropology. Letter to the Editor (a “found” document).

Leach, Edmund 1961 Rethinking Anthropology. In Rethinking Anthropology. Pp. 1–27. London: Althone. 1961 Two Essays Concerning the Symbolic Representation of Time. In Rethinking Anthropology. Pp. 124–136. London: Althone.

6

Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1955 The Structural Study of Myth. Journal of American Folklore 68(270):428–444. 1963 Totemism. Boston: Beacon.

Friday seminar: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques. (NOV 11)

Week 8: Culture in Categories, Culture in Winks, Culture in Codes (NOV 22) Frake, Charles 1964 How to Ask for a Drink in Subanun. American Anthropologist 66(3):127–132.

Geertz, Clifford 1973 Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. In The Interpretation of Cultures. Pp. 3–32. New York: Basic Books. 1983 [1974] “From the Native’s Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding. In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. Pp. 55–70. New York: Basic Books.

Goodenough, Ward 1956 Residence Rules. In Theory in Anthropology: A Sourcebook. R. Manners and D. Kaplan, eds. Pp. 181–190. Chicago: Aldine.

Keesing, Roger 1973 Kwara’ae Ethnoglottochronology: Procedures Used by Malaita Cannibals for Determining Percentages of Shared Cognates. American Anthropologist 75(5):1282–1289.

Ortner, Sherry 1974 Is Male to Female as Nature is to Culture? In Woman, Culture and Society. M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds. eds. M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 67–87.

Rosaldo, Michelle Z. 1974 Woman, Culture and Society: A Theoretical Overview. In Woman, Culture and Society. M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds. Pp. 17–42. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Week 9: Unbounding Culture—Essay #3 due (NOV 29) Abu-Lughod, Lila 1991 Writing against Culture. In Recapturing Anthropology, R. Fox, ed. Pp. 137– 162. Santa Fe: SAR Press.

Appadurai, Arjun 1996 [1991] Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational

7

Anthropology. In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Pp. 48–65. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bunzl, Matti 2005 Anthropology Beyond Crisis: Toward an Intellectual History of the Extended Present. Anthropology and Humanism 30(2):187–195.

Clifford, James 1986 Introduction: Partial Truths. In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. J. Clifford and G. Marcus, eds. Pp. 1–26. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson 1997 Discipline and Practice: The Field as Site, Method, and Location in Anthropology. In Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, eds. Pp. 1–46. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Marcus, George 1995 Ethnography in/of the World System: the Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:95–117.

Yanagisako, Sylvia and Carol Delaney 1995 Naturalizing Power. In Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. S. Yanagisako and C. Delaney, eds. Pp. 1–22. New York: Routledge.

Week 10: Reflections on Anthropological Knowledge: Anti-, Post- or Non- Socio/Cultural? (DEC 6) Boellstorff, Tom 2003 Dubbing Culture: Indonesian Gay and Lesbi Subjectivities and Ethnography in an Already Globalized World. American Ethnologist 30(2):225–242. 2008 Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Helmreich, Stefan 2011 Nature/Culture/Seawater. American Anthropologist 113(1):132–144.

Keane, Webb 2003 Self-Interpretation, Agency, and the Objects of Anthropology: Reflections on a Genealogy. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45(2):222–248.

McDougall, Debra 2009 Becoming Sinless: Converting to Islam in the Christian Solomon Islands. American Anthropologist 111(4):480–491.

8

Strathern, Marilyn 1991 Partial Connections. Pp. xiii–40. Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

TAKE-HOME FINAL due emailed to [email protected] BY 5pm on Friday, December 14

9