Core Course in Cultural Anthropology Spring 2018 Prof

PhD Program in Anthropology CUNY Graduate Center Anthropology 70200: Core Course in Cultural Anthropology Spring 2018 Prof. Marc Edelman [email protected] 212-772-5659 (Hunter), 212-817-8008 (GC) Office hours: GC room 6402.08, Wed. 12:30-1:30PM; Hunter room 706N, Tues. 2:30-4:30PM Course Meeting Time and Place

Wednesdays, 9:30am-12:30pm, Rm. 3212

Course Description

This course introduces students to key current issues and debates in cultural anthropology. It attempts to link these discussions to earlier approaches in order to provide a sense of the genealogies of knowledge in the discipline. This material is intended as part of the preparation for the first exam in the Ph.D. Program. The course also gives students an opportunity to get to know program faculty and their areas of expertise.

The coverage of “topics” is inevitably selective and partial (in both senses of the word). Some very important topics have not been included and we have tried to limit readings to a manageable number. The syllabus is not intended to be exhaustive or canonical, and it may be modified during the semester. Broader bibliographies will be developed in class. Students will be responsible for formalizing these into a more exhaustive document as described below.

Most topics will be covered in two class sessions. The first will be a presentation by a program faculty member. The second will consist of small-group student-led discussions of one or more ethnographies or case studies. In a few cases, indicated below, this pattern will be different. Students will be responsible for reading one of the ethnographies or case studies for each topic and participating in the sub-group that discusses the book that they have read. The purpose of these discussions of ethnographies and case studies is to draw connections between topical fields, analytical frameworks, epistemological perspectives, critical interventions, and ethnographic and historical analyses.

Required readings not available through the Library’s electronic and reserve holdings or through hyperlinks on this syllabus will be posted to Blackboard (although students are encouraged to download assigned journal articles from the CUNY library’s databases, for reasons which will be discussed). Ethnographies should be purchased or borrowed from libraries.

Learning Objectives

a. To encourage a critical understanding of how particular “topics” in anthropology emerge, develop and (sometimes) decline;

b. To analyze the potentials and limitations of ethnographic fieldwork for understanding these topics;

c. To introduce the fields of expertise of members of the Anthropology Graduate Faculty. Each topic is presented by a different faculty member;

d. To aid students in preparing for their First Exams. The “Topics” questions in the First Examination are closely linked to Core Courses I and II; e. To expose students to possible frameworks for their research and/or introduce them to topics connected to their areas of interest and specialization; f. To discuss aspects of professionalization that will allow course members to better plan their careers as graduate students and professionals.

Evaluation Student evaluation will be based upon one 7-10 page essay (40%), a final in-class exam (40%), and in-class performance, including bibliographies and ethnography discussion questions (20%).

Lecture Bibliographies Students will be assigned to serve as bibliographers for a lecture. Bibliographers will look up full citations for publications mentioned in the lecture and compile a complete lecture bibliography to share with the rest of the class. This will constitute a more complete set of “recommended” readings for the topic. Students can use these bibliographies to help prepare for the first exam.

Discussion Leaders Each student will serve as discussion leader for one of the assigned ethnographies. This will include helping the class to situate the book within broader histories of thought and contemporary theoretical currents and guiding a critical discussion of its significance. You should take as your starting point the thematic and theoretical perspectives discussed explicitly in the ethnography itself, but you should relate the book to other perspectives discussed over the course of the semester. Leaders will develop a set of questions for class discussion, which will be submitted to the instructor on the day of the discussion.

Final Exam The final exam will be held on May 23rd. The exam will be in-class and students will write two essays in response to questions that will be provided a week in advance

Week 1: January 31 Prof. Marc Edelman (Hunter College & GC) Course organization and welcome. Social Movements and Engaged Research Calhoun, Craig. 1993. “‘New Social Movements’ of the Early Nineteenth Century.” Social Science History 17 (3):385–427.

Cini, Lorenzo, Daniela Chironi, Eliska Drapalova, and Federico Tomasello. 2017. “Towards a Critical Theory of Social Movements: An Introduction.” Anthropological Theory 17 (4):429–52.

Della Porta, Donatella. 2017. “Political Economy and Social Movement Studies: The Class Basis of Anti-Austerity Protests.” Anthropological Theory 17 (4):453–73.

Fraser, Nancy. 2013. “A Triple Movement? Parsing the Politics of Crisis after Polanyi.” New Left Review 81:119–32.

Polletta, Francesca. 1998. “‘It Was like a Fever ...’ Narrative and Identity in Social Protest.” Social Problems 45 (2):137–59.

Solnit, Rebecca. 2017. “Protest and Persist: Why Giving up Hope Is Not an Option.” The Guardian, March 13, 2017, sec. World news.

Tilly, Charles. 2006. Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, chaps. 1- 4. (Electronic resource available through GC Library)

Week 2: February 7 NO CLASS Week 3: February 14 Social movements and engaged research discussion Borras, Saturnino M. 2016. “Land Politics, Agrarian Movements and Scholar-Activism.” International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University

Edelman, Marc. 2009. “Synergies and Tensions between Rural Social Movements and Professional Researchers.” Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (1):245–265. Hale, Charles R. 2006. “Activist Research v. Cultural Critique: Indigenous Land Rights and the Contradictions of Politically Engaged Anthropology.” Cultural Anthropology 21(1):96–120.

Portelli, Alessandro. 1991. “Research as an Experiment in Equality.” In Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History. Albany: SUNY Press, pp. 29-44.

Pulido, Laura. 2008. “FAQs: Frequently (Un)Asked Questions about Being a Scholar Activist.” In Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship, ed. Charles R. Hale. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 341-365.

Speed, Shannon. 2006. “At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology: Toward a Critically Engaged Activist Research.” American Anthropologist 108 (1):66.

Week 4: February 21 Prof. Ismael García-Colón (College of Staten Island & GC), History and Political Economy in Anthropology Mintz, Sidney W. 1998. “The Localization of Anthropological Practice: From Area Studies to Transnationalism.” Critique of Anthropology 18 (2): 117-133. Mintz, Sidney W. 2010. Chapter 1: “Caribbean Anthropology and History.” In Three Ancient Colonies: Caribbean Themes and Variations, 1-43. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Roseberry, William. 1988. Political Economy. Annual Review of Anthropology 17: 161-185. ------. 2002. Political Economy in the United States. In Culture, Economy, Power: Anthropology as Critique, Anthropology as Praxis, edited by Winne Lem and Belinda Leach, 59-72. Albany: State University of New York Press. Smith, Gavin. 2014. Introduction. In Intellectuals and (Counter-) Politics: Essays in Historical Realism, 1-23. New York: Berghahn.

Week 5: February 28. Four small-group discussions of ethnographies (only one required, others recommended) Biondi, Karina, 2016. Sharing This Walk: An Ethnography of Prison Life and the PCC in Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. (Electronic resource available through GC Library)

Daniel, E. Valentine. 1984. Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way. Berkeley: University of California Press

Gordillo, Gastón R. 2004. Landscapes of Devils: Tensions of Place and Memory in the Argentinean Chaco. Durham: Duke University Press.

Sider, Gerald. 2014. Skin for Skin: Death and Life for Inuit and Innu. Durham: Duke University Press.

Week 6: March 7 Prof. John Collins (Queens College & GC). What is Post-Interpretive Anthropology, and where has it Gone? Context, Meaning and Truth in Pragmatic Light Biehl, João and Peter Locke. “The Anthropology of Becoming.” In Unfinished: An Anthropology of Becoming. Durham: Duke University Press. 2017. 41-92.

Palmié, Stephan. 2015. “Historicist Knowledge and its Conditions of Impossibility.” In The Social Life of Spirits, Ruy Blanes & Diana Espirito Santo, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp. 218-240.

Egginton, William. 2010. “Of Baroque Holes and Baroque Folds.” In The Theater of Truth: The Ideology of (Neo)Baroque Aesthetics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 11-25. (Electronic resource available through GC Library)

Keane, Webb. 2005. “Signs are not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things.” In Materiality. Daniel Miller, ed. Durham: Duke University Press, 182-205.

Daniel, E. Valentine. 1993. “Tea Talk: Violent Measures in the Discursive Practices of Sri Lanka's Estate Tamils.” Comparative Studies in Society and History. 35(3): 568-600.

Peirce, C.S. “Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs” In Justus Buchler, ed. Philosophical Writings. New York: Dover Press, pp. 98-119 (It would be helpful to absorb this whole dense yet basic essay, but required reading goes only as far as p. 110, “Of thine eye I am eyebeam”).

Recommended

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1998. “Cosmological Deixis and Amazonian Perspectivism.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4: 469-88.

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2010. “Intensive Filiation and Demonic Alliance.” In Casper Bruun Jensen and Kjetil Rodje, eds. Deleuzian Intersections: Science, Technology, Anthropology. New York: Berghahn, 219-254.

Skafish, Peter. 2016. “The Metaphysics of Extra-Moderns: On the Decolonization of Thought” Common Knowledge 22(3): 393-414.

Week 7: March 14 Prof. Mandana Limbert (Queens College & GC), Oil, Energy, and Nation Appel, Hannah, Arthur Mason, and Michael Watts. 2015. “Introduction” In Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 1-26. Malm, Andreas and Alf Hornborg. 2013. “The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative” Anthropocene Review, 1(1): 63-69. Coronil, Fernando. 1997. “History’s Nature” In The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 21-66. Mitchell, Timothy. 2011. “Introduction” and “Machines of Democracy” in Carbon Democracy, New York: Verso Press, pp. 1-11 and 12-42. Szeman, Imre and Dominic Boyer. 2017. “Introduction: On the Energy Humanities” In Energy Humanities, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. xx-xx. White, Leslie. 1943. “Energy and the Evolution of Culture” American Anthropologist, 45(3): 335-356. 5

Recommended: Appel, Hannah, Arthur Mason, and Michael Watts, eds. 2015. Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Barak, On. 2014. “Three Watersheds in the History of Energy” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 34(3): 440-453. LeMenager, Stephanie. 2014. Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malm, Andreas. 2016. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, New York: Verso Press. Rogers, Douglas. 2015. “Oil and Anthropology” Annual Review of Anthropology, 44: 365-80.

Week 8: March 21 Discussion, Oil, Energy, and Nation Rogers, Douglas. 2015. The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, Culture after Socialism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Week 9: March 28 Prof. Yukiko Koga (Hunter College & GC), Post-colonialism/Post- imperialism Barlow, Tani E. 1997. “Introduction: On ‘Colonial Modernity’.” In Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, ed. Tani E. Barlow. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 1-20.

Coronil, Fernando, 2007. “After Empire: Reflections on Imperialism from the Americas.” In Imperial Formations, eds. Ann Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter C. Perdue. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, pp. 241-271.

Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 1-44. (Electronic resource available through GC Library)

Stoler, Ann Laura. 2013. “Preface” and “Introduction ‘The Rot Remains’: From Ruins to Ruination.” In Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination, ed. Ann Laura Stoler. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. ix-35.

April 11 NO CLASS. CUNY FOLLOWS FRIDAY SCHEDULE. Week 10: April 18 Discussion, Post-colonialism/Post-imperialism Koga, Yukiko. 2016. Inheritance of Loss: China, Japan, and the Political Economy of Redemption after Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Yoneyama, Lisa. 2016. Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes. Durham: Duke University Press.

Week 11: April 25 Prof. Christine Folch (Duke University, PhD GC 2012), Professionalization Folch, Christine. n.d. “Ph.D. Program Advice for the First Year of Grad School” and “How to go on the Academic Job Market,” manuscripts. Gusterson, Hugh. 2017. “Homework: Toward a Critical Ethnography of the University.” American Ethnologist 44 (3):435–50. Roseberry, William. 1996. “The Unbearable Lightness of Anthropology.” Radical History Review 65:5–25. Tilly, Charles. 2006. “Selecting a Dissertation Topic: Range and Scope.” Powerpoint. Recommended: Belcher, Wendy Laura. 2009. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications.

Dunleavy, Patrick. 2014. “Why Do Academics Choose Useless Titles for Articles and Chapters? Four Steps to Getting a Better Title.” LSE Impact Blog. February 5.

Interfolio. 2017. “Ask a Candidate: Where to Look for Faculty Jobs.”

Lanham, Richard. 2000. Revising Prose, 4th edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. McGranahan, Carole. 2015. “How a Professional Writer Improved My Academic Writing.” Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology. February 16.

Putnam, Lara. 2016. “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast.” American Historical Review 121 (2):377–402.

Zinsser, William. 2006. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, 7th edition. New York: HarperCollins (Parts I and II, other chapters recommended).

Week 12: May 2 Prof. Melissa Checker (Queens College & GC), Environmental Justice and Sustainability

Checker, Melissa 2007. “Wiped Out by the Greenwave: Environmental Gentrification and the Paradoxical Politics of Urban Sustainability,” City & Society, 23, no.2: 210–229.

Sodikoff, Genese Marie. 2004. “Land and Languor: Ethical Imaginations of Work and Forest in Northeast Madagascar.” History and Anthropology 15(4): 367-398.

Rademacher, Anne. 2015. “Urban Political Ecology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 44: 137- 152.

Week 13: May 9 Discussion, Environmental Justice and Sustainability Doane, Molly. 2012. Stealing Shining Rivers: Agrarian Conflict, Market Logic and Conservation in a Mexican Forest. Tucson University of Arizona Press. (Electronic resource available through GC Library) Petryna, Adriana. 2003. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Week 14: May 16 Discussion, Whither USA? Potentials and Limitations of Ethnography Alexander, Brian. 2017. Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Cramer, Katherine J. 2016. The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Week 15: May 23, final examination