Kinship, Making People, and Human Nature, Anth 157A

Kinship, Making People, and Human Nature, Anth 157A Tuesdays and Fridays 12:30 to 1:50 Daniel Souleles

Brown Social Science Center 322 [email protected] 703-888-7323

Office Hours Tuesdays 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM and by appointment

Studies of families, kinship systems, and reproduction are central to anthropology. Anthropology is the holistic and comparative study of all people at all times, everywhere (a modest ambit, that). And kinship studies—studies of what it means to be family, and how families grow and fracture, who counts as human in a particular society or in a particular culture system—are some of the best ways that anthropology can comment on what it means to be human, and what the extent and boundaries of variation in human families and society are. And anthropologists don’t just describe types and categories either. If done well they show what it means and feels to be otherwise.

And inevitably, when you’re talking about families, sex, and making new people, you run into orthodoxies and common sense understandings of how things must be. And for as long as anthropologists have been studying kinship, they’ve been picking fights with clergy, eugenicists, and economists, suggesting that human nature is not as predetermined, racist, or dismal as some might believe.

Kinship, Making People, and Human Nature, will have three portions: 1) big ideas, 2) sample studies, and 3) picking fights. In the course of their work students will have the opportunity to do genealogical and interview research related to course content.

Couse Objectives

1. Students will learn various anthropological approaches to the study of kinship, families, and reproduction. 2. Students will familiarize themselves with relevant cases in the study of kinship, families and reproduction. 3. Students will familiarize themselves with conflicts anthropologists have entered over the nature of human families and behavior. 4. Students will conduct field-based research assignments related to course material. 5. Students will write a research paper or a research proposal on a topic of their choosing relate to course material.

Assignments

1. Daily Reading Response 20% 2. Seminar Management 20% 3. Genealogical Interview 20% (3/1/2016) 4. Family Interview 20% (4/1/2016) 5. Research Paper/Proposal 20%

Reading Response: For each class you will prepare a paragraph length reading response, to be submitted on Latte no later than 8 AM the day before class. To take an example, if class is on Tuesday, the Monday prior you will submit a reading response by 8 AM that morning. These will be graded pass/fail. I will consider submitting 20 of 25 passing.

Seminar Management (20%): While I planned the course with the first option below in mind, on the first day of class we will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the below options and decide which will work best for our class.

We will divide up the course such that each student or pair of students will lead one week’s worth of class. In advance of their particular week, students will prepare a 1000-1200 word paper on the week’s readings, at least 10 discussion questions, and a 20 minute presentation (or two ten minute presentations). Students will send the paper to the instructor no later than 8 AM on the first day in which they are leading discussion, and distribute discussion question to the rest of class no later than 8 AM on the first day in which they are leading discussion. Students will then lead discussion.

I welcome office-hours meetings to talk through this part of the course.

It should go without saying (but won’t) that regardless of the week, students will do all reading and participate in each class substantively.

We will break the class into two groups who will alternate classes. On a given day we will go around the seminar table, and each student in turn will take five minutes to offer their thoughts on the reading. After the students have made a full round, the professor will act as discussant and the course discussion will proceed from there.

It should go without saying (but won’t) that regardless of the week, students will do all reading and participate in each class substantively.

We will break the class into three groups in which the group cycles between writing the discussion sections for the week ahead of time, acting as discussant for a set of questions they have written and another groups has written, or answering the questions that another group has written the week before. Three staggered groups, alternating weekly between Writing the next week’s discussion questions  acting as discussant for questions just written and  answering the questions that another group has written.

This will both make great discussion and require a bit of advance reading. -OR-

Students will evenly divide course sections among themselves such that each class will begin with a student reading a response paper and another student serving as discussant.

Genealogical Interview: You will collect a genealogy. You will then write a 600-1000 word field report to explain the chart you collected. You will also cite two readings from the syllabus. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do this—we’ll go over it in class and there will be a separate sheet explaining this in more depth.

Family Interview: You will conduct an open-ended, Spradley-style ethnographic interview with someone about their ideas family. You will then write a 600-1000 word field report on this interview. You will also cite two readings from the syllabus. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do this—we’ll go over it in class and there will be a separate sheet explaining this in more depth.

Research Paper/Proposal: Your final assignment for this course will either be a research paper on a topic of your choosing and of relevance to this class OR a research proposal suggesting a project you’d like to undertake in relation to a topic in this course. Should you choose to write a research paper be sure you have a clear thesis and a logical, evidence-rich argument proving it. Should you choose to write a research proposal be sure you have a background explanation, research questions and methods to answer them, and then suggestions as to the significance of this project. Either option should be between 1500 and 2000 words. This will be due one week after the last day of the course.

Grading

Each assignment will receive a letter grade (A 4 points, B 3 points, C 2 points, D 1 point, F 0 points); and your final grade will be a weighted average of your grade in the course.

Final Grade = (20% Reading Response) + (20% Ultimatum Game) + (20% Closet Inventory) + (20% Commodity Biography) + (20% Research Paper/Proposal)

Rewrites

Broadly speaking, grades get used in one of two ways—either as an indicator of some sort of innate intelligence or worth (grades as sorting and ranking of people—class rank, gpa, SAT score, etc.), or more narrowly as an indicator of how an individual did on a particular assignment (grades as communication on the progress of your intellectual apprenticeship, not necessarily tethered to who you are, just how you did). I do not like the first use of grades as I don’t accept a lot of the assumptions that underlie ranking people by virtue of academic performance. As such I try to make my grading policy one that allows you to both get honest feedback on a given assignment and to have the opportunity to improve should you so desire—model number two. Given this, you will be allowed to rewrite, as many times as you would like, any of the assignments in this class. I will fully explain every assignment and its rubric prior to its due date. I will make myself available via email and in office hours to discuss assignments. And I will give you comments explaining why your work is graded the way it is.

Should you find yourself dissatisfied with a grade, or simply wanting another crack at an assignment you can rewrite it. However a few constraints apply. In order to rewrite you will need to:  Wait one week from return of the assignment to submit a rewrite.  Talk to me about your rewrite, either over email, over the phone, or in person in office hours.  Submit your original draft with comments, your revised draft, and a rewrite cover sheet (available on Latte).

NB: I will accept no rewrites of regular course assignments after the last day of class—the class has to end sometime. NB: Should you wish to rewrite your final assignment: 1) I will accept no rewrites over the break between semesters, so 2) you will have the first 30 days of the subsequent semester to submit a rewrite. All other points apply.

Disability

If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me.

Mauss, Marcel 1979 Seasonal Variations of the Eskimos trans. James J. Fox. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Mead, Margaret 2001[1935] Sex and Temperament: In Three Primitive Societies New York: Harper Perrenial

Mckinnon, Susan 2005 Neo-Liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press

Sahlins, Marshall 1976 The Use and Abuse of Biology Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press

Sahlins, Marshall 2008 The Western Illusion of Human Nature Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press

Sahilns, Marshall 2013 What Kinship Is…And Is Not Chicago: University of Chicago Press Schneider, David 1968 American Kinship: A Cultural Account Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Stasch, Rupert 2009 Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan Place Berkeley: University of California Press

Schedule

Introduction

January 15: No reading, watch Furious 7. Directed by James Wan. Film.

January 19: Fox, Robin 1967 Introduction. In Kinship& Marriage Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Trautman, Thomas R., Gillian Feeley-Harnik, and John C. Mitani 2011 7. Deep Kinship. In Deep History The Architecture of Past and Present with Andrew Shyrock and Daniel Lord Smail. Berkeley: University of California Press

January 22: Carsten, J. 2004 1. Introduction: after kinship? In After Kinship Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Pp. 1-31 Bloch, Maurice 2005 9 Kinship and evolved psychological dispositions: the mother’s-brother’s controversy reconsidered. In Essays on Cultural Transmission London: Bloomsbury Academic Pp. 139-169

Descent

January 26: Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1952 I The Mother’s Brother in South Africa, IV On Joking Relationships Structure and Function in Primitive Society New York: Free Press

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1950 The Nuer of the Southern Sudan. In African Political Systems Meyer Fortes and E.E. Evans-Pritchard eds. London: International African Institute Pp. 272-297

January 29: Abu-Lughod, Lila 1999 2 Identity in Relationship. In Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society Berkeley: University of California Press

Alliance

February 2: Leach, Edmund E. 1970 6 The Elementary Structures of Kinship, pp 114-124. In Claude Lévi-Strauss Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1969 XXIX The Principles of Kinship. In The Elementary Structures of Kinship trans. James Harle Bell, John Richard von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham. Boston: Beacon Press February 5: Busby, C. 1997 Of Marriage and Marriageability: Gender and Dravidian Kinship. JRAI 3:21-42

February 9: Schneider, David 1968 American Kinship: A Cultural Account Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Distributed Reading)

February 12: Hudson, Sharon Elaine 2000 3 Identity and substance: the broadening bases of relatedness among the Nuer of southern Sudan. In Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Pp. 55-73

February 23: Laqueur, Thomas 1986 ‘Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of reproductive Biology’ in Representations, No. 14, pp. 1-41

February 26: Donnan, Hastings and Fiona Magowan 2010 1 Sexual Advances. In The Anthropology of Sex New York: Berg Pp. 1-23

March 1 (Genealogy Interview Due): Gell, Alfred 2011. On Love http://aotpres.com/articles/love/ Macfarlane, A. 1987. Love and Capitalism. In The culture of capitalistm. Oxford: Basil Blackwell pp. 123-43

March 4: Engels, Frederick 1972 II. The Family. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State New York: International Publishers Pp. 94-147

Mutuality

March 8: Sahilns, Marshall 2013 1. What Kinship Is—Culture. In What Kinship Is…And Is Not Chicago: University of Chicago Press

March 11: Sahilns, Marshall 2013 2. What Kinship Is Not. In What Kinship Is…And Is Not Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Queering Kinship

March 15: Weston, Kath 1997 1. The Monkey Cage and the Red Desoto 5. Families We Choose 7. Parenting in the Age of Aids Families we Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship New York: Columbia University Press Pp. 1-21, 103-137, and 165-188 March 18: Lewin, Ellen 2009 4 Our Own Families. In Gay Fatherhood: Narratives and Citizenship in America Chicago: University of Chicago Press Pp. 98-124

Valentine, David 2007 2 Making Community. In Imagining Transgender Durham: Duke University Press Pp. 71-104

Studies

March 22: Mauss, Marcel 1979 Seasonal Variations of the Eskimos trans. James J. Fox. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

March 29: Mead, Margaret 2001[1935] Sex and Temperament: In Three Primitive Societies New York: Harper Perrenial

Newton, Esther 2000 Introduction. In Margaret Mead made me gay: persona essays, public ideas Durham: Duke University Press Pp. 1-8

April 1 (Family Interview Due): Mead ctd.

April 5: Stasch, Rupert 2009 Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan Place Berkeley: University of California Press

April 8: Stasch ctd.

Picking Fights

Evolutionary Psychologists

April 12: Buss, David M. 1988 5. Love Acts: The Evolutionary Biology of Love. In The Psychology of Love, edited by Robert J. Sternberg and Michael L. Barnes. New Haven: Yale University Press pp. 100-118

Thornhill, Randy 2000 Preface 1. Rape and Evolutionary Theory. 3. Why do Men Rape In A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion Cambridge: MIT Press Pp. xi-xv, 1-31, and 53-85

April 15: Helmreich, Stefan and Heather Paxson 2005 10 Sex on the Brain: A Natural History of Rape and the Dubious Doctrines of Evolutionary Psychology. In Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back Berkeley: University of California Press

Mckinnon, Susan 2005 Neo-Liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press

Socio-biologists April 19: Wilson, E.O. 1975 1. The Morality of a Gene, 2. Elementary Concepts of Sociobiology, 5. Group Selection and Altruism, 15. Sex and Society, 27. Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology. in Sociobiology: The New Synthesis Cambridge: Harvard University Press

Wilson, E.O. 1976 Academic vigilantism and the political significance of sociobiology Bio Science 26:183, 187-190

Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer 1999 Preface. In Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection. New York: Pantheon Books Pp. xi-xix

April 21: Sahlins, Marshall 1976 The Use and Abuse of Biology Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press

Sahlins, Marshall 2008 The Western Illusion of Human Nature Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press