Prof. Carolyn Brown Heinz Contact:
898-4094 or
Office:
Office Hours: M-F,
This is a graduate seminar in cultural
anthropology theory. Students are expected to have a strong background in
anthropology and the ability to participate in sustained intellectual
discussion around central issues of cultural theory, whatever sub-specialization
they pursue in the discipline.
In the 1970s Clifford Geertz radically
refigured culture theory in anthropology and in the process repositioned
anthropology in the social sciences and humanities, moving our discipline from
of its exotic corner to near the center of intellectual life. Arguing that
culture must be seen as “webs of meaning” within which humans must live, he
shifted anthropology from the scientism of the 1950s and 1960s to a more
interpretive and humanist mode of research and analysis. Anthropology became a
source of theoretical inspiration for history and literature, as those
disciplines came to look more and more like anthropology.
And yet, as the title of one contemporary text reads, at
century’s end culture theory may be “in near ruins.” Was it because of the course direction set by
Geertz? Was it because of cross-currents encountered in the last 25
years—currents going by the name of post-modernism, post-structuralism,
post-colonialism? Was culture theory undone by the critical self-examination of
anthropological modes of representation that absorbed the 1980s? Was it undone
by changes in the world itself, by globalization and multiculturalism? Or was
the culture concept flawed to begin with? How should anthropology’s work be
defined today? How should theory be re-configured now? Do we live in a
post-theoretical world? Or even in a post-disciplinary one? Why are historians,
philosophers, and English professors on the reading list? Who are anthropology’s nearest intellectual kinsmen now?
The purpose of this seminar is to
understand these trends by reading and discussing a selection of the major
works that embody them. A few names will recur: Geertz, Clifford, Marcus, Crapanzano, Rabinow, Ortner, Dirks, Bourdieu, Appadurai,
Abu-Lughod, Rosaldo.
Other names cast large shadows from outside the discipline: Foucault, Bourdieu,
Said, Gramsci. One
characteristic of the current times is that these new trends don’t sort
themselves out into schools or followers of one theorist or another. Everyone
is now eclectic. This means that our intellectual work of the semester will not
be about getting a particular theory clear, but understanding the various
strands and themes, how they interconnect and conflict. We aim for fluency in
the complex discourse of contemporary theory. Each member of the seminar should
both develop a growing mastery of these issues and find his or her own voice on
them.
Seminar participants will be
responsible for all the readings, for one-page reflections on each of them, for
leading sessions, and for a major seminar paper and presentation toward the end
of the semester.
Clifford Geertz, 1973, The
Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books.
Pierre Bourdieu, 1990 [1980], The
Logic of Practice,
Paul Rabinow, Ed., 1984, Foucault
Reader, Pantheon Books.
James Clifford and George Marcus, Eds., 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography.
Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, Sherry B. Ortner, Eds.,
1994. Culture/Power/History; A Reader in
Contemporary Social Theory.
There are 2 or 3 additional readings that will be available
by Xerox.
|
week of: |
MONDAY |
WEDNESDAY |
|
Jan 27 |
Introduction to course |
Ortner,
C/P/H, “Theory since the 60s” pp. 372-411 |
|
Feb 3 |
Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures “Thick Description” & “The Cerebral Savage” [ch 1 & 13] |
Geertz, “Deep Play” & “Person, Time, & Culture” [chs. 14 & 15] |
|
Feb 10 |
Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System” & “Ritual and
Social Change, A Javanese Example” [chs. 4 & 6] |
Bourdieu, “Structures, Habitus,
Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power” C/P/H [pp 155-199] |
|
Feb 17 |
Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice Chapters 1-5 [pp 1 – 65] |
Bourdieu, chapters 6-9 [pp. 66-142] |
|
Feb 24 |
Bourdieu, Book II, chapters 1-2 [pp. 143-199] |
Bourdieu, Book II, ch. 3 [pp.
200-270] |
|
Mar 3 |
Foucault, C/P/H, “Two Lectures,” pp. 200-221 |
Foucault Reader “Introduction” “Truth & Power” “Nietsche” [pp. 1-30, 51-100] |
|
Mar 10 |
Foucault, “Madness & Civilization” [pp. 123-168] |
Foucault, “Disciplines & Sciences of the Individual”
[169-256] |
|
Mar 17 |
S P R I N G B R E A K |
|
|
Mar 24 |
Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography Clifford,
“Introduction: Partial Truths”
Pratt, “Fieldwork in Common Places” |
Crapanzano,
“Hermes’ Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographic Description” Renato Rosaldo, “From the Door of His Tent: The Fieldworker and
the Inquisitor” |
|
Mar 31 |
James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Allegory” |
Asad, “The
Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anth” Marcus, “Contemporary Problems of Ethnography in the
Modern World System” |
|
Apr 7 |
Fischer, “Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory” Rabinow,
“Representations are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-Modernity in
Anthropology” |
Said, “From Orientalism”
[packet] Appadurai,
“Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a
Transnational Anthropology” [packet] |
|
Apr 14 |
Culture/Power/History: A Reader
in Contemporary Social Theory Dirks, Eley, and Ortner, “Introduction” |
Haraway,
“Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, NYC, 1908-1936” pp
49-95 Bennett, “The Exhibitionary
Complex” pp. 123-154 |
|
Apr 21 |
Alcoff,
“Cultural Feminism vs Post-Structuralism: The
Identity Crisis,” pp 96-122 Alexander, “Women, Class and Sexual Differences in the
1830s and 1840s: Some Reflections on the Writing |
Hebdige,
“After the Masses,” pp 222-235 Gates, “Authority (White) Power and the (Black) Critic;
It’s All Greek to Me” pp. 247-268 |
|
Apr 28 |
Greenblatt, “The
Circulation of Social Energy” [504-519] |
TBA – post-9/11 critiques of postmodernism |
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May 5 |
P A P E R P R E S E N T A T I O N S |
|
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May 12 |
P A P E R P R E S E N T A T I O N S |
|
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May 19 |
F I N A L S W E E K |
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Course
Requirements and Student Responsibilities:
A good seminar accumulates an agenda of ideas as it goes.
It picks up steam; it builds; it grows in complexity. It gets somewhere that
could not have been exactly predicted at the outset but is nevertheless felt to
be a worthwhile trajectory by most members. It is, moreover, a collective
effort. It only happens through the intentional agency of its members, who are
active, not passive, players. The professor doesn’t make it happen; the
participants make it happen.
I’ll be discussing ways of making discussions work early in
the semester. Obviously, each student’s experience and confidence levels will
vary, but a few general ground rules for the course can be laid out:
At the end of each class session, I will assign
participation points for each member using the following system:
5 – made
very strong and valued contributions; outstanding for this day [this score will
not be granted often to anybody]
4 – made
good comments; posed questions that generated some excitement; made connections
that no one else had thought of; contributed to forward motion of the course
3 – Raised or contributed to
issues in a confident and sustained way
2 – Spoke briefly with an
appropriate comment, or at greater length with less
relevance
1 – present
and awake, but made no contribution
0 - absent
Good discussions need starting points, and that’s one of
the purposes of the position papers. Each week, generally by Thursday evening,
the discussion questions for each of the readings for the following week will
emailed to you. These should be responded to in one single-spaced page each
[i.e., 2 to 4 single-spaced pages a week, depending on the material].
Bring them to class with you on the assigned day and turn them in at the end of
the day. These will be graded on a 5-point scale, where the points mean:
5 – “Transparent.” Easy to
understand the argument being made, which does a good job of connecting with
the main ideas of the reading to which they pertain.
4 – “Semi-transparent.” Not quite
clear where you are going at several points, perhaps because your writing style
interferes, or because you may not have quite understood the article, or
haven’t fully clarified your own thoughts, but in general close to the mark.
3 – “Turgid.” Really hard to know
what you mean.
2 – “Shallow.” Pretty clear you
didn’t have time to do this one.
1 – “Please do over.” [This isn’t
an invitation to replace a 1 with a 5 done at leisure; I will circle the 1 to
indicate that the obligation has been met, which will be better than a set of
1’s not circled.]
Approximately half of the sessions will be led by student
discussion leaders. Your role as discussion leader is to launch the discussion
and keep it going, keep it lively, move it along. The patterns for these
sessions will emerge in the first few weeks; you should pick it up and learn to
lead.
At the same time as participating in the lengthy seminar
sessions, each person will also write a paper on a topic that related their own
personal work and interests to the topics of the seminar. Each student will write a 15-20 page paper
on a topic relating to the issues of this course. I do not wish to make
suggestions about topics; part of your professional growth is to develop ideas
on your own; you should begin to set a course of scholarly topics that interest
you and that you wish to further develop as part of your own intellectual
trajectory. So this is a professional paper you are writing. You may take your
time to decide what the topic is going to be, but should be pinning things down
by spring break and finished by the last week of classes. I am, of course,
happy to discuss the topic with you, and we will also discuss them in class.
They will be evaluated on 1) how richly they connect to the issues of the
course, 2) how well-developed they are as scholarly papers [quality and merit
of argument; complexity and relevance to contemporary culture theory], 3) how
close to perfect the “scholarly apparatus” [format, mechanics, bibliography].
Class Presentation. For the class presentation of your paper, you
should write a one-page, single-spaced summary to distribute during the
previous class session. Each member of the class will then be able to read a
preview in advance and come to class prepared to listen to and then discuss
your paper.
Exams
There are no exams for this course.
Your overall grade for this course will be based on three
main evaluations:
•
Quality of participation in seminar - 30%
•
Quality of position papers – 30%
•
Quality of final paper and its presentation – 40%
It is
recommended that students make and keep a copy of all assignments and papers
submitted to the instructor.