Post-Modernism?

Need one say (or ask) more?

Symbolic/Interpretive Anthropology

Symbolic/Interpretive Anthropology always seems to find its way into current discussions of anthropology.  Is it a post-modern thing?  The following classics, particularly the Cockfight article, are great illustrations on the genre.

-Mary Douglas, External Boundaries (1966)
-Victor Turner, Symbols in Ndembu Ritual (1967)
-Clifford Geertz, Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight (1973)

The Feminist Critique

Is Feminism postmodern?
Who in Antonio Gramnci?
Antonio_Gramsci

Any comments on some classics in this area:
Anthropology and Gender: The Feminist Critique
-Sally Slocum, Woman the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology (1975)
-Eleanor Leacock, Interpreting the Origins of Gender Inequality: Conceptual and Historical Problems (1983)
-Ann L. Stoler, Making Empire Respectable: the Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-Century Colonial Cultures (1989)

Paul Rabinow’s “Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco”

Ive been re-reading Rabinow of late.  I love the wikipedia on him since it changes often.

Any thoughts on the first few chapters?

A colleague, merrily mccarthy, stated the following.
Do you agree?

Ibrahim Rabinow some new ways to use language that perhaps Rabinow had not previously experienced. Perhaps the importance and subtlety of a language might be more appreciated by everyone after reading through chapter two. I would be fairly certain Ibrahim is not the only person in the world that uses language to confuse, confabulate or confound someone other than someones own native speaker. Perhaps it has more to do with ancient rituals of survival as these techniques integrate into modern society that keeps humans perpetuating devious linguistic techniques. Using language to dominate, rule or control is not a technique exclusive to the Arab Moroccan culture, anymore than it is exclusive to another culture that learns or figures out to use language for more than mere innocent simple human communication.

Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, and Behavioral Ecology

Nature vs Nurture is a classic Debate.  Which side are you on?

Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, and Behavioral Ecology

Edward O. Wilson, “The Morality of the Gene” (1975)

Jerome Barkow, “The Elastic Between Genes and Culture” (1989)

Rebecca Bliege Bird, Eric Alden Smith, and Douglas W. Bird, “The hunting handicap: costly signaling in human foraging strategies” (2001)

Ethnoscience and Cognitive Anthropology

Cognitive Anthropology has played a major role in many cross-disciplinary efforts.  Why might that be the case?

What role does “Ethnoscience and Cognitive Anthropology” play in today’s world?

-Harold C. Conklin, “Hanunóo Color Categories” (1955)

-Stephen A. Tyler, “Introduction to Cognitive Anthropology” (1969)

- Claudia Strauss. “What makes Tony run: Schemas as motives reconsidered” (1992)

You are “full of skit” skit guide

Here is a guide to skit development.  Use these as a rough draft to develop some of your own.  Mark and Patricia are the captains of the two teams you will break into. -jim

This is an evolving assignment that dates back a few years. Here is the current semester version of it. You are free to make changes, and not all of these have to be done. However, everyone should have a role to play.

Form groups of 5 or 6 students to compose and perform an approximately 15 minute skit in which key theorists from the course are portrayed. Use a plot that facilitates the presentation of their ideas.

The plots of the skits could go in several ways. The key to all of them is that the theorists in question get a chance to express their views clearly in the dialogue. You might dream up a novel plot, or “rip off” a pre-existing plot; either way is fine. Standard plots that might work include:

• Guests attend a dinner party; one of the guests is murdered. Sorting out who done it would provide opportunities for a detective character to interrogate various guests and try to find the one with the best motive, maybe the one with the most theoretical differences with the murdered guest…
• A group of people is shipwrecked on a deserted island and must work out a way to survive the island, and each other. Better still, it turns out that there are “natives” on the island… “Survivor,” “Lost,” and so on are all open game!
• A Roast of the Theoretical Stars
• You are gods on a new worlds; gods at war
• The theoretical dating game
• Holy war; made up of theoretical tropes
• Soap Opera “Desperate Theorists”
• Super Hero, justice league, Heroes vs Villains
• Singles Bar
• Home of the soon to die –
• 1950s sitcom
• Leave it to Beaver with Ruth & Margaret

Anachronism and general creativity will obviously be necessary, since most of the theorists involved in the skits were not contemporaries. Feel free to play around with the details of who, what, when, where, etc., but DO pay attention to representing the ideas of the theorists accurately. Costumes, props, etc., really help to convey the messages of your skits.

Group 1: Steward (cultural ecology) and Leacock (feminist anthropology)

Key tension: Steward was notorious for ignoring gender in his analysis, while Leacock and other feminist anthropologists maintain that gender is a central issue in any sociocultural analysis. On the other hand, both Steward and Leacock were materialists, so they do have some common ground.

Group 2: Morgan (unilineal evolutionism) and Boas (historical particularism)

Key tension: Morgan and other UEs envisioned a progression of societies from primitive to civilized, while Boas argued that such a scale is inherently evaluative and, anyway, not supported by the evidence. The tension is between a form of “ethnocentric anthropology,” and the father of modern cultural relativism.

Group 3: Wolf (political economy) and Geertz (symbolic anthropology)

Key tension: Wolf was a materialist and Marxist, while Geertz emphasized the primacy of “symbols and meanings” in defining and driving human life; he has been often criticized for lack of attention to the power inequalities that are central to political economy. Also, Wolf was interested in large-scale interconnections, while Geertz was known for a rather tight focus on particular cultures. There is a lot to work with here.

Group 4: Steward (cultural ecology) and a representative of post-modernism

Key tension: Steward had a strong commitment to anthropology as a science and to finding cause-effect relationships with a particular emphasis on materialism. Post-modernists (depending on the particular type) would question the assumptions that underlie a science of humanity, attack the certainty with which Steward drew his conclusions, and emphasize biases inherent in anthropological work.

Group 5: Mead, Ortner (structuralism and feminism), Leacock (anthro and gender) Lila Abu-Lughod (postmodernism), Aihwa Ong (postmodernism), and any one of the males we have studied.

Tension: Bearded or moutacheoed, perhaps, but on this occasion outnumbered, he at lasts decides to listen, really listen, to what the women anthropologists have to say. Where are they? A desert island? A dinner party? Witnesses to a headhunter’s rage? Held hostage by religious radicals? Delegates to the Democratic Party National Convention? How do their differences play out? See if you can do this without making the male the center of attention—I think there are more tensions among the women, but they may argue it out using him as the audience.

Structuralism

What is Structuralism?

How is structuralism still present in analysis today?

Is “neo-structuralism” an effective description?

- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology (1963)

- Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Four Winnebago Myths” (1960)

-Sherry Ortner, Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? (1974)

-Saussure excerpts from Course of Linguistics

Materialism: Evolutionary, Functionalist and Ecological

How is Marx present in the “Materialism: Evolutionary, Functionalist and Ecological Traditions?

-Morton Fried, On the Evolution of Social Stratification and the State (1960)

-Marvin Harris, The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle (1966)

-Philippe Bourgois, “From Jibaro to Crack Dealer: Confronting the Restructuring of Capitalism in El Barrio” (1995)

Cultural Ecology and Neo-Evolutionary Thought

What is the significance of the “Cultural Ecology and Neo-Evolutionary Thought” tradition?

How was it “neo-evolutionary”?

-Julian Steward, “The Patrilineal Band” (1955)
-Leslie White, “Energy and the Evolution of Culture” (1943)
-George P. Murdock, “Family Stability in Non-European Cultures” (1950)

Culture and Personality?

What was the impact of the “Culture and Personality” tradition?  Is it still present?  Is it overly psychological?

-Ruth Benedict, Psychological Types in the Cultures of the Southwest (1930)

-Margaret Mead, Introduction to Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)

Functionalism-Does it still Function?

Functionalism
-Bronislaw Malinowski, The Essentials of the Kula (1922)
-A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Mother’s Brother in South Africa. (1924)
-E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer of the Southern Sudan (1940)
-Gluckman, Licence in Ritual (1956)

Is functionalism still influential in anthropological theory today?
How about Malinowski? Is his notion of ethnography still useful?

Historical Particularism

Historical Particularism
-Franz Boas, The Methods of Ethnology (1920)
-Alfred Louis Kroeber, Eighteen Professions (1915)
-Paul Radin, Right and Wrong (1927)
-Benjamin Whorf, The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language (1939)

Boas’ influence on American Anthro is very evident; Whorf’s is far less evident. Any idea as to why?

Nineteenth-Century Evolutionism

Nineteenth-Century Evolutionism

This was a period in science and human thought that affected great changes in how people understand the world and human development.

Notable people of this era include:

Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace,

Herbert Spencer,

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor,

Lewis Henry Morgan,

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Notable publications include:

-Herbert Spencer, The Social Organism (1860)
-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook (1845-1846)
-Edward Burnett Tylor, Science of Culture (1871)

-Lewis Henry Morgan-Lewis Henry Morgan, Ethnical Periods (1877)(link to article)

Link to Discussion of Morgan’s Ethnical Periods here

Are Qualitative Methods Valuable?

I found a great link listing ones skills at the close of such a course.

http://www.cyber-anthro.com/?p=42#comment-32

Thanks to Cyber-Antho