Postgraduate Course: Anthropological Theory (PGSP11172)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Postgrad (School of Social and Political Studies) |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | This course aims to give a deeper grounding in contemporary social anthropology. In charting how society and culture are being theorized, we reflect on forms of theoretical knowledge and ethnographic sensibilities that are relevant today, and assess the stakes for a future anthropology. The course first introduces three of the most important strands of 'grand theory' (Boas&©s theory of culture, Marx&©s theory of ideology, and Claude Lévi-Strauss' structuralism). It then discusses three theorists who have reworked these grand theories in their own distinctive ways: Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Bruno Latour. In the last two lectures, we move away from examining the work of particular theorists, to consider how anthropological theory has also been profoundly affected by two broader social and political movements: feminism and post-colonialism. Each week, the lecture introduces the theory and leads to a joint discussion. The tutorials focus on how each strand of theory has informed and engendered different kinds of ethnographic writing. This course is not a comprehensive history of anthropological theory: there is very little reference, for example, to British anthropology in the mid-twentieth century or to earlier influential ideas like evolutionism or diffusionism. Instead, it works like a genealogy, by taking anthropological debates at the beginning of the 21st century as a starting-point for a re-reading of thinkers of the past century. The students' own first-hand reading and creative engagement with theoretical thought is the main aim of this course. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2011/12 Semester 1, Available to all students (SV1)
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WebCT enabled: Yes |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| No Classes have been defined for this Course |
| First Class |
First class information not currently available |
| No Exam Information |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
| By the end of the course, students should have a confident grasp of the main trends in anthropological theory that are influential today. They should have read a number of pieces by a range of theorists, and be capable of providing a critical account of anthropological theorists and the intellectual context in which they worked. They should be able to relate the application of those theories in existing ethnographic writing and be able to draw upon them in thinking about future ethnographic research. |
Assessment Information
| 4000 word essay |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Introduction and Overview
The first session introduces the big themes of the semester: what is "anthropological theory"? What is the relation between theory and ethnographic writing? What do we need theory for? We discuss, in broad strokes, the rise and fall of grand theories such as Marxism and structuralism, raising the critical question if all these '-isms' have turned into '-wasms' or not. We will also sort out various practical issues for the term, including support group work, assessment requirements, and reading expectations.
Culture: Boas, Sapir, and Beyond
In this lecture, we explore the beginnings of anthropology in the U.S. through the writings of Franz Boas and his student Edward Sapir. In particular, we will focus on the relation of early American anthropology to the concept of $ùculture&©, a term which continues to be central to both popular and anthropological thinking without anybody being quite sure what it means.
Ideology: Marx, Althusser, and Beyond
In this lecture we will explore the enduring influence of Karl Marx whose writings can genuinely be said to have changed the world. In particular, we shall focus on Marx&©s rather ambiguous understanding of $ùideology&©, a concept which despite various transformations continues to be of central importance to anthropological inquiry.
Structure: Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, and Beyond
In this lecture we will be exploring the concept of structure in the work of Lévi-Strauss. In particular, we will explore how myth, unrestrained by the demands of the material world, offer a privileged realm in which to observe the unending structural transformations of the human imagination.
Latour: Beyond the Nature/Culture Dichotomy
This week we shall be exploring the work of Bruno Latour and its implications for the anthropological project. In particular, we shall focus on his critiques of the anthropocentrism characteristic of Western approaches to both natural and social sciences.
Bourdieu: a Different Style of Reflexivity
Pierre Bourdieu has been one of the most influential post-structural theorists in anthropology. This week we will concentrate on his understanding of the meaning of 'reflexivity' and its practical implications (and limitations) as an approach to anthropological analysis, while also attempting a student-friendly introduction to this important but difficult writer.
Foucault: Power and the Body
Michel Foucault has been probably the single most important social theorist of the last twenty years, whose work has been enormously influential across the humanities and social sciences. This week we will attempt a number of tasks: getting a sense of Foucault's key ideas about knowledge, power, the body, and the modern; considering their implications for anthropology (as well as the kinds of criticism anthropologists have made of Foucault); and contrasting the late Foucault's perspective on the self, with the more implacable arguments of his middle years on disciplinary power.
Feminism and Anthropology
Of all the social and cultural movements which could be said to have 'destabilized' anthropology as an intellectual project in the 1980s and 1990s, feminism was the most prominent and most important. The feminist critique did not simply require academics to acknowledge the role of women in society and the gendered nature of power, more profoundly it called in to questions many of the categories and dualisms that had been fundamental to social scientific thought: the distinctions between the body and society, nature and culture and, of course, women and men. This week we will look at the tension between feminism as a cultural/political project and feminism as an intellectual movement, and ask where does this leave anthropology?
Critical Histories & Postcolonialism
Over the past two decades few areas of the social and cultural sciences have produced such a plethora of academic prose as colonial and postcolonial studies. Emerging from and responding to the intellectual ferment of the post-war politics of decolonisation and the assertion of new nationalisms in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, postcolonial theory has grown into a diverse and sometimes difficult body of theoretical writing. Although this theorising is often abstract and indeed has oft been criticised for a lack of attention to historical and ethnographic realities, the critical project of postcolonial studies has had a profound influence on anthropology. The effects of this influence have been various, but perhaps the most enduring legacy has been a renewed interest in history and, in particular, a historiography of culture, power and identity in the colonial and postcolonial milieus. Beginning with an exploration of the colonial processes of $ùothering&© and the politics of representation, the lecture will also consider how notions of colonial and post mimicry, hybridity, derivative discourses influenced the forging of anti-colonial nationalisms, finishing with a consideration of some recent influential work on the politics of postcolony. This lecture will focus particularly on the works of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Partha Chatterjee, and Achille Mbembe. |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Nash, J. 1997. When Isms Become Wasms: Structural Functionalism, Marxism, Feminism And Post-Modernism. Critique of Anthropology 17(1): 11-32.
Ortner, S. 1984. Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(1):126-166
Boas, F. 1974. The Aims of Ethnology. In A Franz Boas Reader: the Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. GN6 Boa
Stocking, G. 1982. Franz Boas and the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective. In Race, Culture, and Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. GN325 Sto
Orta, A. 2004. The Promise of Particularism and the Theology of Culture: Limits and Lessons of &«Neo-Boasianism.&ª American Anthropologist, Vol. 106 (3): 473-487.
Marx, K. 1970. The German Ideology. London: Lawrence & Wishart. HX276 Mar
Althusser, L. 1971. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays. London: NLB. B2430.A473 Alt
Asad, T. 1979. Anthropology and the Analysis of Ideology. Man, Vol.14, No.4: 607-627 (www.jstor.org)
Tutorial reading:
Taussig, M. 1977. The Genesis of Capitalism amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil&©s Labor and the Baptism of Money. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.19, No.2: 130-155. (www.jstor.org)
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1967. Four Winnebago Myths. In Myth and Cosmos: Readings in Mythology and Symbolism (ed.) J. Middleton. New York: The Natural History Press. BL313 Myt. (also available in Lévi-Strauss&©s Structural Anthropology: Vol.2. GN362 Lev)
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1972. Overture. In The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. BL304 Lev
Gow, P. 2001. Introduction. An Amazonian Myth and Its History. Oxford: Oxford University press. F3430. 1. P5 Gow.
Latour, B. 1993. Ch.4 Relativism, in We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Q175.5 Lat
Latour, B. Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Door Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by Wiebe E. Bijker & John Law, MIT Press, USA, 1992, pp. 225-258.
Nadasdy, P. 2007. The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and Human-Animal Sociality. American Ethnologist 34(1): 25-43.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity (chapters 3&4: Structures, Habitus, Practices AND Belief and the Body, pp. 52-79)
Foucault, M 1977 Docile Bodies' in M Foucault Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Harmondsworth: Penguin. 135-169
Laidlaw, J. 2002. Towards an Anthropology of Freedom and Ethics. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute n.s. 8 (2): 311-332
Strathern, M. 1987. 'An Awkward Relationship: the Case of Feminism and Anthropology' Signs 12 (2): 276-92
Mahmood, S. 2001. Feminist Theory, embodiment, and the docile agent: some reflections on the Egyptian Islamic revival. Cultural Anthropology 16 (2): 202-36
Said, E. 1985 [1978]. Orientalism. London: Penguin. In particular the Introduction.
Bhabha, H. 1984. Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse
October 28, Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis: 125-133
Also published as Chapter 4 in The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. 85-92
Sahlins, M. 1999 Two or three things I know about culture Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute n.s. 5(3): 399-421
Carrithers, M. 2005.Anthropology as a Moral Science of Possibilities Current Anthropology 46: 433-456
Dirks, N., G. Eley and S. Ortner Introduction: Culture/Power/History in Dirks, Eley and Ortner (eds) 1992 Culture/Power/History. Princeton: UP
Kuper, A. 1994 Culture, identity and the project of a cosmopolitan anthropology Man 29 (3): 537-54. |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
In the main session, most weeks will involve a mixture of whole-class lecture, discussions and small-group work. You will be allocated a group for the term in the first session.
Support Groups
MSc students will meet in a single group. The group will meet weekly from Week 2. Attendance and active participation in the support group sessions is compulsory. All students must do the reading before each meeting.
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| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Joost Fontein
Tel: 07753306778
Email: j.fontein@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Clare Nisbet
Tel:
Email: Clare.Nisbet@ed.ac.uk |
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