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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2011/2012
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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Social and Political Science : Social Anthropology

Postgraduate Course: The Invention of History (SCAN11008)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Social and Political Science CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Course typeStandard AvailabilityAvailable to all students
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) Credits20
Home subject areaSocial Anthropology Other subject areaNone
Course website None Taught in Gaelic?No
Course descriptionThe past is 'everywhere a battlefield of rival attachments' - an arena fraught with contestation and dispute. Picking up this cue this course examines the politics of history, memory, and the past. It begins by examining time, and way in which notions of time and history have been central both to the development of social anthropology as a discipline and to wider, racialised discourses about others in colonial contexts. Engaging with a growing body of anthropological work, and research done in related disciplines, which has emphasised the social construction of the past, it looks at how the past it is understood, experienced, remembered and represented in different ethnographic contexts in the present. Memory, history, and 'oral traditions' will be examined as different but related means of understanding, representing and politicising the past, alongside other, less discursive means of relating to the past, such as through performance, rituals, objects and landscape. Engaging with more recent arguments that have emphasised the limits to the 'invention' of history, the course will consider how the study of 'the past' inevitably involves not only notions of time and temporality, but also of space, place and landscape. The politics of the past is in no way limited to how we understand or represent it; it is also finely related to questions of what to do with its materiality - in the form of archaeological remains, heritage sites, monuments and memorials. With reference to a variety of empirical examples and broader theoretical trends, lectures will explore the politics of the past through the following topics: Time and denial of co-evilness; nationalism and identity; memory and forgetting; commemoration and memorials; heritage and museums; landscape and place.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Additional Costs None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus?Yes
Course Delivery Information
Delivery period: 2011/12 Semester 2, Available to all students (SV1) WebCT enabled:  Yes Quota:  None
Location Activity Description Weeks Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
CentralLectureRoom 11.01, David Hume Tower1-11 16:10 - 18:00
First Class First class information not currently available
No Exam Information
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
Advanced knowledge and understanding of:
(i) the way the past is imagined, constructed and contested through the processes of history, memory and commemoration; (ii) the role that ideas and knowledge of the past play in the complex politics of identity and state-making, in colonial, postcolonial and nationalist contexts;
(iii) how place & space, landscape, objects, bodies and things (in discursive and material ways), can enable and limit the imagination of the past;
(iv) the ways in which notions of the past inform, enable, and limit the means through which landscape, objects and heritage are understood, engaged with, and managed;
(v) the way in which struggles over place and the past are both inscribed in and produce or constitute space/place, landscape, ritual and artifacts.
Assessment Information
This course will be assessed by a long essay (word-limit: 4,000).
Special Arrangements
None
Additional Information
Academic description Not entered
Syllabus Week 1: History, anthropology and the politics of the past
The first lecture, as an introduction to the course, will begin by considering the place of history in anthropology, before turning to Fabian's important argument about the way anthropology has used time to construct its 'other', as a way of introducing 'the politics of the past' which will a recurrent theme throughout the course

Week 2: The invention of tradition & the limits there of.
In this lecture we will look at the impact of Hobsbawm and Ranger's (1983) well known edited collection, "The Invention of Tradition" from which the course gets its name, and examine some of the critiques that have emerged, as historians and Anthropologists have increasingly recognised the 'limits of invention'.

Week 3: The Past in the service of Colonialism & Nationalism
Following on from the previous lecture, in this lecture we will discuss how 're-invented' and 're-imagined' pasts, particularly as provided by archaeology, have been used to both provided legitimacy for colonialism, and for anti-colonial nationalist movements.

Week 4: Commemoration & forgetting
In this final lecture, we will focus on the relationship between memory, forgetting and the material world by looking at remembrance and commemoration.

Week 5: Heritage & Museums
This week we will return to some of the issues considered in week 3, but with the additional perspectives on landscape and memory that subsequent lectures offered, in order to consider how not only the representation of the past, but the management of its material remains as 'Heritage' is often subject to intense political contestation and dispute.

Week 6: Reading week no lecture

Week 7: Memory, ritual, ancestors & kinship
In this lecture we will consider other ways of relating to past, concentrating particularly on ritual, ancestors, and the interconnectedness of kinship and memory.

Week 8: Landscape, Memory & the past
This week we focus on the relationship between landscape and the past.

Week 9: Objects, Artefacts & Bones
This lecture explore the relationship between objects and artefacts and the past, focusing particular attention upon bones and human remains as particular emotive, affective and indeed 'peculiar' kinds of object/subjects.

Week 10: Ruins, affect and ruination
In this last lecture we will consider recent approaches to affect through the burgeoning literature on ruins and ruination.

Week 11: Review of course
Transferable skills Not entered
Reading list Some Sample Readings for the course:
Cohn B. 1980 "History & anthropology: the state of play" in Comparative Studies in Society & History
Faubion J.D. 1993 "History in anthropology" Annual Review of Anthropology 22: 35-54
Fabian 1983 Time & the Other New York: Colombia University Press
Bond G.C & Gillian A. 1994 "Introduction" in The social construction of the Past London: Routledge.
Comaroff j. & Comaroff J. 1992 Ethnography and the historical imagination Oxford: Westview Press
A. Appadurai 1980 "The past is a scarce resource" MAN vol. 16, no. 2pp201-219
Hobsbawm E.J. & Ranger T. 1983 Invention of Tradition Cambridge University Press
Dirks N. 1989 'The Invention of Caste: Civil society in Colonial India', Social Analysis, 25 (1989)
Lentz c, & Nugent P. (eds) 2000 Ethnicity in Ghana: the limits of invention. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Ranger 1993 "The invention of tradition revisited: the case of colonial Africa" in Ranger T. & Vaughan O. (eds) Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth Century Africa. London: Macmillan Press
Spear, T. 2003 "Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in British Colonial Africa" in Journal of African History 44, pp. 3-27
Thomas, N. 1992 "The Inversion of Tradition" in American Ethnologist, vol. 19,No. 2.
Chatterjee, P. 1996 "Whose Imagined Community?" in Balakrishnan, G. (ed.) Mapping the nation, New Left Review, London: Verso
Kohl P.L. & Fawcett C. 1995 "Introduction. Archaeology in the service of the state: Theoretical considerations" in Kohl & Fawcett (eds) Nationalism, politics and the Practise of archaeology Cambridge University Press
Diaz-Andreu M. 1995 "Archaeology and Nationalism in Spain" in Kohl & Fawcett (eds) Nationalism, politics and the Practice of archaeology Cambridge University Press
Ranger, T. 2004 'Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: the struggle over the past in Zimbabwe' in Journal of Southern African Studies, 30(2).
Kuklick H. 1991 "Contested Monuments: The politics of archaeology in Southern Africa" in Stocker G.W. (ed) Colonial Situations London: University of Wisconsin Press
Paine R. 1994 "Masada: A History of a Memory" in History and Anthropology Vol. 6, No. 4 pp 371-409
Anderson B. 1983 Imagined communities, London: Verso
Said E. "Invention, Memory & Place" in Mitchell (ed) 2002 (2nd ed.) Landscape and Power London: University of Chicago Press
Chatterjee, P. 1986 Nationalist thought & the colonial world: a derivative discourse? Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press
Chatterjee, P. 1993 The Nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories, New Jersey: Princeton University Press
Shepherd, N. 2002 "the Politics of Archaeology in Africa" in Annual review of Anthropology, 31:189-209
Abu El-Haj N. "Translating Truths: Nationalism, the practice of archaeology, and the remaking of past and present in contemporary Jerusalem" in American Ethnologist 25(2): 166-188
Fontein, J. 2006 The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested landscapes & the power of Heritage, Oxon: UCL Press, Chapters 6 & 7
Basso K. 1988 ' "Speaking with Names": Language and Landscape among the Western Apache' in Cultural Anthropology Vol. 3, No. 2 99-130
A. Gell 1995 "The language and the Forest" in Hirsch & O'Hanlon 1995 The Anthropology of Landscape Oxford: Oxford University Press
Morphy H. 1995 "Landscape and the reproduction of the ancestral past" in Hirsch & O'Hanlon 1995 The Anthropology of Landscape Oxford: Oxford University Press
Humphrey C. 1995 "Chiefly & shamanist landscapes in Mongolia" in Hirsch & O'Hanlon 1995 The Anthropology of Landscape Oxford: Oxford University Press
Layton R. 1995 "Relating to the country in the western desert" in Hirsch & O'Hanlon 1995 The Anthropology of Landscape Oxford: Oxford University Press
Bender & Weiner 2001 Contested Landscapes Oxford: Berg Esp. 'Introduction' & selected chapters.
Said E. 1995 (1st ed. 1978) Orientalism London: Penguin Books esp. "Imaginative Geography and its representations: Orientalizing the Orient"
Simon Harrison $ú "Forgetful and memorious landscapes" in Social Anthropology (2004), 12: 135-151
Connerton P. 1989 How societies remember Cambridge University Press
Lowenthal D. 1985 "How we know the past" pp. 185-249 in Lowenthal D. The Past is a foreign country Cambridge University Press
Schama, S. 1996 Landscape & memory London: Fontana Press
Mazarire G. 2003 "Changing landscape and oral memory in south-central Zimbabwe: Towards a historical geography of Chishanga, C. 1850-1990" in Journal of Southern African studies Vol. 29, Number 3.
MacGregor J. 2003a "The Victoria Falls 1900-1940: Landscape, Tourism and the Geographical Imagination" in Journal of Southern African Studies Vol. 29, No. 3
Macgregor J. 2003b "Living with the River: Landscape and Memory in the Zambezi Valley, Northwest Zimbabwe" in Beinart & Macgregor 2003 Social History & African Environments Oxford: James Currey.
Bender & Weiner 2001 Contested Landscapes Oxford: Berg
Stewart P. & Strathern A. 2003 "introduction" in Stewart P. & Strathern A. (eds) Landscape, Memory & History: Anthropological perspectives London: Pluto Press
Morphy H. 1995 "Landscape and the reproduction of the ancestral past" in Hirsch & O'Hanlon 1995 The Anthropology of Landscape Oxford: Oxford University Press
Morphy H. 1993 "Colonialism, History and the Construction of Place: The Politics of Landscape in Northern Australia" in Bender Landscape, Politics & Perspectives Oxford: Berg
Fontein, J. 2006 "Great Zimbabwe in Local History-scapes" in The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage London; UCL Press
Kuchler S 1993 "Landscape as memory: The mapping process and its representation in a Melanesian Society" in Bender B. (ed.) Landscape: Politics and Perspectives Oxford: Berg
J.D. Kelly & Kaplan M. 1993 "History, Structure and Ritual in Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990) 119-50
Lambek 1996 "The Past imperfect: Remembering as Moral practice" in Lambek & Antze (eds) Tense Past: Cultural essays in Trauma and Memory London: Routledge.
Lambek M. 2002 "The Sakalava Poiesis of History: Realising the Past through Spirit Possession" in Lambek. M. 2002 The weight of the Past New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Fontein. J. 2006 "Traditional Connoisseurs of the past" chap 3 in The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage London: UCL Press
Fontein. J. 2006 "Shared Legacies of the War: Spirit mediums and war veterans in southern Zimbabwe" in Journal of religion in Africa, vol 36, no. 2.
Carsten J. 2007 "Introduction: Ghosts of Memory" in Carsten J. (ed) Ghosts of Memory: essays on Remembrance and relatedness Oxford: Blackwell
Tsintjilonis D. "Words of intimacy: re-membering the dead in Buntao" The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol 10, Number 2, June 2004 , pp. 375-393(19
Walsh K. 1992 "The idea of modernity" in Walsh K. The Representation of the past: Museums and heritage in the post-modern world London: Routledge
Fontein J. 2000 "UNESCO, Heritage and Africa: an anthropological critique of World Heritage" University of Edinburgh, Centre of African Studies, Occasional Paper No. 80
Fontein J. 2006 The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage London: UCL Press $ú chap.s 5, 8 & 9
Bender B. 1998 'Stonehenge: Making Space Oxford: Berg
Herzfeld M. 1991 "Histories in their places" in Herzfeld M. A Place in History: Social and monumental time in a Cretian Town Princetown University Press
Also reprinted in Low S.M. & Lawrence-Zuniga D. 2003 The Anthropology of Space and Place Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Gathercole & Lowenthal 1990 The Politics of the Past London: Unwin Hyman $ú selected chapters
Lowenthal D. 1998 The heritage crusade and the spoils of history. Cambridge University press.
Bruner, E.M. 1996 "Tourism in Ghana: The representation of slavery and the return of the black diaspora" in American Ethnologist 98(2):290-304.
Forty A. 1999 Introduction in the Art of forgetting, Oxford : Berg
Kuchler s. 1999 "The Place of Memory" in Forty & Kuchler (eds) The art of forgetting Oxford: berg
Rowlands M. 1999 "Remembering to forget: Sublimation as Sacrifice in War Memorials" in the Art of forgetting, Oxford : Berg
King, A. 1999 "Remembering & Forgetting in the Public memorials of the Great War" in The Art of forgetting, Oxford : Berg
Saunders, N. 2001 "Matter & Memory in the Landscapes of conflict: the western front 1914-1999" in Bender & Winer (eds) 2001 Contested Landscapes; Movement, exile & place Oxford: berg
Kriger N. 1995 "The Politics of creating National heroes: the search for political Legitimacy and national identity" in Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War London: James Currey
Werbner R. 1998 "Smoke from the Barrel of a gun: Postwars of the Dead, Memory and re-inscription in Zimbabwe" in Werbner (ed) Memory & the Post colony: African anthropology and the critique of power London: Zed Books
Ranger T. Alexander J. & McGregor 2000 Violence & memory: One hundred years in the 'Dark Forests' of Matabeleland Oxford: James Currey
Fillipucci P. "Memory and marginality: Remembrance of War in Argonne (France)" in Oine, Kaneff & Huakanes (eds) Memory, Politics and Religion: the Past meets the present in Europe London: Transaction Publishers.
Study Abroad Not entered
Study Pattern This course consists of whole class lectures, general discussions and small group work in which students MUST participate. In addition to these whole class lectures, MSc students must attend five one-hour tutorial sessions. With the exception of the first tutorial, each tutorial will involve a twenty minute presentation focusing on a detailed case study by a student or a group of students, on a subject agreed in advance with the course organizer.
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Joost Fontein
Tel: 07753306778
Email: j.fontein@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMs Clare Nisbet
Tel:
Email: Clare.Nisbet@ed.ac.uk
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