Postgraduate Course: Anthropological Theory (PGSP11172)
Course Outline
School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
Summary | This course offers an advanced approach to anthropological theory suitable for those who have previously taken anthropology courses. It is not recommended for those who have not studied any anthropology.
The course explores how contemporary anthropologists apply theory. It introduces a range of advanced concepts and invites students to use these to analyse and theorize the material world. Students are invited to select a material object of particular social or cultural significance, and will then have the opportunity to theorize their object through a variety of theoretical perspectives introduced during the course. This includes engagement with decolonial theory, actor-network theory, theories of materiality, gender, and technology. The focus is not just on studying theories, but on learning how to apply them.
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Course description |
This course introduces a variety of advanced theoretical concepts and explores how to apply them to selected objects in the material world. We explore anthropological approaches to coloniality, scale, gender, governance, and technology, among other topics. Course assignments will assess the application of these theoretical approaches ot chosen objects which will be discussed in class time. As a whole the course aims to leave students with a strong sense of anthropology as a coherent, vibrant discipline with major contributions to make on contemporary issues.
Content
The course is based around students¿ selection of an object to analyse throughout the course. Guidance will be offered on selection of the object, and each week will offer the opportunity to explore how new theoreticla ideas relate to thinking about the object. Key theorists to be studied include Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Bruno Latour, Marilyn Strathern, Epeli Hau¿Ofa, and others. Focus will be on the contemporary application of anthropological ideas.
Student Learning Experience
Lectures will introduce the core questions of anthropological theory in a cumulative fashion, each week building on the last to produce a fuller appreciation of theory as a process of development. Content will be delivered in lecture sessions involving some participatory activities. These will be supported by hour-long tutorial sessions for each week. Students are expected to actively discuss readings in class, and to participate in classroom activities and discussions during lecture time
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisites | None |
High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 30 |
Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
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Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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Additional Information (Assessment) |
4000 word essay |
Feedback |
Not entered |
No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- show a confident grasp of the main trends in anthropological theory that are influential today
- utilise the reading of a number of original writings by a range of theorists, and be capable of providing a critical account of anthropological theorists and the intellectual context in which they worked
- relate the application of those theories in existing ethnographic writing and be able to draw upon them in thinking about future ethnographic research.
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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." 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. |
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Tom Boylston
Tel:
Email: tom.boylston@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr James Wills
Tel:
Email: jwills2@ed.ac.uk |
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