ANTH—UA1 Human Society and Culture Prof. Bruce GrantSpring 2014 8:00-9:15 Office Hours: By AppointmentSilver 207 25 Waverly Pl, Room 601

bruce.grant@nyu.edu

Updated 27 January 2014

Description

What does it mean to think anthropologically? In this course we consider some of the historically foundational practices of anthropological thought, and its most influential product, the ethnography, in order to think practically and creatively along the lines of what constitutes cultures, societies, translation, and difference. Cultural anthropology has long been considered the most humanistic of the social sciences and the most scientific of the humanities. Anthropology shares its subject matter with almost every zone of the academy—the arts, literature, religion, history, politics, economics, and the natural sciences, most broadly—but its particular claims to knowledge build on its singular method and practice, fieldwork. At its most canonic, fieldwork may consist of anywhere from one to two years of protracted immersion in a given setting for the purposes of helping those unfamiliar with that world better understand its logics.

Ethnography is both process and product: the act of “graphing” the ethnos, in a nineteenth-century sense of mapping, and the written or filmed result. The method of ethnography is simple and at times even disarming, for of all the fields that capture people in their purview—the history of events, the science of politics, the economy of purchasing predictions, and the psychology of our inner cores—anthropology is the only field where you are required to talk to people. This is not purely in the sense of an interview (though fieldwork may sometimes encompass that), or on the assumption that first person voices accord a kind of truth-value (they do not). Instead, anthropological method presumes that the ethnographer uses his or her own mind and body as the units of measurement, tracking their own degrees of understanding, alienation, and learning as they immerse themselves in someone else’s world. The late Clifford Geertz called this “deep hanging out.” The classic fieldwork goal is to document how “cultural knowledge”—that is to say, the discursive and bodily practices that constitute a sense of the appropriate in any given setting—is marked at multiple registers by legal codes, “common sense,” unspoken habits, and even “patterned randomness.” Anthropology’s kinship with common sense is part of the risk at hand: When no more than a chronicle of what any intelligent member of a society already knows, anthropology gains the ignominy of being the social science that is perhaps the easiest to do badly. When done well, by contrast, it conjoins art to science through fine prose, it renders knowable a world of unspoken habit, and it can reveal motives and suggest explanations for the most deeply embedded forms of human action.

However we approach it, the aim is not simply to render the strange familiar and the familiar strange, but to develop insight into how the seemingly most practical and commonsensical aspects of any person’s life can be most broadly informed by the cultural and

social contexts of which they consider themselves a part, contexts that shift continually, and that resist easy scrutiny. Our first goal this semester is to better understand and advance that scrutiny.

Our second goal for this semester’s work will be to better understand the “culture concept,” with its hidden hierarchies and dependence on savagery (or “primitivism”) at the very core of perceived civilizing structures. Through a brief tour of the history of the discipline and a consideration of some more recent ethnographic work, we look at a number of the most useful ways in which culture, this very moving target, may be paused and better understood.

Evaluation and Grading

In the weekly lectures, in the smaller group sections, as well as in the individual meetings with your TA, your openness to discussion, and your willingness to share as much of what you do not understand as compared to what you do will be the basis for a participation grade of 10%, determined at the discretion of your section leader. Your ability and interest in making yourself a better writer shares in this rubric.

Your analytical understanding of all material from the lectures, readings, and films will be tested in two, non-overlapping, in-class examinations, a mid-term worth 15% and a final worth 30%. Students will be invited to suggest exam questions by email prior to each exam. The typical exam will consist of several short answer (1 paragraph) questions and a few longer answer (3-4 paragraph) questions that invite analyses of broader issues.

Fieldwork Project and Papers

By February 11, you are asked to email your TA a proposal for a short-term fieldwork project that you will conduct over the course of the semester. The idea should be to work through a setting easily available to you—in nearby sections of New York City, or through your pre-existing networks—where you find that the cultures and logics of that setting are not easily understood by all, not least possibly by yourself, and merit explanation. The first paper is worth 15% and the second paper is worth 30%. Papers can be 5-10 double-spaced pages in length.

The papers you will write for this class differ from conventional research papers. What matters is your ability to integrate questions and ideas from the course readings. The central criterion for grading is your creative and synthetic use of these readings, rather than the specific dimensions of the field site itself. We ask you to engage salient moments or arguments from three course authors (or film directors) in each paper—more so than the specific dimensions of your chosen field site. The first paper integrates readings from the first half of the course only; the second paper integrates readings from the second half of the course only.

In each paper you need to offer enough about your topic to identify context, and why your site is interesting and important. In an average, 7-page paper, this will occupy no more than about 4 pp. In each installment, the remainder should be a detailed discussion of what you consider to be key moments from course authors that illuminate or critically engage your topic. Papers are due at the start of class on the day assigned, and must be signed on the front page by

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at least one reader unfamiliar with the class to certify that at least one non-specialist found your arguments intelligible. Retain the marked copy of your first paper and resubmit it with your second so that we can track your writing progress.

As your grade includes an assessment of your ability to organize your thinking and

writing, penalties are accorded to late papers. There are no scheduled make-up tests or incompletes. Please do not email the professor or TA to request extensions. Exceptions will be made, in advance only, through email requests directed to the professor by your faculty advisor, someone from the dean’s office, or in the form of a doctor’s note. Please consult the syllabus before booking any travel.

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Books

Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York: Norton, 2000)

Meneley, Tournaments of Value: Sociability and Hierarchy in a Yemeni Town (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996)

Myerhoff, Number Our Days: Culture and Community Among Elderly Jews in an American Ghetto (New York: Simon and Schuster 1980 or Penguin, 1994)

Ries, Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation During Perestroika (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)

Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981)

* Please note that the bookstore removes and returns all course books from the shelves at mid-semester.

Articles and Films

All articles are available on the course’s dedicated NYU Classes site, under “Resources.” In the same folder you will find a Style Sheet for all written work, some recommendations for taking fieldnotes (filed under Emerson), and examples of term papers. Copies of all films in the course are available at the Avery Fisher Center on the 2nd Floor of Bobst Library.

Teaching Assistants

Brinton Ahlin Joseph Livesey Natasha Rahejaahlin@nyu.edu jfl322@nyu.edu nraheja@nyu.eduM 9:30-10:45 24W4 C18 M 12:30-1:45 Tisc LC15 M 9:30-10:45 12WV L114M 11:00-12:15 Silv 508 M 2:00-3:15 Silv 506 M 11:00-12:15 25 W4 C15

The Teaching Assistants for the course are directly involved in evaluating your work. They are available to discuss your writing, exams, and course material individually with you during their office hours or by appointment. Please take the opportunity to meet with them regularly to discuss your work. Students may attend only the section for which they are registered.

Requirements

Section Participation 10%Paper 1 15%Mid-Term Examination 15%Paper 2 30%Final Examination 30%

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Calendar

Definitions, Problems, Keystones

Jan 28: Introduction: Four Fields, Anthropology and its Interlocutors

Jan 30: The Classic Culture Concept

Raymond Williams, “Culture,” in Keywords (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 87-93.

The Anglo-American Tradition: From Polygenism, through Primitivism, to “Cultures”

Feb 4: Edward Tylor, “The Science of Culture,” in Primitive Culture (London: Murray, 1920), 1-25.

Adam Kuper, “The Idea of Primitive Society,” in The Invention of Primitive Society: The Transformation of an Illusion (New York: Routledge, 1988), 1-14.

Feb 6: Franz Boas, “The Study of Geography” in Race, Language, and Culture (New York: Free Press, 1940 [1887]), 639-647.

Boas, “The Potlatch” in Kwakiutl Ethnography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966 [1897]), 77-104

Recommended:

Tierney, “Tips from the Potlatch: Where Giving Knows No Slump,” New York Times, 16 December 2008: D1.

Fieldwork Paradigms

Feb 11: Malinowski, “Foreword,” “Introduction,” chs. 3, 22 of Argonauts of the Western Pacific (New York: Dutton, 1950 [1922]), xv-xviii, 1-25, 81-104, 509-518.

Fieldwork Proposal Due by email to TA.

Feb 13: Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (New York: Morrow, 1961 [1928]), “Preface,” and chs. 1, 2, 13.

Alternative Economies

Feb 18: Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies

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Recommended:

Émile Durkheim, “What is a Social Fact?” in The Rules of Sociological Method (New York: Free Press, 1982 [1895]), 50-58.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Gifts,” in Alan Schrift, ed., The Logic of the Gift (New York: Routledge, 1997 [1844]), 25-27.

Feb 20: Jacques Derrida, “The Time of the King,” in Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 1-5.

Pierre Bourdieu, [On Misrecognition] in Outline of a Theory of Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 1-15, 164-171.

Feb 25: Screening: Ongka’s Big Moka: The Kawelka of Papua, New Guinea (1974, 52 mins).

Symbols and Passages

Feb 27: Victor Turner, “Social Dramas and Ritual Metaphors,” in Richard Schechner, ed., Ritual, Play, and Performance (New York: Seabury, 1976), 97-120.

Recommended:

Turner, “Liminality and Communitas,” in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 94-130.

Mar 4: Barbara Myerhoff, Number our Days, chs. 1-4.

Mar 6: Myerhoff, Number our Days, chs. 5-Afterword.

Mar 11: Screening: Number Our Days (d. Lynne Littmann, 1977, 29 mins.)

Paper 1 Due

Mar 13: In-Class Mid-Term Examination

-- Spring Break --

Language and Social Change

Mar 25: Whorf, “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language,” in Language, Thought and Reality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956), 134-159.

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Ries, Russian Talk, Introduction, chs. 1-2.

Recommended:

Deutscher, “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” New York Times, 26 August 2010, online at:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=2

Mar 27: Ries, Russian Talk, chs. 3-4, Conclusion.

Sherry Ortner, “On Key Symbols,” American Anthropologist 75, no. 5 (1973): 1338-1346.

Apr 1: No class

Apr 3: Screening: American Tongues (d. Louis Alvarez and Andy Kolker, 1987, 56 mins.).

Public Spheres and Symbolic Economies

Apr 8: Meneley, Tournaments of Value, “Introduction,” chs. 1-2, pp. 3-59.

Bourdieu, [On “Symbolic Capital”] Outline of a Theory of Practice, 171-197.

Recommended:

Hirschkind and Mahmood, “Feminism, the Taliban, and the Politics of Counter-Insurgency,” Anthropological Quarterly 75, no. 2 (2002): 339-354.

Vollman, William, “Letter from Afghanistan: Across the Divide—What Do the Afghan People Think of the Taliban?” The New Yorker (15 May 2000): 58-73. [Available in digital archive with a subscription].

Apr 10: No class

Apr 15: Meneley, Tournaments of Value, chs. 5-6, “Conclusion,” pp. 99-140, 180-194.

Apr 17: Screening: Divorce, Iranian Style (d. Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, 1998, 80 mins). [Please note: Class begins slightly earlier to accommodate extended film run).[Also available online at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7607777740102230188#

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Recommended:

Yong, “Iran’s Divorce Rate Stirs Fears of Society in Crisis,” New York Times (6 December 2010). Online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/world/middleeast/07divorce.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Iran%20divorce&st=cse

Ziba Mir-Hosseini, "Negotiating the Politics of Gender in Iran: An Ethnography of a Documentary," in The New Iranian Cinema, edited by Richard Tapper, 167-199 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002). Available electronically via Bobst, at:http://site.ebrary.com/lib/nyulibrary/docDetail.action?docID=10133103

Ethnographies of History and Encounter

Apr 22: Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities

Recommended:

Perlstein, “The God that Sailed,” Lingua Franca (Mar/Apr 1995): 15-16.

Geertz, “Culture War,” in Available Light (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 97-107.

Apr 24: Screening: First Contact (d. Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, 1987, 55 mins.)

Primitives and Moderns: Culture as “Sensuous Knowledge”

Apr 29: Screening Extracts:

Nanook of the North (d. Robert Flaherty, 1922, 79 mins.)

Fitzcarraldo (d. Werner Herzog, 1982, 158 mins.)

The Old and the New [aka The General Line] (d. Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei Eisenstein, 1929, 121 mins.).

Recommended:

Bourdieu, [On “Habitus”] Outline of a Theory of Practice, 72-95.

Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1968), 69-82.

Rachel Moore, “The Moderns,” in Savage Theory: Cinema as Modern Magic (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 12-27, 32-46.

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May 1: Screening: Man with a Movie Camera (d. Dziga Vertov, 1929, 68 mins.)

Paper 2 Due

May 6: In-Class Final Examination

May 8: TBA

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