Graduate Seminar
David Sutton
dsutton@siu.edu
A consideration of contemporary approaches to the question of "culture" and how we interpret it, including Postmodernism and its critics, Globalization theory, Neo-holism, Systems theory and chaos, and advances in cognitive anthropology.
Requirements: 4-5 page weekly essay reviewing and discussing the readings.
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2. Where are we Now? Prospects and Possibilities
Anthropological Theory Today, Henrietta Moore ed.
Marshall Sahlins "What is anthropological enlightenment?"
William Sewell "The Concepts of Cultures"
Weeks 3-6 Postmodernism, Globalization, Postcoloniality
Week 3- Postmodernist Fragmentation:
Arjun Appadurai Modernity at Large Chs. 2-3
James Clifford Ch 1 from Routes
George Marcus Chapter on Holism in Ethnography Through Thick and Thin
Sherry Ortner "Borderland Politics and Erotics"
Angela Cheater "Globalization and the new technologies of Knowing" In Strathern Shifting Contexts
Gupta and Ferguson. Garcia Canclina?
week 4- Nick Dirks ed In Near Ruins: Culture Theory at the end of the Century
week 5- Rethinking "Place," culture, and scale. Neo-Marxist and other approaches.
David Harvey The Condition of Postmodernity
Anna Tsing "The Global Situation"
Peter Metcalf "Global Disjunctures and the Sites of Anthropology"
Sidney Mintz "The Localization of Anthropological Practice"
week 6- current re-engagements with culture and commodification
Hillary Cunningham "Ethnography and Transnational Social Activism."
Paula Ebron "Tourists as Pilgrims"
Karen Fog Olwig "Carribean Place Identities"
Stuart Hall "Cultural Identities and Diasporas"
Nina Glick Schiller et al. "Transnational Migrants"
Richard Wilk "Learning to Be Local in Belize"
Weeks 7-10, Neo-Boasianism, Neo-Holism, Systems Ecology and Phenomenology, Chaos Theory.
week 7-
Matti Bunzl "Toward a Neo-Boasian Anthropology"
Herb Lewis article in Current Anthro.
Robert Brightman "Forget Culture: Replacement, Relexification"
Howes and Classen on Cross-Cultural Consumption.
week 8-
Descola & Pallson "Rethinking Nature & Culture"
Tim Ingold selections from Perception of the Environment,
and Debate with Wendy James.
weeks 9-10 Chaos and systems.
Bateson selection from Mind and Nature
Stephen Jackson "Remembering to Forget: Memory, Burial and Selef Similarity"
N. Katherine Hayles "Chaos as Orderly Disorder: Shifting Ground in Contemporary Literature and Social Science"
Roy Wagner "The Fractal Person"
Strathern? Fritjof Capra?
Weeks 11-12 Reweaving Anthropology and Psychology. Schema Theory, Neuroscience, Constructivism and Connectionism.
Week 11 readings:
Bradd Shore Culture in Mind
Maurice Bloch chs. 2-4, How we think they think
Week 12
Douglas Hollan "Constructivist Models of Mind, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Development of Culture Theory"
Christina Toren
Steve Reyna
Strauss and Quinn?
Weeks 13-14 Select an Ethnography.