Sessions 1 and 2.  Formulating disciplinary history (9/5 and 9/12)

Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Finn Sivert Nielsen, A History of Anthropology, London: Pluto Press, 2001

The assignment for the first two sessions is to read and analyze this representative disciplinary history. Please read as much of the book as possible prior to the first session meeting and prepare a brief written commentary prior to the second session.

recommended readings, if time permits:

George W. Stocking, Jr., "On the Limits of 'Presentism' and 'Historicism' in the Historiography of the Behavioral Sciences," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 1(3) [1965].  Reprinted as chapter 1 of Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology, pp. 1-12 (Free Press, 1968).

George W. Stocking, Jr., "Preface" to his Victorian Anthropology, pp x-xvii (Free Press, 1987)

L. R. Hiatt, "Conception and Misconception," chapter 7 of his Arguments about Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Social Anthropology , pp. 120-141 (Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Regna Darnell, "Camelot at Yale: The Construction and Dismantling of the Sapirian Synthesis, 1931-1939," American Anthropologist 100(2):361-372 [1998]

Sherry B. Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties," Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(1):1-26 [1984]

Joseph Masco, "'It is a Strict Law That Bids Us Dance': Cosmologies, Colonialism, Death, and Ritual Authority in the Kwakwaka'wakw Potlatch, 1849-1922," Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(1):41-75 [1995]

Robert Brightman, "Forget Culture: Replacement, Transcendence, Relexification," Cultural Anthropology 10(4):509-546 [1995]

Marshall Sahlins, "Two or Three Things That I Know About Culture," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5(3):399-421 [1999]

Adam Kuper, "Culture, Difference, Identity," chapter 7 of his Culture: The Anthropologists' Account, pp. 226-247 (Harvard University Press, 1998)

Peter M. Whitley, "The End of Anthropology (at Hopi)," chapter 6 of his Rethinking Hopi Ethnography (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998)

Herbert Lewis, "The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and Its Consequences,"  American Anthropologist 100(3):716-733 [1998] and the exchange between Toussaint and Lewis in American Anthropologist 101(3):605-610 [1999]

 

Session 3.  Comparison and classification: Edward Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan  (9/19)

Lewis Henry Morgan, selections from League of the Ho-de'-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois, preface (ix-xi), 54-65, 78-89  (Rochester: Sage & Brother, 1851)

Lewis Henry Morgan, "Ethnical Periods," in his Ancient Society (1877). Reprinted in Paul Bohannan and Mark Glazer (eds.), High Points in Anthropology, pp. 32-60 (A. A. Knopf, 1988)

British Association for the Advancement of Science, selections from Notes and Queries in Anthropology, first edition, 1874.

Edward B. Tylor  "On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18: 245-269 (with discussion of the paper, 270-272) [1889].

Curtis M. Hinsley, Jr., "Heroes and Homelessness: Reflections on Frank Hamilton Cushing, James Mooney, and BAE Anthropology," chapter 7 of his Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846-1910, pp. 190-230 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981).

 

Session 4.  Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen (9/26)

 Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen, "Introduction" (Chapter 1, pp. 1-54) and selections from "The Social Organisation of the Tribes" (chapter 2, pp. 55-69) of their The Native Tribes of Central Australia (Macmillan, 1899)

George W. Stocking, Jr., "Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen: Getting Down to Bedrock in Central Australia," in his After Tylor, pp. 87-98 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995)

Sir James George Frazer, excerpt from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion, pp. 1-4 (Macmillan, 1951; originally published in 1890).

W.H.R. Rivers, "Part III: Sociology, General Account of Method," in British Association for the Advancement of Science, Notes and Queries in Anthropology, Fourth Edition, pp. 108-127 (London, 1912).

W.H.R. Rivers, excerpt from "Anthropological Research Outside America," in Carnegie Institution, Reports upon the Present Condition and Future Needs of the Science of Anthropology, pp. 6-7 (Publication No. 200, 1914).

A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, "The Mother's Brother in South Africa," South African Journal of Science, 21:542-555 (1924).

Part 2

Consolidating a modernist profession as a modern discipline

Session 5. Boas and the founding of a North American anthropology (10/3)

 Franz Boas, "On Alternating Sounds," American Anthropologist 2(1):47-51 [1889]

Franz Boas, "The Study of Geography," Science 9(210):137-141 [1887]

Franz Boas, "The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart," Science 9(224):485-486 [1887]

Otis Mason, "The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart," Science 9(226):534-535 [1887]

Franz Boas, "Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification," Science 9(228):587-589 [1887]

John W. Powell, "Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification" (with a response by Franz Boas), Science 9(229):612-614 [1887]

Franz Boas, "The Potlatch," (pp. 77-104) , in his Kwakiutl Ethnography, Helen Codere, ed.  (University of Chicago Press, 1966) [also recommended: "The Winter Ceremonial" (171-241)]

Franz Boas, selected entries from "Letter-Diary," in Ronald P. Rohner (ed.), The Ethnography of Franz Boas, pp. 33-41 (Boas's first visit to the Kwakiutl: Nawiti, 1886) and pp. 176-191 (Boas's Nov-Dec 1894 stay at Fort Rupert during the Winter Ceremonial)  (University of Chicago Press, 1969).

Franz Boas, "Klathamet Texts" (pp. 116-122), "The Documentary Function of the Text" (pp. 122-124), and "The Boas Plan for American Anthropology" (pp. 286-289) in George W. Stocking, Jr. (ed.), The Shaping of American Anthropology 1883-1911: A Franz Boas Reader (Basic Books, 1974)

William E. B. Du Bois, "Double-Consciousness and the Veil," chapter 1 of The Souls of Black Folks, pp. 1-9 (Bantam, 1989 [originally pub: 1903])

recommended, if time permits:

 Audrey Smedley, "Dismantling the Cultural Construction of Race: Twentieth-Century Transformations in Science," chapter 12 of her Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, pp. 273-293 (Westview Press, 1993).

Sessions 6 and 7. Malinowski and "the intensive study of limited areas" (10/10 and 10/17) 

Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea  (Waveland Press, 1986; originally published: 1922).

Bronislaw Malinowski, entries for 12/17/1917 through 12/26/1917, in his A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term, pp. 154-166 (Stanford University Press, 1989; originally published: 1967).

"The Economic Pursuit of the Trobriand Islanders," report on a lecture by Bronislaw Malinowski, Nature 105(2644):564-565 [1920].

R. R. Marett on "custom and the individual," a 1912 manuscript published by Wilson Wallis in American Anthropologist 59:789-790 [1957].

 recommended, if time permits:

 George Stocking, "Radcliffe-Brown and British Social Anthropology," in George Stocking (ed.), Functionalism Historicized (History of Anthropology, Volume 2), pp. 131-191 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984).

A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, "On the Concept of Function in Social Science," American Anthropologist 37: 392-402 [1935].

Session 8. Evans-Pritchard within and beyond the structural-functional paradigm (10/24)

E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer  (Clarendon Press, 1940).

E. E. Evans-Pritchard, excerpt from "Fieldwork and the Empirical Tradition," in his Social Anthropology, pp. 76-79 (Cohen and West, 1951).

E. E. Evans-Pritchard, "Social Anthropology, Past and Present" (the Marett Lecture), Man 50:118-124 [1950].  Reprinted in his Social Anthropology and Other Essays, pp. 139-157 (Free Press, 1962).

recommended, if time permits:

Renato Rosaldo, "From the Door of His Tent: The Fieldworker and the Inquisitor," in James Clifford and George Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, pp. 77-97  (University of California Press, 1986).

Meyer Fortes, "Time and Social Structure: An Ashanti Case Study," in Meyer Fortes (ed.), Social Structure: Essays Presented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, pp. 51-84  (Clarendon Press, 1949).

Talal Asad, "The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology," in James Clifford and George Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture, pp. 141-164  (University of California Press, 1986).

Part 3

British Revisions: Postwar Anthropology beyond Oxbridge

Session 9:  Making structure dynamic: contradictions, dramas, and symbols (10/31)

recommended, if time permits:

Max Gluckman, "Introduction" to his Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa, pp. 1-49 (Free Press, 1963).

Mary Douglas, "Animals in Lele Religious Symbolism," Africa 27(1):46-58 [1957].

Victor Turner, "Symbols in Ndembu Ritual" (pp. 19-47) and "Ritual Symbolism, Morality, and Social Structure Among the Ndembu" (pp. 48-59) in his The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Cornell University Press, 1967).

S. F. Nadel, "Witchcraft in Four African Societies," American Anthropologist 54:18-29 [1952].

Max Gluckman, "The Utility of the Equilibrium Model in the Study of Social Change," American Anthropologist 70:219-237 [1968].

see also the Max Gluckman web site, including a 1962 report by Max Gluckman on "History of the Manchester 'School' of Social Anthropology and Sociology" [prepared by him as part of a grant application] [at site home page, click on "MG's Work" and then under "Manchester School"]

Session 10. From social norms to strategic rules (11/7)

recommended, if time permits:

Frederick Barth, Models of Social Organization. Royal Anthropological Institute Occasional Paper no. 23 [1966].

Robert Paine, Second Thoughts about Barth's Models. Royal Anthropological Institute Occasional Paper no. 32 [1974].

 

Session 11:  (Re)configurations, from cultural pattern to cultural psychology  (11/14)

Session 12:   Reasserting culture (12/5)

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (Basic Books, 1973).

Richard Handler, "An Interview With Clifford Geertz," Current Anthropology 32(5):603-613 [1991].

Session 13:   Adaptation and materialism: ecology and political economy (12/12)

Roy A. Rappaport, Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People. Enlarged edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984 (orig. : 1968). Reprinted by Waveland Press, 2000.

recommended, if time permits:

Eric Wolf, "Closed Corporate Communities in Mesoamerica and Java," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13(1):1-18 [1957]

Marvin Harris, "Potlatch," in his Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture, pp. 111-132 (Random House, 1974).

Marshall Sahlins, "Culture as Protein and Profit," New York Review of Books 25(18):45-53 (November 23, 1978).