Course Description
Provides a broad overview of the history of cultural anthropology, from its beginnings in the Enlightenment to the present. We combine two approaches in this course: (1) an intellectual history approach, and (2) an approach that examines particular ethnographic accounts as exemplars of various paradigm shifts through time.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
This course will build graduate students' skills for crafting
publishable written argument, and increase their knowledge of
published arguments as exemplars of various paradigm shifts in
cultural anthropology through time. Commensurate with these
goals, each graduate student will be assigned a major theme
from the course around which to (a) gather supplemental
published research, including theoretical contributions and
case studies, (b) summarize this research in an annotated
bibliography, (c) present a brief oral summary of this
literature to the class on the day the theme is addressed, thus
providing the undergraduates with a better sense of the breadth
of the topic, and (d) write a term paper exploring the topic or
some aspect of it in greater depth. Finally, graduate students
will take different exams, commensurate with their greater
knowledge and ability to express complex ideas in writing.
Athena Title
HISTORY OF ANTH
Prerequisite
ANTH 1102 or permission of major
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course provides a broad overview of the field of cultural anthropology, from it's beginnings up to the present. We will combine two approaches in this course: (1) an intellectual history approach to the discipline, in which we consider the contributions of certain major figures to the development of the discipline, and (2) an approach that examines particular ethnographic accounts as a way of defining the different types of explanatory paradigms that anthropologists have used to explain cultural diversity. The course will also consider the role of anthropology in the contemporary world and examine some of the ethical challenges that confront anthropologists today. As is the case with many anthropology courses, critical thinking is an important part of this course. Students will consider and engage opposing points of view, analyze arguments and interpret inferences and develop subtleties of symbolic and indirect discourse. Students will develop an understanding of the ethics theory related to decision-making, and develop and understanding of the basis of ethical principles, codes and standards of conduct. This will be accomplished by: applying societal ethics to scientific inquiry; recognizing the community and the greater common good in addition to individual needs and goals; and to contribute to the eradication of stereotypes and prejudices that exist in society, either in crude forms or in more sophisticated and sometimes pseudo-scientific ones.
Topical Outline
1. Introduction 2. Key Concepts in the History of Anthropological Theory 3. The Roots of Anthropology: From the Enlightenment to Darwin 4. Classical Evolutionism: Spencer, Darwin, Morgan and the Concept of Progress 5. From 19th Century Materialism to Psychoanalysis: Marx and Freud 6. Boasian Historical Particularism 7. Durkheim and Weber 8. Mead, Benedict and the "Culture and Personality" School 9. Fieldwork and the Politics of Interpretation: The Mead/Freeman Controversy 10. Fieldwork and the Politics of Interpretation: The Penan of Sarawak 11. Radcliffe-Brown and British Structural-Functionalism 12. Malinowski and Functionalism 13. Evans-Pritchard and Max Gluckman 14. Structuralism and Semiotics: Levi-Strauss and Exchange Models of Social Organization 15. Cultural Ecology and Neoevolutionism 16. Cultural Materialism and Ethnoscience 17. Turner, Douglas, Geertz: Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology 18. Precursors to Contempory Theory: Critical Theory and Cultural Studies 19. Foucault: Power and the Archeology of Knowledge 20. Challenges to the Practice of Ethnographic Representation: Feminism, Post-structuralism, and Post-colonialism 21. Recent Developments in Environmental Anthropology 22. Case Study: The Contested Meanings of Conservation and Development in Sarawak 23. Globalization and the Relevance of Anthropology
Syllabus