Fall 2005 Courses
- UNDERGRADUATE
COURSES
ANTHRO 1: INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
S. Agarwal 4 units TuTh 2-3:30 Wheeler Auditorium
Note: This course will no longer be offered during spring semesters.
This course examines human anatomy and behavioral biology within an evolutionary context. It includes an introduction to: the history of evolutionary thought from before Darwin to the present; basic human genetics and molecular biology; human variation and adaptation; evolutionary influences on behavior; the anatomy, ecology, and behavior of our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates; and the evolution of our lineage as reflected in the hominid fossil record. We will pay special attention to the complex interrelations of biology, behavior, and culture and the challenges of studying these interactions. There will be three hours of lecture and one hour of lab/discussion per week.
Prerequisites: none.
Requirements: There is one midterm, a final exam, and weekly quizzes. Participation in the lab/discussion section is mandatory and will include weekly quizzes.
Required texts:
"Introduction to Physical Anthropology" 10th ed., Jurmain, et al., Wadsworth 2005
"The Human Evolution Coloring Book" 2nd Ed. by A. Zihlman, Harper Collins 2000
ANTHRO 2AC: INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY
M. Conkey 4 units TuTh 3:30-5 100 Lewis
Course description not yet available.
ANTHRO 3: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL & CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
X. Liu 4 units MWF 12-1 Wheeler Auditorium
This course introduces students to major currents in social/cultural anthropology, past and present. Throughout the course we will examine research tools and conceptual problems that have helped to shape and define the discipline during its hundred-year history. Particular attention will be given to the problem of ethnographic writing—the key method for the discipline of anthropology. In terms of its themes, the course focuses on several anthropological topics, including, but not limited to, language and culture, gender and race/ethnicity, ritual and religion, meaning and symbols, globalization and social change, etc. What are the conceptual questions behind the empirical studies of other people or cultures? How are these questions related to other forms of social science knowledge? These are two basic questions with which we pursue our introductory topics. Students are required to attend three hours per week for lecture, plus one hour per week for discussion section.
Prerequisites: none.
Required books:
A. Kuper, Anthropology and Anthropologists.
G. W. Stocking, The Ethnographer's Magic.
C. Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind.
S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power.
C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.
J. Clifford and G. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture.
ANTHRO 24-1: FRESMAN SEMINAR: The Photograph as Social Document
S. Brandes
1 unit M 2-3, 15,2224 Piedmont
They say that a photograph is worth a thousand words. Since the invention of photography over a hundred and fifty years ago, images have been used, together with text, to provide documentary evidence. Nonetheless, photographs are open to multiple interpretations and subject to editorial bias on the part of both photographer and viewer. This seminar explores some of the uses and abuses of documentary photography in journalism, social science research, and other visual domains. As part of the course, students must produce a photographic essay, based on the daily life of one willing individual--a person from a field or walk of life unfamiliar to the student photographer. The essay will be developed over the course of the term. Students must also come to class prepared to discuss assigned readings.
ANTHRO 24-2: FRESMAN SEMINAR: The Anthropology of Museums
B. Benedict 1 unit M 11-12, L20 Unit 1 Central
Depending on what one calls a museum, there are approximately sixteen thousand museums in the United States where, it is estimated, a new one opens every 3.3 days. They are among the most visited sites in the world with about 850 million visits per year in the United States alone. Thus museums and museum-going are major activities in the United States. They constitute a major ingredient in tourism, a principal world industry. In this seminar we will look at museums: what they are, what they offer us, and what we bring to them. There will be special emphasis on anthropology and history museums. In particular we will examine the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum on campus and look at its collections. Topics will include a brief history of museums, how they order the world, how they serve as status symbols, how they promote nationalism, methods of display (hands-on or hands-off), museums as entertainment, museums as sales rooms, what objects can explain, museums as education, how they manipulate the viewer, and museums as repositories of the authentic. Students will be asked to pick a single object from the Hearst Museum's objects on display and explain it to the seminar e.g. what's it made of, how is or was it used, how old is it, what does it tell us about the culture from which it came, etc. Students will also be asked to write a label (not to exceed 100 words) for the object. This seminar is part of the Food for Thought Seminar Series. Food for Thought lunch meeting dates, times and locations will be discussed in class.
ANTHRO 112: SPECIAL TOPICS IN BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "TOPICS IN BIOLOGY AND CITIZENSHIP: HEALTH, IDENTITY, AND SECURITY"
P. Rabinow 4 units TuTh 5-6:30 155 Kroeber
Course description not yet availableProgress in biological understanding is playing an important part in changing conceptions of health, identity and security. This course explores how understanding of molecular biology and genomics, elaborated through industrial and governmental structures, is impacting definitions, practice, and delivery of diagnostics, therapeutics, and health. It explores how the genome-based understanding of living organisms is changing the narratives and future trajectories of descriptions of human genetic differences and understanding of their significance. It explores the impact of the new biological technologies on US and international security in the changed conditions of the post-Cold War and post-9/11 world.
The course is co-taught by Paul Rabinow, professor of anthropology at Berkeley; Roger Brent, Director of the Molecular Sciences Institute, and Paul Billings, Vice President for Biotechnology and Health Care Strategy at Laboratory Corporation of America.
This course is cast at an advanced upper-division level. Although there are no formal prerequisites, it is important for students to have familiarity with the basic principles of molecular biology as well as contemporary anthropology.
There will be two midterms and a term paper. To do well on these, students will need to be able to read and understand primary and advanced secondary articles detailing and making use of concepts and experimental methods of molecular biology and genetics.
ANTHRO 114: HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT
C. Hayden C.Hirschkind 4 units
MWF 2-3 160 Kroeber
This course will present a history of anthropological thought from the
mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century and will draw upon
the major subdisciplines of anthropology. It will focus both upon the
integration of the anthropological subdisciplines and upon the relationships
between these and other disciplines outside anthropology. Three hours
of lecture; one hour of required discussion section per week.
ANTHRO 115: INTRODUCTION TO MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
L. Cohen 4 units TuTh 9:30-11 277 Cory Hall
These are questions common to many disciplines and many eras; their organization as a field of medical anthropology was in large measure a product of the post-World War II era and Cold War concerns with poverty and sickness in what was then called the underdeveloped world. "Culture"-so-called traditional "beliefs"-seemed an impediment to the implementation of successful public health measures globally, and anthropology as the science of culture seemed to offer tools to fix the problem.
Whatever consensus there may have been in the 1950s and 1960s as to what the question was (how to get peasants in poor countries to behave differently) and the answer (use fieldwork to understand culture and then apply this understanding to designing more culturally appropriate health interventions), by the 1970s the field was growing in multiple directions and diverging. Many anthropologists saw not culture but economics as the issue, and more and more came to distrust the whole enterprise of planned development as not fixing but perpetuating poverty. Others were less worried about political economy but felt that "culture" was a much more complex and subtle thing than a bunch of so-called beliefs; they brought in new tools from philosophy, linguistics, sociology, and literature to think about "illness experience" in new ways. These two shifts in the field became known as "critical" and "interpretive" medical anthropology, respectively.
The field continued to shift in the 1980s. Many scholars outside anthropology were looking at the body and at illness and health as problems of great importance to general philosophy and general sociology. Scholars focusing on how racial and gender differences came to matter in a given society began to attend to the politics of bodily knowledge and the relations between biology and power in new ways. New approaches to the study of science were growing in popularity in many disciplines and becoming known by names like "science studies." Medicine itself continued to expand and to shift increasingly in the United States toward a "managed care" model. How doctors and other clinicians and healers operated was changing, as was the role of the pharmaceutical industry, of government, of non-governmental organizations, and of patients' groups. All of these changes meant that medical anthropology was less and less a specific subdiscipline and more and more a set of linked questions that scholars across anthropology and across the social and natural sciences had to consider.
This course offers an introduction to the field over these different moments, taking from each of these moments questions and debates that still matter and that help us to think about how to understand medicine, health, the body, and life in the present and future.
ANTHRO 119: SPECIAL TOPICS IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY "VIOLENCE, GENOCIDE, AND SOCIAL SUFFERING: PERSPECTIVES FROM MEDICINE, SOCIAL SCIENCE, AND THE HUMANITIES"
N. Scheper-Hughes & B. Manz 4 units TuTh 3:30-5 155 Kroeber
This course is instructor approval only. Interested students should attend the first class to obtain a class entry code.
This experimental, intensive, undergraduate lecture/discussion/field practicum course will explore violence and genocide as a continuum that includes often unrecognized forms of violence -- the 'small wars and invisible genocides' -- of everyday life. Most forms of violence are not 'deviant' at all but defined as moral in the service of political norms and economic interests. Thus, we will focus on the structural and symbolic violence of poverty, exclusion, and confinement as these negatively impact the sick-poor, the socially marginalized, the displaced and the disgraced, especially refugees, immigrants, the homeless, street children, prisoners, the mentally ill. Lectures and readings will juxtapose the routine, the ordinary -- the symbolic and normative violence of everyday life ("terror as usual") -- against sudden eruptions of unexpected, extraordinary, or "gratuitous" violence (as in genocide, state terror, dirty wars, drug wars, terrorism, rough justice, guerrilla warfare, and civil wars). We will explore the continuities between political and criminal violence, between state violence and 'communal' violence, between structural violence and domestic violence.
Part one of the course will introduce students to an interdisciplinary (anthropological, medical, philosophical, theological, and literary) approach to the definition and meanings of violence and suffering. Students will be introduced to Franco Basaglia's "peace-time crimes", Conrad's "heart of darkness"; Immanuel Levinas's "useless suffering"; Bourdieu's "symbolic violence"; Taussig's "culture of terror," Primo Levi's "gray zone"; Agamben's "impossibility of witnessing"; and Foucault's "carceral network". We will contrast ethnographic, literary, documentary, and humanitarian forms of 'witnessing', representing, and responding to violence and genocide.
The second half of the course will look at the emergence of human rights discourses and humanitarian responses to violence and their extension to new populations and problems and the creation of new rights (including medical and cultural rights); biological and medical citizenship. We will look at the applications of human rights to medicine, psychiatry, to expanded notions of citizenship, especially in the fraught context of new nation building following civil wars and political violence. Among the questions we will raise are: How do conceptions of human rights vary with respect to different social, cultural and political contexts? What social groups do or do not have recognized human rights? Are specific human rights seen as 'owned' by individuals or by social groups? What notions of 'the human' and 'human dignity' are recognized and encoded in various human rights discourses? Guest speakers who have extensive experience as scholars, artists, and activists dealing with violence, genocide, social suffering and human rights will be an integral part of this course
Finally, this course has a optional field research component and practicum through which students will participate as 'interns' in local various institutional field sites, programs, institutions related to the themes of the course.
Assigned Readings will be drawn from the following:
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Philippe Bourgois. 2004. Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology. London: Basil Blackwell
Beatriz Manz. 2003. Paradise in Ashes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sontag, Susan 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others,. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Derrida, Jacques 2001. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. London: Rutledge
Farmer, Paul. 2003. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. U of California Press.
Philip Gourvitch. We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will be Killed with Our Families.NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Mark Danner. 1994. The Massacre at El Mozote. New York: Vintage
A Human Being Died That Night
Ignatieff, Michael. 1997. The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience. NY: Henry Holt.
ANTHRO 121AC: AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE
L. Wilkie 4 units
TuTh 11-12:30 4 LeConte Hall
Note: This course meets the American Cultures Requirement.
Material culture as an expression of American socioeconomic, political,
religious, gender and ethnic values since the 17th century. Topics include:
architecture, domestic artifacts, food ways, healthcare and pop
culture. European, African, Hispanic, Asian and Native American
examples will be considered.
Prerequisites: Anthropology 2 recommended.
ANTHRO 125B: ARCHAEOLOGY AND JAPANESE IDENTITIES: "CHANGING LIFEWAYS OF COMMONERS, SAMURAI, AND NOBLES"
J. Habu 4 units
TuTh 2-3:30 155 Kroeber
This course attempts to shed new light on the stereotypical images of the traditional Japanese culture and people through archaeological analysis. Specifically, the aims of the course are twofold. First, it shows how recent archaeological discoveries can change conventional interpretations of Japanese history. Particular emphasis will be placed on changing lifeways of past residents of the Japanese islands, including commoners, samurai (the warrior class) and nobles. Second, the course aims to discuss the implications of these archaeological studies on our understanding of Japanese identities. Class lectures will be supplemented by slides of excavation scenes and artifacts, and videos.
The majority of archaeological case studies discussed in this course falls into the category of “historical archaeology,” which is defined as the study of excavated remains from periods associated with written documents. This is in contrast with prehistoric archaeology, which deals with periods with no written documents. In the case of Japan, historical archaeology started as the study of early historical periods, namely the study of tombs and temples from the Nara (A.D. 710-794) and Heian (794-1192) periods. However, as archaeologists became more interested in the relationship between material culture and human behavior, they have begun to excavate remains from later periods, including the Medieval period (1192-1600; this includes the Kamakura, Muromachi and Azuchi/Momoyama periods) and the Edo period (1600-1868). Questions that will be addressed in the course include the following:
1) How can excavations of early historical palaces and Kofun tombs shed new light on political struggles described in early historical texts?
2) How can studies of medieval and Edo period ceramics and other trade goods help us understand the expansion of market economy, as well as the interaction with other countries in Asia and Europe?
3) What can archaeologists tell about the health and hygienic conditions of medieval and Edo period people from demographic and pathological studies of skeletal remains?
4) How did the mortuary practice of the Japanese people change over time, and how were the practices related to religious beliefs?
5) What were the lifeways of samurai and commoners, including their foodways, clothing and housing?
6) Where did the Ainu people (an ethnic group who has lived, and still live, primarily in Hokkaido, and whose cultural and linguistic traditions are different from those of the Honshu or “Mainland” Japanese) and their culture come from, and how did the relationship between the Ainu and the central Japanese state change through time?
No prerequisites. Although this is an upper division course in anthropology, freshmen, sophomores and students in non-anthropology majors are also encouraged to take this course.
ANTHRO 128A: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY "INCA AND THE COLONIAL ANDES"
E. Dean 4 units MWF 9-10 170 Barrows
This course relies upon lectures and class discussion of archaeological, anthropological, and ethnohistorical readings in order to look at the origins, impact, decline, and transformation of Inca society in the 14th through 18th centuries. Drawing upon the recent, but growing, body of documentation (including translations of primary historical sources), this course will address the sociopolitical, religious, and quotidian construction of 'an' Inca identity. The last weeks of the course look at the role of "The Inca" in the ritual, economic, and political life of the contemporary Andes. In our consideration of Inca and neo-Inca cultures, we will pay special attention to the following topics: the confluence of landscape, ritual, and politics in the Inca Empire; the complexity of Andean syncretic religious traditions; how Inca conquest and imperial maintenance strategies differed from those of the Spanish; post -Colonial struggles for indigenous sovereignty; and how each generation and political camp constructs its own vision of the Inca past.
Two classes per week are given over to illustrated lectures, and the remaining session is devoted to small group discussions (students will divide into groups of 4-5 students and the instructor will circulate through the classroom, monitoring and moderating the conversations). Student debates, student presentations of final projects, and a visit to view Inca material culture currently housed in the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology round out the syllabus.
ANTHRO 136B: MUSEUM METHODS "EXHIBITING OTHER PEOPLE'S CULTURES"
R. Joyce 4 units TuTh 3:30-5 115 Kroeber
Note: This course meets the method requirement for the
anthropology major.
This course will introduce participants to the fundamentals of contemporary museum practices. It is intended for two groups of students: individuals who may be thinking of conducting research in museums, and may benefit from an understanding of the way these institutions work and individuals who may be thinking of museum work as a post-graduate career. The course provides a practical introduction to contemporary museum approaches to exhibition design, with particular application to the design of exhibits that represent cultural heritage. Both the theory of museum exhibit design and practice will be considered. In addition to reading, presenting, and discussing assigned articles each week, evaluation for the course will be based on completion of a comparative exhibit design exercise and a group project, culminating in the design of a proposed on-site interpretive center for the Los Naranjos archaeological site, located on Lake Yojoa, Honduras.
ANTHRO 136H: ARCHAEOLOGY AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAM: "THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE 6TH GRADE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAM"
R. Tringham T. Sturak & C. Underwood 4 units Tu 9-11 101, 2251 College
Additional requirement: off-campus after-school mentoring, one afternoon per week (Wed, Thu, or Fri)
Note: This course meets the method requirement for the anthropology major.
This course is about ethnographic fieldwork, public archaeology, the anthropology of pedagogy and education, the anthropology of technology, and collaborative learning and the material and media representation of culture. The course is designed to provide an opportunity for undergraduates to work with 6th graders in exploring the worlds of archaeology, history, and computer-based technologies. There is no mid-term or final examination for this course. Students enrolled in Anthropology 128m are expected to mentor and interact with children (predominantly 6th graders) in Expedition, an after-school program at Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland. Additionally, this course fulfills the methods requirement for Anthropology majors, providing an opportunity to learn and use a variety of ethnographic skills, guided by adjunct faculty member Dr. Charles Underwood. The focus of the course this semester is encouraging the awareness of the multicultural nature of the meaning of material culture and its expression through digital storytelling.
The Expedition after-school program, which is voluntary, is designed to bring the archaeological experience to 6th graders through facilitated play with a variety of media, including: digital storytelling (video production), computer games, web browsing, hands-on exploration of real artifacts, etc. The facilitator for the Expedition program is Tamara Sturak.
Pre-requisites: Students from fields other than archaeology and anthropology are welcome to participate. Bilingual students are strongly encouraged to apply. The Introduction to Archaeology (Anthro.2) or its equivalent or the permission of the instructor are the only prerequisites. Regular access to an email and Internet account are essential.
Requirements: This course is essentially a practical research/service-learning course. Participation in the Roosevelt School after-school program (approx. 2-3 hrs one afternoon each week) is a required part of the course. You will be expected to keep fieldnotes of your observations and enter them into the course database each week.
Required reading:
Kozol, J. 2000. Ordinary Resurrections: children in the years of hope. Crown Publ, New York.
A course reader of weekly required readings will also be available for course.
ANTHRO 134B: MULTIMEDIA AUTHORING FOR ARCHAEOLOGY
R. Tringham 4 units M 10-11 15, 2224 Piedmont
M 11-1 & W 10-12(dis) 13, 2224 Piedmont (MACTiA lab)
Prerequisites: Anthro 2, Introduction to Archaeology or consent
from the instructors. Students who participated in the 2004 summer field-schools
will have first priority. In order to confirm registration for admittance
to the class or request to be added, you must come to the first lecture.
NO EXCEPTIONS. Confirmation of your admittance to the class will be
made at that time.
4-unit studio course. The instructor meets for one hour per week lecture/discussion (Mon 10-11), and 2-hour studio twice a week (Mon 11-1, Wed 10-12) in MACTIA (Multimedia Authoring Center for Teaching in Anthropology), 2224 Piedmont. Maximum number of students is 20.
Course Description : This course focuses on the use of digital media to create narratives about the practice and the products of archaeology. The Fall 2005 version will be about the public presentation of World Heritage (UNESCO) sites. The ultimate aim of the course is to enable students to create their own digital narratives (videos) or combination live theater/digital narrative from their own research as a collaborative project. Through the course, students build a critical awareness of the way in which digital media are used by archaeologists, journalists, TV producers, film producers, and many others express in a linear narrative format how archaeologists and others construct knowledge about the past and about the many pasts that they have created.. The format is the MACTiA model of technical training and guidance in which a priority is given to well-researched content.
Formal instruction will focus on the history, current state and theory behind the use of digital media to present archaeological narratives. Digital media (including film/video, websites, and games) are explored and critically evaluated and compared to non-digital sources (publications, pantings, live theater). At the same time students are guided in studio format through the introductory stages of the digital authoring process, receiving an introduction to video photography and non-linear video editing (iMovie, Final Cut Pro).. The final assignment is the collaborative production of a short digital narrative or a combined digital story/live theater narrative to be performed/presented to an audience at the end of the semester.
This course is the prerequisite for an advanced digital narrative production for archaeology course to be offered in Spring 2006.
Prerequisites: Anthro 2 (Introduction to Archaeology) or equivalent
Reading: (also a large number of web resources)
Required Text Lambert, J. 2002. Digital Storytelling: capturing lives, creating community. Digital Diner Press, Berkeley, CA.
Plus a Course Reader of selected readings from Digital Narrative Practice and Theory, Cultural Heritage Issues, and Public Archaeology
Highly recommended text: Fowler, Peter 2004. Landscapes for the World: Conserving a Global Heritage. Macclesfield, Cheshire, UK: WINDgather Press.
ANTHRO 138A: HISTORY AND THEORY OF ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM
I. Leimbacher 4 units M 3-7 155 Kroeber
This course is a prerequisite for 138B, Production of Ethnographic Film, which is scheduled to be taught Spring 2006. (138B meets the Method requirement for the major.)
The course will trace the development of ethnographic film from its
beginnings at the turn of the century to the present. In addition to
looking at seminal works in the field, more recent and innovative productions
will be viewed and analyzed. Topics of interest include the role of
visual media in ethnography, ethics in filmmaking, and the problematic
relationship between seeing and believing. Requirements include film
critiques, a film proposal, and a final exam.
Prerequisites: Anthro 3 or 114.
ANTHRO 151: ANTHROPOLOGY OF TOURISM
N. Graburn 4 units
TuTh 12:30-2 155 Kroeber
The course will focus on the two main topics in the study of tourism, in the following order:
(1) The cultural, social-structural and psychological aspects of tourism, focusing on its history, meaning, and growth in the Western and Eastern Worlds. We will examine the relationship of tourism to work, life style, pilgrimages, ritual, play, postmodernism and other forms of cultural expression.
(2) The social, cultural and economic impacts of tourism on host communities and nations,particularly tourism from the industrial world impinging on the Third and Fourth World. Specific case studies will include ecological, stratificational and ethnic aspects.
The 1st part of the course will consist mainly of lectures and some videos, with opportunity for student feedback and questions. The 2nd part of the course will consist of lectures, some illustrated by slides and videos; I hope to arrange for guest presentations on the impact and growth of tourism in specific communities, ranging through island cultures, historical cities, and modern nations, by members of those societies and other experts (including students who come from places that are “targets of tourism”).
Exams and Assignments: There will be two exams and one graded essay assignment. The mid-term will be a take-home exam with short essay questions requiring synthesis and application of the first subject matter. The final will focus mainly on the second subject matter. Those who do very well in the mid-term and the assignment may be allowed to do a term paper in lieu of a final, if they come up with an appropriate subject for research and analysis. Graduate students are especially encouraged to do a term paper.
Required text:
Sharon B. Gmelch (ed.) Tourists and Tourism: a Reader. Waveland Press
A Course Reader will be available at Copy Central, Bancroft Avenue
A Course web site will be set up for messages, news and links to additional readings.
If you have additional questions, please write to: graburn@berkeley.edu
ANTHRO 157: ANTHROPOLOGY OF LAW
L. Nader 4 units TuTh 11-12:30 160 Kroeber
An introduction to law in culture and society. Among the topics discussed will be the use of law as legitimation, the interplay between law and colonialism, law and ideology, legal pluralism, the evolution of law and conception of justice, legal hegemonies and user theory in the context of local, national, and global disputing processes. Reading and lecture materials include perspectives across cultures.
ANTHRO 158: RELIGION AND ANTHROPOLOGY
S. Pandolfo 4 units TuTh 11-12:30 160 Kroeber
Course description not yet available.
ANTHRO
C160: FORMS OF FOLKLORE
* Cross-listed with ISF 160
C. Briggs 4 units
MWF 9-10 155 Dwinelle
A worldwide survey of the major and minor forms of folklore with special emphasis upon proverbs, riddles, superstitions, games, songs, and narratives.
Charles L. Briggs is the Alan Dundes Distinguished Professor in Folklore. He has studied jokes, proverbs, ritual, folk art, and several narrative genres. In anthropology, he focuses on linguistic and medical anthropology, social theory, modernity, citizenship and the state, race, and violence. He has conducted research with Latino/a populations in the Southwestern US and in Latin America; he is currently working in California, Cuba, and Venezuela.
ANTHRO 162: TOPICS IN FOLKLORE KOREAN FOLKLORE AND POPULAR RELIGION
T. Tangherlini 4 units TuTh 11-12:30 110 Barrows
The goal of this course is to introduce students to the varied traditional expressions of Korea. The main emphasis of the course will be on Korean rituals (shamanistic and Confucian-influenced), folk narratives (myths, legends and folktales), folk performances (primarily mask dance drama), and folk music (p'ungmul). Other aspects of folk culture, such as foodways, clothing, material culture, and architecture will also be explored during the course of the quarter. One of the main focuses of the course will be an exploration of the similarities between Korean traditions and those found in other East Asian countries as well as the traditions of other more disparate cultures. As such, the course aims to identify what makes Korean traditional expressions Korean. The course will also include considerations of how folklore is used---why do people tell the stories, perform the rituals, eat the foods, wear the clothes and build the buildings that they do? We will examine how the various "Korean Folk Villages" and other aspects of tourism, particularly the 1988 Olympics, use folklore for various purposes. Finally, we will examine the transformation of traditions from Korea to the United States, and how traditions have adapted to the new cultural landscape. The emerging Korean-American ethnic group(s) reinvent tradition to fit their situation, and we will examine how this occurs. The large Korean and Korean-American populations in Los Angeles are a fantastic resource for our class. Therefore, a major component of the class requirements will consist of a fieldwork project.
Course Requirements: Students are required to attend all classes and actively take part in the discussions (20%). There will be a midterm examination (20%) and a final paper (30%) based on your fieldwork project (30%). The fieldwork project topics will be reached in consultation with the instructor during the third week of classes.
ANTHRO 166: LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY: CANCELLED
ANTHRO 179: ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE MAYA
W. Hanks 4 units TuTh 9:30-11 155 Dwinelle
This course introduces students to the anthropological study of Maya people in Southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belice. Necessarily selective, the course focuses on certain parts of the Maya region, emphasizing selected themes and problems. In the first half of the semester we will explore regional history in the double sense of the development of Maya studies, and the historical transformations of Maya societies. These two themes will be traced through studies of the Classic Maya, the Spanish conquest and colonization, indigenous resistance and rebellion and recent pan Maya activism. The Yucatan is one of the best studied parts of the Maya region, and will provide a case study through which to critically explore the models, methods and practices of ethnography. In the latter half of the semester, we will examine in detail aspects of contemporary Yucatan ethnography, based on research over the past two decades by myself and others. In this phase, our focus will be the constitution of lived space and the role of shamanic practice in relation to the body, the domestic sphere and agricultural production.
The course will be a combination of lectures and discussion, with a midterm in week 8 and a final paper (max 25 pp.) to be turned in during exam week. Class attendance and careful readings are obligatory and will count towards the grade. There are no prerequisites. Reading knowledge of Spanish helpful but not required.
ANTHRO 181: THEMES IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE EAST
S. Mahmood 4 units TuTh 11-12:30 155 Kroeber
This course will explore some of the major themes through which the
Middle East has been studied within the discipline of anthropology.
Some of the themes we will cover are: tribe, kinship, gender, poetics,
political conflict, and religion.
ANTHRO 183: TOPICS IN THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF AFRICA
M. Ferme 4 units TuTh 2-3:30 210 Wheeler
The course will focus on African societies and cultures, as well as on issues relating to the history of Africanist anthropology. Images and constructs of Africa or Africans will thus be contextualized in relation to prevailing anthropological theories at different times and in different regions of the continent.
ANTHRO 189: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY "ANTHROPOLOGY AND DISABILITY"
D. Kasnitz & R. Shuttleworth 4 units TuTh 2-3:30 115 Kroeber
Anthropology is underrepresented in the development of interdisciplinary disability studies. Medical anthropology has traditionally chosen to focus its primary analytic lens on the meaning of illness and its amelioration, minimally addressing variations in cross-cultural concepts of impairment, disability, and accommodation. This is changing. Anthropology is beginning to use theoretically grounded and consistent definitions of these phenomena. This course will supply an overview and will demonstrate the important contributions to be gained from a mutual engagement between anthropology and disability studies. We will present the anthropology of disability by engaging multiple perspectives on the sociocultural construction of disability and impairment. The international disablement experience brings up important issues at the interface of identity, society, and culture. These issues are not always necessarily tied to the narratives of cause and cure with which medical anthropologists are familiar, but in some cultural contexts can clearly be viewed as social exclusions and their impact. The distinction between disability meanings and illness meanings and their sometimes intersection and interaction requires theoretical elaboration and this course will address this distinction as well as engage other unique perspectives in discourse on anthropology and disability.
Requirements: This class is designed for upper-division undergraduates and graduate students with some background in anthropology and in disability studies. It will be a lecture/discussion class with a significant amount of reading. Active class participation is expected. Grading will be on the basis of class participation, reaction papers, a midterm exam, and a final research paper.
- ANTHRO 229A: ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH STRATEGIES
L. Wilkie & R. Tringham 4 units W 2-5 101, 2251 College
GRADUATE
COURSES
Note: Graduate seminars are open to qualified undergraduates
at the discretion of the instructor.
ANTHRO 219: TOPICS IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY "ALCOHOL AND CULTURE"
S. Brandes
4 units W 3-5 309 Kroeber
This graduate seminar is devoted specifically to the anthropological study of alcohol consumption and its consequences. Course material concerns both the prescription and prohibition of alcoholic beverages. Some of the main topics to be considered in the course are cross-cultural drinking patterns, gender and drink, changing drinking norms and behavior, and religious and ceremonial aspects of drink. Core readings will be selected from classic works on the topic as well as from recent research carried out around the world.
This graduate seminar is REQUIRED for all first and second-year graduate students in archaeology. It is open to other students in anthropology and in other departments who are interested in the history and theory of archaeological practice. Particular attention in the seminar will be given to the Anglo-American tradition of archaeological practice, although other intellectual regions will be considered, depending upon the areas of student interest and research. In particular we shall focus on the emergence and specification of the so-called "ecological-evolutionary "paradigm: how and why it came to take the form(s) that it did, what issues and approaches were precluded or marginalized, what "gains" it has achieved, and how and why it set the stage for the various "post-processualist" types or archaeology that have emerged recently. There will be regular discussions and extensive reading. Students are expected to attend all classes, to participate and to be prepared. In addition, one major research paper (20-25 pages long) and probably a few debate presentations will be required during the course of the semester.
ANTHRO 240A: FUNDAMENTALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY
L. Cohen & S. Mahmood 5 units TuTh 2-5 101, 2251 College
Advanced survey of the major theoretical and empirical areas of social and cultural anthropology.
ANTHRO 229C: WRITING THE FIELD IN ARCHAEOLOGY
R. Joyce 4 units
W 2-5 101, 15, 2224 Piedmont
This seminar is intended to guide students in the definition of a field within anthropological archaeology, from initial conceptualization to writing of a field statement, dissertation chapter, or review article. A "field" may be defined as a body of knowledge considered to have intellectual coherence. Fields are constituted through acts of writing, including those using new media, and then come to delimit domains of knowledge. Yet as this definition makes clear, a field is an heuristic construct. Many fields are recognized and embodied in such forms as undergraduate and graduate courses, introductory texts and survey articles, but all are artificial in this sense. One implication is that moving the discipline forward begins by defining new fields. Participants in this course will be expected to define a field and produce a statement of that field by the end of the semester.
Required texts: Howard Becker, 1986. Writing for Social Scientists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rosemary A. Joyce, 2002. The Languages of Archaeology: Dialogue, Narrative, and Writing. Oxford: Blackwell.
ANTHRO 230-1: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF JAPAN "
J. Habu
4 units M 10-12 101, 2251 College
Historical archaeology (the study of excavated remains from periods associated with written documents) is a growing field in Japanese archaeology. Excavations of sites from the early historic period (ca. AD 7C.-12C.), the medieval Kamakura, Muromachi and Azuchi/Momoyama periods (late 12C.-16C.), and the Edo period (17C.-19C.) provide us with new lines of evidence to infer social, political, economic and biological aspects of past people who lived on the Japanese archipelago. Through these studies, issues that have been underrepresented in traditional Japanese history, such as the lifeways of commoners and samurai as opposed to nobles and other political elites, ongoing trade with neighboring political entities and ethnic groups, and origins and development of minority cultures including the Ainu culture in Hokkaido, can be approached. These studies in turn shed new light on our understanding of the conventional images of the Japanese culture and people. Topics that will be covered in this seminar also include the relationship between the study of the past and identity construction in contemporary Japanese society, and theoretical contributions of Japanese historical archaeology on the world archaeology scene.
ANTHRO 250A: PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY "MADNESS, MEMORY, POSTCOLONIALITY"
S.Pandolfo 5 units W 10-12 15, 2224 Piedmont
Course description not yet available.
ANTHRO 250C: GLOBALIZATION "THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF GLOBALIZATION"
A. Ong 4 units Tu 11-1 317 Kroeber
There is no agreement as to what "globalization" means. One may argue, however, that in the social sciences, the term has a general marker for heterogeneous and often contradictory transformations -- in economic organization, social regulation, political governance, and ethical regimes -- that are felt to have profound though uncertain, confusing, or contradictory implications for contemporary human life. Increasingly, the phenomena that concern social scientists assume spatial forms that are non-isomorphic with standard units of analysis such as country, nation, and culture. The emergence of various localisms and regionalisms, along with "transnational" patterns have been the subject of growing interest and investigation. This is a problem that cuts to the heart of contemporary social sciences. Many observers believe that we have witnessed a shift in the core dynamics of social, cultural, economic and political life.
In anthropology, we have had a range of analytical responses. One approach has been to track migrant flows and the emergence of "transnational" communities. Another view has been to stress cultural flows that come to reconstitute new spaces or "scapes" of social organization and activity. A third has been to examine the rise of "localities", however defined, as articulations with, effects of, or dynamic responses or resistances to, global forces. In this seminar, we will discuss a fourth alternative, an approach to globalization as a problem-space that constitutes contemporary anthropological problems. We will consider the methodological implications of a perspective that takes into account particular assemblages of mobile "global forms," politics, and ethics that put at stake what it means to be human today.
Requirements: Priority is given to graduate students in Berkeley anthropology. Students are expected to make class presentations and to write a research paper based on theoretical arguments read in class. No incompletes are accepted.
ANTHRO 250J: THNOGRAPHIC FIELD METHODS: "FIELDWORK INSIDE OUT"
N. Scheper-Hughes 4 units W 2-4 203 Wheeler
"Theorists and methodologists - get to work!" - C.Wright Mill
'The way to do fieldwork is to not come up for air until it is over". - Margaret Mead
This seminar offers a broad-ranging yet focused examination of key issues in the epistemology, methodology, practice, and politics of ethnography as an approach to data production and social analysis characterized by personal embeddedness and embodied involvement in the universe under study. Various traditions and styles of ethnographic inquiry in anthropology and sociology (interpretive versus analytic, extended case, narrative, confessional, phenomnological, carnal, historical) are dissected, evaluated and compared in terms of their epistemic assumptions and aims, field techniques and relations, analytical strategies, representational devices, and ethical quandaries. Among the issues we confront are the differences and similarities between ethnography and other methods of social inquiry, the connection of theory to data, the origins and deployment of concepts, the nature and texture of social relations in the field, production and writing standards, and the multiple audiences of ethnography. A second focus of this course is on doing ethnographic fieldwork. Thus, in rather quick order we cover everything from choosing and defining a problem, research design, proposal writing, and protection of human subjects to the tools and techniques specific to cultural and to medical anthropology in a variety of settings from traditional community-based and "street corner" ethnography to research in clinical and laboratory settings, hospitals, schools, jails, mental asylums and refugee camps to multi-sited ethnography among highly mobile workers in global cities. We discuss the limits of inference and understanding based on experience and empathy, and power dynamics and conflicting loyalties in the production of anthropological knowledge.
Requirements RESEARCH PROJECT. As this is a seminar on the practice of ethnographic fieldwork, every seminar participant is required to select a feasible research topic, to write a short research proposal, and to dedicate one day a week to fieldwork, to produce fieldnotes on a weekly basis, and to complete a ten page research report by the last seminar meeting. Typed fieldnotes based on handwritten notes are to be handed on a weekly basis after week 7. A final requirement is a 6 page critical reaction paper due at the 5th seminar meeting. Each member of the seminar will choose two ethnographies -- one older and classic and one newer, recent -- and evaluate, compare, contrast the methods used by each. This will require you to be an intuitive reader as many traditional ethnographers are exceedingly vague about, for example, whether the events described were observed or based on interviews. In the end, we want to clarify the distinctive virtues, liabilities, predicament, and promise of the ethnographic craft across the social sciences and kindred disciplines.
Readings will be drawn from (among many others) :
Anderson, Elijah. 1978. A Place on the Corner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Davis, Nathalie Zemon. 1983. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Jackson, Michael (ed.). 1997. Things As They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson (eds.). 1997. Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kulick, Don and Margaret Willson (eds.). 1995. Taboo: Sex, Identity, and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork. New York: Routledge.
Marcus, George. 1998. Ethnography through Thick and Thin. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. [1979, 1982] 2001. Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland. Berkeley: University of California Press, new edition 2001.
Van Maanen, John. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wacquant, Loïc. [2000] 2004. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. New York: Oxford University Press.
Whyte, William F. [1943, 1955] 1978. Street-Corner Society: The Social Structure of An Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
ANTHRO 250X-1: SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: ETHNOGRAPHIES OF RELATION
C. Hayden 4 units
W 10-12 101, 2251 College
This seminar focuses on the work of British social anthropologist Marilyn Strathern. Tacking back and forth between Melanesia and Britain, Strathern has had unique and formative influences on, among other things, feminist and political anthropology, work on kinship and exchange, and science studies. The seminar will introduce students to her work, taking a roughly chronological approach from the early Melanesian ethnographies to contemporary interventions on intellectual property, audit culture, and European modes of knowledge production. We will employ a few distinct reading strategies to work through this challenging but rewarding body of work: reading cumulatively [that is, with attention throughout to the continuities and tensions across time in her work], placing these readings into conversation with selected interlocutors, and rolling up our sleeves and working intensely with smaller selections of text. In the process, we will dive into conversations about gift and exchange, descent and alliance, persons and things, form as a mode of analysis, and Strathern's unique mode of re-thinking liberal political/social theory itself.
ANTHRO 250X-2: SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: MODERN THEORIES OF DISCOURSE
C. Hirshkind 4 units
Th 10-12 15, 2444 Piedmont
This course explores different notions of discourse as they inform discussions within anthropology on such topics as subjectivity, disciplinary practice, gender, performance, ideology, and power. Readings will be drawn from key texts in anthropological linguistics, linguistic indexicality, speech act theory, Bakhtinian dialogicality as well as from the works of Volosinov, Foucault, Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Butler. These theoretical discussions will be read in conjunction with a number of ethnographic works so as to explore the analytical purchase afforded by the various approaches.
ANTHRO 250X-3: SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: CANCELLED
ANTHRO 250X-4: SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: ORIENTALISM, OCCIDENTALISM, AND CONTROL
L. Nader 4 units M
10-12 201 Wheeler
This seminar will explore the ways in which moving ideas of East and West define each other to create their own special identities. Topics include the use of gender, development, modernization, religion, law, science/technology as categories crucial to a critical understanding of both “orientalism” and “occidentalism” in relation to hierarchy and control.
During the first part of the seminar readings will be discussed in seminar time and participants will lead the discussions. Possible topics for papers should emerge from these discussions. The latter part of the seminar will include presentations of student research papers. The seminar will be structured by means of four topics: 1) the critique of the study of others; 2) the ubiquitous interest in other peoples that was part of the human experience long before there were social sciences; 3) 20th century views of the peoples of other “civilizations”—Euro-American, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, Japanese; and 4) the reactions and consequences of the present global interaction between and within “civilizations” reflective of differing power positions.
ANTHRO 250X-5: SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: CANCELLED
ANTHRO 250X-6: SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: CANCELLED
ANTHRO 250X-7: SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION
M. Ferme 4
units Tu 10-12 15, 2224 Piedmont
This seminar will examine writings in political theory and anthropology on ways of imagining the political, including ways in which power exceeds domains delineated as “political.” To what extent are the state and the national imaginary appropriate sites for examining political practices, especially in light of profound shifts in conceptualizing classic concepts of sovereignty and forms of governance? On the one hand political theory has recently taken on board “weak” models of state power in the face of new supra-state sovereign entities (though understanding this weakness not as a retreat of the state, but a redeployment of sovereignty), while on the other hand these very entities have proven to be subject to the political manipulations of particular states, rather than rising above them. What political spaces are left open by these shifts, which are also linked to historical changes in the relationship between political, economic, and ethical modes of belonging? Political anthropologists have used non-western models of governance to critique the focus on states as privileged sites of the political. What is at stake in the efforts some societies have made to isolate political institutions from key social ones? At the other end of the spectrum, how have globalization and transnationalism shaped new ways of imagining being in the public sphere, as well as notions of citizenship, nationality, and cosmopolitanism?
Readings will include works by Anderson (Imagined Communities), Agamben (selections from Homo Sacer), Canetti (selections from Crowds and Power), Cheah and Robbins (selections from Cosmopolitics), Clastres (Society against the State), Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Habermas (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere), Mbembe (Necropolitics, selections from On the Postcolony), Roitman (Fiscal Disobedience), Schmitt (The Concept of the Political), Stiglitz (Globalization and its Discontents. Seminar participants will be asked to write five 5-page response papers to a week’s assigned readings and should be ready to lead discussions for at least two seminar sessions among those they select for close scrutiny.
ANTHRO 250X-8: SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: CANCELLED
ANTHRO 250X-9: SPECIAL TOPICS IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "ADVANCED TOPICS IN LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY "
B. Hanks 4 units F 10-1 15, 2224 Piedmont
This seminar is an advanced course in linguistic anthropology, focused on current issues in the field, the state of the field nationally and the research projects of seminar members. Members will be expected to attend all meetings, lead discussion one or more times and make formal presentation of their own research. Designed for students who have already taken Anthro 270 Fundamentals of Language in Context and who are pursuing advanced training in linguistic anthropology. Prerequisite: Anthro 270B Fundamentals of Language in Context or permission of instructor.
ANTHRO 260: PROBLEMS IN FOLKLORE: PUBLIC DISPLAYS FOLKLORE & SOCIETY: REPETOIRE, POLITICS, AND PERFORMANCE
T. Tangherlini 4 units Tu 2-4 15, 2224 Piedmont
Folklore emerges from the dialectic tension between the individual and tradition. Far too frequently, folklore collections elide the individual in the presentation of "traditional expression." Conversely, studies of individual craftsmanship at times neglect the embeddedness of the individual's traditional expression in the greater community of tradition participants. In this seminar we focus intensely on the folklore collections of the Danish collector Evald Tang Kristensen, and specifically on the repertoires of five of his informants. We will explore aspects of genre and performance, as well as questions pertaining to folklore repertoire and world view. We will read the repertoires of these five informants against an ethnographically thick understanding of late 19th century Jutlandic peasant communities. Our investigations will start with a grounding in history, focusing on legal, social, cultural, and environmental transformations that marked this period. To what extent did changes in the educational system, local community organization, church organization and transportation and communication infrastructure influence the individual storytellers? To what extent can one read their stories (and repertoires) as a form of commentary on the changes that surround them? We will also examine the problematic relationship between informant and collector, and collector and the intellectual elites who controlled publication. No knowledge of Danish is required.
Requirements: There will be two presentations per student--one a main presentation, and the other a response presentation. These will both be done in pairs. Students are required to write a research paper on a topic of their choosing.
ANTHRO 280E JAPAN - CANCELLED
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ANTHRO
290-1: SURVEY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH
ANTHRO 300: GRADUATE PEDAGOGY SEMINAR
* Note: This class will become Anthro 300 pending approval
R. Joyce 2 units F 10-12 101, 2251 College
Note: Required for all first-time GSIs appointed for 2004-2005 in Anthropology.
This seminar introduces new GSIs to the theory and practice of teaching and learning within the discipline of Anthropology. By the end of this course, participants will be able to effectively foster small group discussions; organize and coach group work; develop test questions that advance learning; and evaluate student work consistently. Participants will also have developed an individual teaching philosophy, grounded in theoretical work related to teaching and learning, and will understand the implications of that teaching philosophy for practice
- Professor Stephania Pandolfo
Subjectivity, madness, post-coloniality. Contemporary conversations between anthropology and psychoanalysis .
R. Joyce 1 unit M 4-6 160 Kroeber
The departmental seminar, which is held on posted Mondays from 4-6 p.m. in 160 Kroeber throughout each semester, presents a range of speakers on current topics in anthropology. Speakers and topics are announced prior to the event on the glassed-in bulletin board opposite the main office (232 Kroeber). All students are invited; however, enrollment is strictly limited to and required of all Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, and Demography graduate students who have not been advanced to candidacy.
ANTHRO 290-2: SURVEY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH: ARCHAEOLOGY GRADUATE STUDENT OUTREACH
R. Joyce 1 unit Off Campus
Course may be repeated for credit. Preparation for and at least one visit with a designated elementary or secondary school, either at the school or in a schools or groups visit to the campus, bringing aspects of archaeological information and practice to the classroom, in consultation with the specific school and teacher(s). Designed to put into practice core values of contemporary archaeological practice, as specified in the Code of Ethics of the Society for American Archaeology. Readings, workshops, and some resources are provided, but selecting relevant materials, communication and coordination with the teacher of the class to be visited, and prepartory meeting with partners in the visit are anticipated. Total input per semester estimated to be 15 hours. Required each term of all in-residence graduate students in the archaeology program. Must be taken on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.
FOLKLORE
FOLKLORE 250A: Topics in Psychological Anthropology
Wednesday 10-12 pm 2224 Piedmont, # 15
Efforts at understanding the contemporary moment in psycho-political terms have stressed phenomena of de-subjectivation and massive alienation, in contexts of political exceptionality where death looms over the space of life. The resurgence of “archaic” forms of collective identification, with the potential of hatred these entail, and what has been seen as a return of religion, particularly in the context of Islam, are the sites of a growing conceptual anxiety. In recent scholarly debates that have sometimes reached the international media, these phenomena have been described as a fixation with identity of destructive and self-destructive propensity. More specifically in psychoanalytic language, they have been seen as aspects of a generalized mutation of subjectivity, of a psychotic nature, related to parallel mutations in late-capitalist societies, hinting that human society may be moving “off limits”, beyond symbolic laws, in a trajectory of self-annihilation.
This seminar is an attempt at critically departing from such diagnostics, which, it argues, foreclose the possibility of apprehending the rationality, and creativity, of multiple life forms, rendering unintelligible the lives and worlds of millions of people. It calls for the necessity of a renewed conversation between anthropology and psychoanalysis in cross-cultural perspective, and outlines the possibility of a different reading from within the corpus of psychoanalysis itself. In counterpoint with contemporary critics of the notion of the unconscious it argues for a renewed relevance of the psychoanalytic concept of subjectivity-in-alterity for the possibility of recognizing the intrinsic fragility, as well as the complexity, of multiple life forms -- if these concepts are understood otherwise, and beyond the bounds of their institutional operation.
The seminar will open with an introduction to the notion of the unconscious, subjectivity and unconscious identification through the writings of Freud and Lacan, Winnicott and Aulagnier, as well as some contemporary critics, to establish the shared ground for further discussion. It develops as an exploration of questions of alterity and cultural translation in anthropological perspective, considering the Freudian concepts of subjectivity and the unconscious at the trial of other discursive traditions and conceptualizations of alterity (specifically, the ethical and eschatological tradition of Islam), both in philosophical terms and in the historical complexity of postcolonial situations. For it is in postcolonial contexts that the question is most prominently raised of how to think subjectivity in the experience of dispossession and fragmentation; in the interruption of intergenerational transmission; in the experience of madness between demonic possession and psychiatric illness and institutionalization; in the instability of the systems of reference. And it is in postcolonial contexts that the “question of the subject” (in Lacan’s expression) is increasingly re-formulated from within a theological and eschatological frame of reference – a re-formulation that challenges deeply rooted assumptions within the psychoanalytic community about the relation of subjectivity, secularization and the “hermeneutics of suspicion”, calling for theoretical reinvention. The seminar will conclude on a discussion of philosophical and institutional issues raised by an anthropological reflection on the representation and experience of madness/mental illness in comparative perspective.
Readings include selections from S. Freud, J. Lacan, T.D. Winnicott, M. Borch-Jakobsen, M. Foucault, N. Rose, J. Derrida, P. Aulagnier, F. Benslama, De Certeau, Al-Ghazali, H. Corbin, S. Mahmood, C. Hirschkind, S. Pandolfo, E. Balibar, L. Binswanger, F. Basaglia, B. Good, E. Corin, V. Crapanzano, J. Jankins, V. Das, among others.