Week

Topic KNOWLEGE

Assignment due

Reading due

Terms

1

Understanding Culture

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Handout:
Geertz “Thick Description”

thick description, interpretation, culture, hermeneutic cycle

2

Foundations of anthropological/ sociological thought

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Handout:
McGee and Warms pp. 5-117 (Spencer, Tylor, Morgan, Marx/Engels, Freud)

approaches: evolutionism, functionalism; sociology anthropology psychology; culture, institutions, individual

culture and politics

3

American cultures:
The Native’s Point of View

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Handouts:
McGee and Warms: Durkheim, Mauss, Weber, and Malinowski

methods: social fact, objective science, empirical observation, fieldwork, voice, represetation/story, insider/outsider, reflexivity and "double hermeneutic": the subject talks back and theorizing is intervening.

4

American cultures:

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Tocqueville (excerpt, handout)
Baudrillard
(excerpts, handout)
Rosaldo "After Objectivism" (handout)
Wisdom Sits in Places Ch 1

objectivity/subjectivity, democracy,
place making,
writing ethnography

5

American cultures:
Out of the mainstream

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Chicana Lives and Criminal Justice
Wisdom sits in places Chs 2 and 3

representation -- whose, what, why?
"giving a voice"

6

American cultures: The Other’s Point of View
Insiders observed

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View videostream
Handouts (available in box outside my office)
Jaguar

Begin paper

7

Paper due on Friday

Work on papers (optionally in culture lab)

Write paper; first version due Monday March 5; final version due Friday March 9

8

American cultures:
Insiders outside, outsiders inside; Studying Scientists

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Handouts: 1. on ethnographic research, 2. "Oh research, very good!"
Pieces from The Latino Reader (handouts)
Excerpts from Reading Lolita in Tehran

Begin independent research

9 Spring Break

KNOWLEDGE
POWER

10

Review first half

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Share Short Papers
Film

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11

African Cultures: Colonialism’s Practices

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Bibliography due Friday

King Leopold’s Ghost

Annotated Bibliography

12

African Cultures: The Power of Stories

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Readings due Friday

Things fall apart

View Moolaade

Select readings for your class discussion

13

African Cultures in Current Anthropology

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Handout (Readings will include Cussins, De Laet & Mol, James Clifford)

14

Discussion lead on culture of your choice

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15

Discussion lead on culture of your choice

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