Department of Anthropology

University of Alaska Fairbanks

Anthropology 629

Fall 2007

Tuesday 6-9 pm

Eielson 304

Syllabus (Full bibliography can be found on Blackboard)

Sept. 11 Rhetoric, Logic, Science and Argument

No required reading

Sept. 18 Evolutionary Argument

Morgan – Ancient Society, pp. 3-28

Sahlins and Service – Evolution and Society, pp. 12-44

Spencer – "On the Tempo and Mode of State Formation: Neoevolutionism Reconsidered"

Flannery – "Prehistoric Social Evolution," in Research Frontiers in Anthropology

Fuentes – "It's Not All Sex and Violence: Integrated Anthropology and the Role of Cooperation and Social Complexity in Human Evolution"

Sept. 25 Comparative Ethnology of the Durkheimian School

Mauss – Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo

October 2 Boasian Anthropology

Boas - "Alternating Sounds," "The Ethnological Significance of Esoteric Doctrines," "The Documentary Function of the Text," "The Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians," "The Study of Geography"

Benedict - "The Science of Custom"

Orta – "The Promise of Particularism and the Theology of Culture: Limits and Lessons of Neo-Boasianism"

Bunzl, Matti – "Boas, Foucault, and the "Native Anthropologist": Notes toward a Neo-Boasian Anthropology"

Recommended:

Bauman & Briggs, Voices of Modernity

October 9 Models, Metaphors and Themes

Howell - "Nature in culture or culture in nature? Chewong ideas of 'humans' and other species"

Ortner - "Patterns of History: Cultural Schemas in the Foundings of Sherpa Religious Institutions."

paper 1 due October 10

October 16 The Research Process in Science and the Humanities

Latour and Woolgar – Laboratory Life

Mead – Male and Female, Chapter 1

October 23 Biological Argument – The Aquatic Ape Theory

Langdon – "Umbrella hypotheses and parsimony in human evolution: a critique of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis"

Verhaegen – "The Aquatic Ape Theory: Evidence and a Possible Scenario"

Verhaegen - "Aquatic Ape Theory and Speech Origins: a hypothesis"

October 30 Politicized and Applied Anthropology

Boas – "The Negro's Past"

Das – Critical Events ch. 6, pp. 137-174

Trouillot – "Adieu, Culture: A New Duty Arises"

Merry – "Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle"

Riles – "Anthropology, Human Rights, and Legal Knowledge: Culture in the Iron Cage"

November 6 Archaeological Argument – Global Change Archaeology

paper 2 due

Hardesty, Donald L. – "Perspectives on Global-Change Archaeology"

Kirch, Patrick V. – "Hawaii as a Model System for Human Ecodynamics"

McGovern, Thomas H., Orri Vesteinsson, Adolf Friðiksson, et al. "Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology of Human Impact and Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale"

Wilkinson, T. J., J. H. Christiansen, J. Ur, M. Widell, and M. Altaweel – "Urbanization within a Dynamic Environment: Modeling Bronze Age Communities in Upper Mesopotamia"

November 13 Ethnographic Writing

Geertz, Clifford – "Thick Description"

Narayan, Kirin – "Ethnography and Fiction: Where is the Border?"

Das, Veena – Critical Events, ch. 2, pp. 24-54

Recommended:

Malinowski - "Introduction" in Argonauts of the Western Pacific

Evans-Pritchard - "Fieldwork and the Empirical Tradition," Ch. 4 in Social Anthropology

November 20 Indigenous Issues and Anthropological Argument

Keskitalo – "Research as an Inter-Ethnic Relation"

Selection from list from AAA publications

November 27 Culture, Practice and Power

paper 3 due

Ortner – Anthropology and Social Theory

December 4 Gender and Culture

Goodale - "Gender, sexuality and marriage: a Kaulong model of nature and culture"

Collier and Rosaldo - "Politics and gender in simple societies"

Shapiro - "Transsexualism: Reflection on the Persistence of Gender and the Mutability of Sex"

Das Critical Events ch. 3, pp. 55-83, ch. 5, pp. 118-136

December 11 Language and Culture

Whorf - "The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language"

Rosaldo, Knowledge and Passion, Chapter 3 "Knowledge, identity, and order in an egalitarian world"

Irvine and Gal, "Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation"

Recommended:

Silverstein, "Whorfianism and the Linguistic Imagination of Nationality"

Final paper (4) due December 18, 4pm.

Requirements:

Required reading and class participation (20% of grade)

Class assignments - 5-minute presentation most class periods (20%)

4 papers (5-8 pages) with assigned questions, topics and lengths - (60%)