ANTH 303 - CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Fall Semester 2009
Dr. Ahmet Yukleyen
Office: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Leavell Hall, Room 107
Office hours: Wednesday, 12:00-2:00 pm and by appointment
Email:
Telephone: (662) 915 5733
Cultural Anthropology systematically compares and explores the various ways in which people around the world organize their lives in a common quest for survival and search of meaning. The objective of this course is to reorient you in your approach to your own culture(s) by understanding the “exotic” and questioning “the familiar.” To this end, we will discuss the ways in which human beings in different parts of the world interact with their environment to survive, how they create meaningful cultural patterns to guide their interactions, and how they structure their societies and institutions to maintain order and distribute resources. We will examine major theoretical frameworks to understand fundamental aspects of social organization such as kinship, gender, religion, and social stratification. Finally, we will look at global political and economic developments and their effects on local cultures. The main underlying theme of this course is the interconnectedness of economic, political, and cultural aspects of human life, that is, the relations between systems of production, exchange, and consumption and social order and meaning. At the end of this course, the students will a) acquire the basic terminology and debates to conceptualize human diversity b) utilize anthropological theories to analyze and discuss cultures and societies.
Required Texts:
Reading Packet for ANTH 303 (available at Copy Time, 407 South 11th Street, Phone:
662 234 2679)
James L. Watson (ed.) (1997) Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (Stanford:
Stanford University Press)
Course Grading:
Attendance and Participation 10%
Midterm Exam I 25%
Midterm Exam II 25%
Final Exam 40%
Exams will cover material from the readings, lectures, and films.
Course Outline:
Week 1 (Aug 25, 27): Introduction to Anthropology
Horace Miner (1956) “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”
Week 2 (Sept 3): Confronting the “Other” in Fieldwork
Richard Borshay Lee (1969) “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari”
Theory: Early Evolutionism and Historical Particularism
Lewis Henry Morgan (1877) “Ethnical Periods”
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1871) “The Science of Culture”
Franz Boas (1920) “The Methods of Ethnology”
Week 3 (Sept 8, 10): Culturally Defined Self and Society
Theory: Psychological Functionalism
Bronislaw Malinowski (1922) “The Essentials of the Kula”
Film: First Contact
Week 4 (Sept 15, 17): Kinship and Descent
Melvyn C. Goldstein (1987) “Polyandry: When Brothers Take a Wife”
Theory: Structural Functionalism
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1924) “The Mother’s Brother in South Africa”
E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1940) “The Nuer of the Southern Sudan”
Week 5 (Sept 22, 24): Language and Construction of Reality
David S. Thomson (1975) “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Worlds Shaped by Words”
Theory: Structuralism
Claude Levi-Strauss (1963) “Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in
Anthropology”
Midterm Exam I
Week 6 (Sept 29, Oct 1): Culture, Nature, and Subsistence
Richard Borshay Lee (1968) “The Hunters: Scarce Resources in the Kalahari”
Theory: Cultural Ecology
Julian Steward (1955) “The Patrilineal Band”
Film: N!Ai: Story of a !Kung Woman
Week 7 (Oct 6, 8): Sex and Gender
Theory: Culture and Personality
Ruth Fulton Benedict (1930) “Psychological Types in the Cultures of the
Southwest”
Margaret Mead (1935) Introduction to Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive
Societies
Film: Margaret Mead: An Observer Observed
Week 8 (Oct 13, 15): Economic Systems and Social Stratification
Philippe Bourgois (1995) “Workaday World—Crack Economy”
Lee Cronk (1989) “Reciprocity and the Power of Giving”
Theory: Founders of Sociological Thought
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1845-1846) “Feuerbach: Opposition of the
Materialist and Idealist Outlook”
Week 9 (Oct 20, 22): Conflict, Order, and Power
Anne Sutherland (1994) “Cross-Cultural Law: The Case of the Gypsy Offender”
Theory: Founders of Sociological Thought
Max Weber (1922) “Class, Status, Party”
Week 10 (Oct 27, 29): Social Groups and Identities
Jeffrey M. Fish (1995) “Mixed Blood”
Jack Weatherford (2000) “Blood on the Steppes: Ethnicity, Power, and Conflict”
Theory: Founders of Sociological Thought
Emile Durkheim (1895) “What is a Social Fact?”
Emile Durkheim (1912) “The Cosmological System of Totemism and the Idea of
Class”
Midterm Exam II
Week 11 (Nov 3, 5): Religion
George Gmelch (2000) “Baseball Magic”
Theory: Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology
Clifford Geertz (1973) “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”
Clifford Geertz (1973) “Religion as a Cultural System”
Week 12 (Nov 10, 12): Colonialism
Theory: Neo-Marxism
Eric Wolf (1982) Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of
California Press) Selected chapters.
Week 13 (Nov 17, 19): Globalization
James L. Watson (ed.) (1997) Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (Stanford:
Stanford University Press)
Film: The Spirit of Kuna Yala
Week 14 (Dec 1, 3): Review
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