Current Course Listings

Anthropology at Berkeley


Courses: Fall 2002
UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
Many graduate courses are open to qualified undergraduates.
UNDERGRADUATE COURSES

ANTHRO 1: INTRODUCTION TO PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Ray, E. 4 units TuTh 9:30-11 Wheeler Auditorium

This course will provide the student with an introduction to the primary theories and concepts relating to Biological Anthropology. The course will cover the three main subdisciplines of Biological Anthropology: Human Biology, Paleoanthropology, and Primatology. Course material will be introduced to students in a variety of ways, including visual presentations (in lecture and section) and hands-on experiences (in section).

There will be three hours of lecture and one hour of discussion section per week.
Prerequisites: None.

ANTHRO 2: INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY
Wilkie, L. 4 units MWF 11-12 1 LeConte

An introduction to the methods, goals, and theoretical concepts of archaeology. The course outlines how archaeologists make interpretations using the cultural materials of past human societies. Topics include the history of archaeology; developing a research design; field methods; laboratory analyses; chronology; and reconstructing past economic and social organizations. Examples of survey, excavation and analytical techniques will be presented as part of the class.
Prerequisites: None.

ANTHRO 3: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL & CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Brandes, S. 4 units TuTh 2-3:30 Wheeler Auditorium
Yurchak, A.

This course introduces students to the exciting field of social and cultural anthropology. It starts with a discussion of the major turning points in the discipline’s hundred-year history and continues with a focus on current issues and debates. In this latter section of the course, we center on a series of select topics, such as language and culture, popular culture, political discourse, food and drink, visual anthropology, and ritual and religion. In addition to lectures, films and other audio-visual material will be used in exploration of course subject matter. Grades will be determined through a combination of papers and examinations. We require an average of about 100 pages of reading per week.

ANTHRO 24: FRESHMAN SEMINAR: “PHOTOGRAPH AS SOCIAL DOCUMENT”
Brandes, S. 1 unit Th 11-12 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 photography in journalism and social research. Students will be required to participate in class discussions and complete an original photographic essay consisting of about a dozen photographs, with commentary or captions, that explore a theme or tell a story.

RELATED COURSES IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS

COURSE NUMBERS: ESPM 150 OR SPANISH 135
INTRODUCTION TO NATIVE AMAZONIA
Eduardo Kohn (listed under Louise Fortmann)
TuTh 2:00-3:00, 2311 Tolman
Course Numbers: ESPM 150 sec. 1, CCN 30669 or Spanish sec. 7, CCN 86303

Students may use this course as an elective for the Anthropology major.

This survey course is intended to introduce students to the indigenous peoples of lowland South America as well as to the various academic debates that literature about them has engendered. We will try to understand the diversity of Amazonian lifeways today by using a comparative framework. Comparative axes include: 1) pre-European and especially colonial, republican, and global socio-political and economic structures and how they have affected native peoples in a variety of ways 2) how neotropical environmental factors as well as introduced ones (such as Old World diseases) impact indigenous lifeways 3) region-wide socio-cultural, linguistic, and technological patterns. One important goal of this course is to critically assess the utility of the comparative method. Many anthropologists working in Amazonia have tried to use such a method to explain local lifeways according to one criterion (e.g., culture area, generative mythic logic, or protein requirements). Our goal, by contrast, is to use comparison as a framework through which we can get a historically, ecologically, and ethnologically grounded sense of how people live in this region.

GRADUATE COURSES

ADDED CLASS, CCN: 02956
ANTHRO 219: TOPICS IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: “THE POLITICS OF AMERICAN INDIAN HEALTH”
Ferreira, M. 4 units M 12-2 15, 2224 Piedmont (as of 7/5/02)

American Indians in North and South America face similar health problems at the turn of the millennium. Epidemics of both degenerative ailments (diabetes, for example) and infecto-contagious diseases (such as tuberculosis) are all too common among indigenous peoples of both developed and developing countries. This course addresses the ways in which specific health effects relate to macro-level politics and economics. It situates American Indian health in Brazil and in the United States within a broader debate that encompasses power relations between modern states and indigenous nations. The course also explores the nature of the links among domination, demoralization, and disordered emotional experience in indigenous communities. Finally, we shall look at the close association among cannibalism, discourses of immortality, and the politics of American Indian identity.

ANTHRO 221: MESOAMERICAN PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE
Joyce, R. 4 units Th 4-6 101, 2547 Bowditch

Traditional approaches to the archaeology of northern Central America take for granted the utility of the concept of Mesoamerica, originally proposed as a culture area based on sixteenth century AD trait distributions. While acknowledging the questionable nature of such constructs, Mesoamerican archaeologists continue productively to work as if this area were a well defined and well bounded object of analysis. This seminar will approach the question of why Mesoamerica continues to be productive heuristic concept by examining the reproduction of a material sphere invested with values over the long term. It will engage with contemporary social theory on materiality, memory, and knowledge. Seminar participants will collaboratively embodied in a common seminar project to be described at the first seminar meeting.

This seminar is intended for students with a focus on Mesoamerican archaeology, and assumes a beginning knowledge of chronological, geographic, cultural, and social frameworks developed by Mesoamerican archaeologists. It is appropriate as a course in a second area for a graduate student willing to undertake additional reading as necessary to fill in gaps in background. Advanced undergraduates with appropriate background may be admitted but must be prepared to conduct graduate-level research.
Course may be repeated for credit. Two hours of seminar per week.
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.

ANTHRO 229A: ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH STRATEGIES
Conkey, M. 5 units W 2-5 101, 2547 Bowditch
Habu, J.

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 230-1: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: “THEORY AND METHOD IN CULTURE CONTACT STUDIES”
Lightfoot, K. 4 units Tu 2-4, Rm. 101, 2547 Bowditch

Description not available.

ADDED COURSE: CCN: 02965
ANTHRO 230-2: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: “DEMOGRAPHIC ARCHAEOLOGY”
Hammel, G. 4 units M 9-11 100, 2232 Piedmont (change as of 6/18/02)
Kirch, P.

This seminar is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in Archaeology, Demography, Biological Anthropology, and those segments of Social Anthropology concerned with economics, ecology, and population issues. No mathematical expertise beyond high school algebra is required. Familiarity with common "productivity tools" and personal computers is required, e.g. ability to work simple problems in spreadsheets.

We intend to cover three broad areas of concern within the intersection of archaeology and demography. Inevitably, they overlap:
1. Relationships between populations and their environment.
2. Relationships between segments of the population, especially according
to age and gender.
3. Dynamics of populations, especially patterns of mortality, fertility,
and nuptiality.

Under the first category we are especially interested in the dynamic relationship between populations, technology (including the ideology of exploitation and social organization), and the natural environment. These issues were approached early on by scholars such as Ibn Khaldun, Machiavelli, and later thinkers, then by Malthus, subsequently by Childe, and then by Boserup. A classic focus of such concern is the "invention" of agriculture and animal domestication, for example, the role that population pressure may have played (viz. Cohen), or in the role that incidental or industrially oriented domestication may have played (viz. MacNeish). However, we are also interested in the continuing intensification of production in complex societies and the linkages between intensification and population. Our intent here would be to introduce theory, especially the Malthusian-Boserupian synthesis proposed by Ron Lee, to explore the archaeological evidence for the labor value of women and children in epi-Paleolithic and later time periods, the role of tribute and exchange networks (amber, Kula), and so on. We will articulate with current research on the modelling of these relationships.

Under the second category we are interested in archaeological evidence for age and gender-specific roles and contributions to the family economy, class formation, tributary relationships, and especially marriage exchange networks. We are especially interested to see whether new techniques, such as DNA identification, can assist in identifying patterns of spouse exchange between local populations. We are interested to see whether grave goods will give some insight into labor contributions by age and gender and the allocation of social status across these categories.

Under the third category we are interested in classic demographic descriptive techniques. Can archaeological evidence permit us to deduce the condition of life in those societies? Can we learn what mortality patterns were, fertility patterns? Essential to such endeavors is the ability to estimate the age and sex of skeletal materials, and we will explore the most recent advances in that area.

There will be a series of introductory lectures surveying the intellectual terrain. Students will be expected to read the essential archaeological and demographic literature, e.g. Childe, Malthus, Boserup. We will then attempt to specialize, asking students to pursue particular topics in depth and report to the seminar. We will, for the third focus of concern, hold lectures and assign problem sets in very basic demographic measurement so that students will be able to read the literature and competently analyze their own data.

ANTHRO 240A: FUNDAMENTALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY
Ong, A. 5 units TuTh 2-5 15, 2224 Piedmont

This seminar is required of all first-year graduate students in Social/Cultural Anthropology. It will focus on major ideas in social/cultural anthropology. The course is restricted to GRADUATE students in Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, and Demography.

ANTHRO 250E: CULTURAL POLITICS
Moore, D. 4 units W 3-6 144 Barrows

This graduate seminar traverses the terrain of anthropology, critical human geography, history, and cultural studies to examine the cultural politics of landscape and identity in diverse historical and geographical contexts. The project is less to trace a genealogy of 'landscape' as an analytical construct and more an occasion to explore the simultaneity of material and symbolic practices that carve out landscapes and their related keywords: space, place, locality, territoriality, region, and nation. We will devote particular attention to the politics of memory and geographical imaginaries; governmentality and state territorial ambitions (including cartographic encounters); the mappings and reterritorializations of identity; the construction of belonging, exclusion, and citizenship in relation to imagined and practiced landscapes; livelihoods and landscapes; and the production of multi-local and transnational sociocultural spaces. One goal of the seminar is to 'ground' a series of theoretical debates in the particularities of the historical and ethnographic work we explicitly engage as well as in our own research projects.

ANTHRO 250J: ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD METHODS
Cohen, L. 4 units W 12-2 15, 2224 Piedmont

This seminar is designed for anthropologists working on dissertations and other significant pieces of writing. It combines the close reading of each others’ work of a traditional dissertation-writing group with a conversation on the relationship between ethnography, theory, method, and textual production.

Each week, one or two seminar members will contribute chapters or essays to be read and discussed by the group. Additionally, each week there will be a short reading engaging questions of the practice of writing in relation to genealogies of modern social thought, and an excerpt from recent ethnography. Reading choices will in some cases depend upon the composition and needs of the group.

So as not to linger over well-traveled terrain, seminar members should refamiliarize themselves with 1980s debates on the status of ethnography (for example, in anthologies like Writing Culture and Recapturing Anthropology and books like Johannes Fabian’s Time and the Other, Marcus and Clifford’s Anthropology As Cultural Critique, and Marcus’s Ethnography Through Thick and Thin.

Our own discussions will move in somewhat different directions. We begin with the question of anxiety (Georges Devereux and Harold Bloom) and turn to questions of voice (Kierkegaard), aesthetics (Barthes, Stewart), and the fragment (uck-Morse, Koestenbaum). Further readings, and the choice of ethnographic excerpts, will depend on the direction of seminar discussions.

The seminar will be limited to eight persons. There will be a course reader.

ANTHRO 250X-1: SPECIAL TOPICS: “TIME, NARRATIVE, AND ETHNOGRAPHY”
Liu, X. 4 units F 10-12 15, 2224 Piedmont

The question of narrative or, rather, its recent revival in our intellectual interests, can be traced to three main streams of thought. First, it has always been part of the discussion among literary scholars, for whom the question of narrative is essentially a question about the form of literature. Second, the question of form, in the heated debates among historians or philosophers of history in the past few decades, is primarily concerned with how "historical facts" are constituted in writing. These two streams of thought converged on the question of forms in the representation of reality; and this convergence was linked to the rise of Structuralism and its innovative approach to narrative, with which our discussion will begin. The third stream of thought on narrative is philosophical, in which the question of narrative has become-no longer simply about the representation of reality-an inquiry into the nature of reality itself. What is out there in the everyday world of social and cultural life? It is to this question that our questioning of narrative is (in)tended. The notion of reality thus invoked is the human reality that consists of various kinds of experiences in and of time. The question of Time/time, which is not an unfamiliar theme for anthropological studies, therefore has to be addressed; and this examination of the problem of temporality aims at providing a theoretical background for our increasing interests in a number of research sites such as memory or imaginary. Finally, the seminar will read a couple of ethnographic examples to show whether these broad theoretical discussions may bring any fruitful insights to the anthropology of everyday life in the contemporary world.
Required texts:
Propp, V. [1928]1968. Morphology of the folktale.
White, H. 1973. Metahistory.
Mitchell, W. J. T. ed., 1980. On narrative.
MacIntyre, A. 1984. After virtue.
Ricoeur, P. [1983]1984. Time and narrative. Vols. 1 and 2.
Carr, D. 1986. Time, narrative, and history.
Taylor, C. 1989. Sources of the self.
Gell, A. 1992. The anthropology of time.
Finnegan, R. 1998. Tales of the city.
Liu, X. 2002. The otherness of self.

ANTHRO 250X-2: SPECIAL TOPICS: “ORIENTALISM/OCCIDENTALISM AND CONTROL”
Nader, L. 4 units W 10-12, 15, 2224 Piedmont

This seminar will explore the ways in which East and West define each other to create their own special identity. 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 different participants will be designated to 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—western, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, Japanese; and 4) the reactions and consequences of the present global interaction between civilizations of differing power positions.
Required Texts:
E. Said, Orientalism.
J. Abu-lughod, Before Pre-European Hegemony.
A. Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes.

ADDED COURSE CCN: 02980
ANTHRO 250X-4: SPECIAL TOPICS: “THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION"
Ferme, M. 4 units Th 5-7 111 Kroeber

Ethnographies and theoretical writings on the state have been at the forefront of much recent political anthropology. This seminar thematizes the political space dominated by concerns with state power, legitimation, and sovereignty but also seeks to expand this hegemonic concern of the moment in the discipline within a broader set of questions. For example, to what extent is the state the appropriate site for linking political imagination and practices, especially in light of profound shifts in conceptualizing its sovereignty (e.g., from Bodin to Schmitt)? 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? In some cases, ethnographic cases have been used to argue for the deliberate relativization of the state as a privileged site of the political (see Clastres). What is at stake in the efforts some societies have made to isolate political institutions from key social roles?

Recent work in European theory has begun to look at the construction of the city as a site for alternative forms of political belonging (Cacciari, Derrida). At the same time, we shall revisit those theorists who have exposed the contradictory movement of modern state sovereignty between its own de-legitimation and its increased deployments of power (e.g., Arendt, Agamben, Foucault, Mbembe). In particular, from these authors we have seen how the political can operate at a much more intimate levelòthrough biopolitical interventions on family and body. Conversely, explorations of alternative sites of the political have re-established the primacy of empire as a much broader and comprehensive unit of analysis which may shed light on both the expression of power and of forms of resistance. This literature raises interesting questions about new collisions between the political and its others (e.g., current debates on the problematic status of NGOs as both agents of empire and at the same time of civil society and grass-roots organizational activity).

A further concern of the seminar will be an exploration of the boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate behavior of particular figures of the political, ranging from the sovereign to the collectivity (and its degenerate form, the rioting crowdòCanetti). In particular, we shall examine classic and new forms of the personification of power in modern political practices.
Course requirements: participation and a paper (to be presented in draft form, then final form).
Required texts: works by Arendt, Agamben, Canetti, Foucault, Schmitt, Clastres, Mbembe, Hardt and Negri, Cacciari, Castoriadis, Laclau, Zizek.

ANTHRO 250X-4: SPECIAL TOPICS: “GLOBAL ANTHROPOLOGY: OIKOS AND ANTHROPOS”
Ong, A. 4 units M 1-3 327 Kroeber

This seminar is an exploration of what a global anthropology would look like. Global anthropology does not depart from or aim toward a definition of globalization. Nor does it attempt to recast culture, imagination, or other similar figures in new spatial (global, transnational) terms. Rather, it offers a framing for recent attempts by anthropologists to study the way anthropos—the human—is at stake, as ethical subject, scientific object, moral actor, laboring individual, living being, in contexts that are resolutely modern and remotely global.

ANTHRO 250X-5: SPECIAL TOPICS: “HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY”
Pandolfo, S. 4 units W 10-12 80 Barrows

CANCELLED.

ANTHRO 250X-6: SPECIAL TOPICS: “CONTEMPORARY THEORY”
Rabinow, P. 4 units W 2-5 15, 2224 Piedmont

This course will offer an advanced introduction to the work of Max Weber and Michel Foucault. It will equally explore contemporary topics in science, capitalism and political culture.

ADDED CLASS CCN: 02989
ANTHRO 260: ON NARRATIVE
Conrad, J. 4 units Tu 10-12 15, 2224 Piedmont

"To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself."Hayden White.

This class revolves around a theoretical investigation of the narrative; a multidisciplinary endeavor which revisists discussions on the nature of narrative: What are the minimum conditions of narrativity? How much distortion/manipulation/representation can a narrative endure before it becomes something else? What is the relationship between versions? How does intertextuality in narratives enhance meaning? How is meaning produced? What is the relationship between narration and temporality? Spatiality? What is the relationship between narration and power? Starting with a discussion of Narrative and Narrative Theory, the class continues by investigating theoretical approaches to specific genres of folk narrative: Myth, Personal Narrative, Folktale, and Legend, to make sense of the ways in which narratives of all sorts impose an order onto disorder, defining, in the process, the nature of “reality.”
Required texts:
Nonsense: Aspects of Intertestuality in Folklore and Literature. —Susan Stewart
A Glance Beyond a Doubt: Narration, Representation, Subjectivity. —Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. —F. Jameson
Other Peoples, Myths: The Cave of the Echoes. —Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty
As well as the work of: Rolan Barthes, V. Propp, Alan Dundes, Roger Abrahams, Barbara Herrenstein Smith, Dan Ben-Amos, Paul Ricoeur, M. Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, and others.

ANTHRO 280E: JAPAN
Graburn, N. 4 units M 10-12 15, 2224 Piedmont

See Anthro 280E course web site.

This seminar is intended for graduate students in the social sciences and humanities who are preparing for preliminary or doctoral research in contemporary Japan or are preparing for field statements and qualifying exams on Japan. Though the topics will be in some sense be guided by the interests of the students, the seminar will initially focus on contemporary research on Japan, contemporary research in Japan, particularly concerning phenomena which pertain to the contested arguments of convergence versus uniqueness and the drastic changes that are taking place in Japan today. Advanced undergraduates may be able to take the course. Contact the Instructor after July 24th at graburn@uclink.berkeley.edu

ANTHRO 290-1: SURVEY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Liu, X. 1 unit M 4-6 160 Kroeber

See also 290 Lecture Series.
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: PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY
Conkey, M. 1 unit TBA 101, 2547 Bowditch

Required each term of all in-residence graduate students in the archaeology program.

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 school’s or group’s 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 teacher of class to be visited, and preparatory 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.

RELATED COURSES IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS: FOLKLORE

FOLK 250A: FOLKLORE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES
A. Dundes, 4 units, W: 4-6, 332 Giannini

This seminar, the first semester of a two-semester sequence, is a survey of the history of Folkloristic Theory and method worldwide. Assignment includes the compilation of an annotated bibliography on some folkloristic topic, the bibliography to be the basis of a research paper in the second semester of the year-long seminar.
Prerequisites: Consent of the instructor.

Ph.D. in Anthropology
(Social Cultural / Archaeology)

Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology

Master of Arts in Folklore

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