undergraduate course listings
This internal catalog is updated regularly. Continue to check the Department bulletin board outside 232 Kroeber for changes (in Bold highlights). For independent study courses, graduate students get CCNs from the Graduate Office; and all undergraduates should fill out and return a signed application with the Undergraduate Office (209 Kroeber) to obtain the CCN.
Also check graduate course listings, as graduate seminars are open to qualified undergraduates.
ANTHRO 1: INTRODUCTION TO PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
J. Marks 4 units TuTh 2-3:30 Wheeler Auditorium
This course deals with the historical and comparative bio-anthropology of humans, looking at humans as members of the animal kingdom, focusing on attributes shared with our primate relatives and the origins of uniquely human attributes. We will examine modern evolutionary theory and those specific mechanisms that produce change to help understand the processes and course of our history. We will investigate the interrelations of biology, behavior, and culture as these shape our lives.
There will be three hours of lecture and one hour of discussion section per week.
Prerequisites: None.
Requirements: There will be two midterm examinations, one five page paper, and a final. All will be weighted equally. There will be a cumulative makeup exam at the end of the semester for students who missed either exam. Be certain you do not have a conflict with either the course lecture times or the final examination period (exam group #2). Participation in the discussion section is mandatory because the material presented there is important and may not be covered in lecture or readings.
Required texts: The Human Species, Relethford, 3rd ed. and the course reader at Copy Central.
ANTHRO 2: INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY
C. Hastorf 4 units MWF 10-11 100 Lewis
Archaeology is a conjunction of techniques and disciplines which makes possible the study of phases and aspects of the human past that are not documented by written records. Anthropology 2 offers an introduction to the fundamentals of archaeological concepts and methods. In its broadest role, archaeology attempts to treat the development of behavior from nonhuman antecedents to the complex cultural patterns and socio-economic systems that are documented in history, ethnography and the daily newspapers. Anthropology sketches in bold outline aspects of what is known and thought about the evolution of human culture and behavior from its earliest beginnings to the present, even peering into the future. The course also examines how archaeologists find out about the past. Much of this latter aspect of the course will be undertaken in section discussions of excavation techniques, dating and the study of artifacts and buildings and garbage.
Requirements: Mid-term examination, final examination and several problem sets that are issued during the semester through section meetings. Each student is required to attend a one-hour discussion section meeting each week.
Required texts: Colin Renfrew & Paul Bahn (1991) Archaeology New York: Thames and Hudson
ANTHRO 3: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL & CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
S. Brandes, M. Ferme 4 units TuTh 11-12:30 Wheeler Auditorium
This course provides an introduction to major currents in social and cultural anthropology. It considers the history of anthropological research and methodology as well as a variety of approaches to the field, such as interpretive, symbolic, psychological, economic, political, and linguistic perspectives. Some of the topics singled out for special treatment in the course include ethnic and gendered identities, ritual and religion, and the cultural meaning of food and drink.
The course will include lectures based on the research areas of Professors Brandes (Mesoamerica and Europe) and Ferme (West Africa), as well as occasional visiting lecturers, and approximately six films. Students will also participate in discussion sections.
Requirements: Tentatively, grades will be based on a midterm, a final, and a paper based on anthropological-style fieldwork.
Required texts: A course reader with articles and book chapters, as well as the following books: Anne Allison, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, And Corporate Masculinity In A Tokyo Hostess Club; Keith Basso, P The Barrio; Jane Cowan, Dance And The Body Politic In Northern Greece; and E.E. Evans, Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, And Magic Among The Azande.
ANTHRO C100: HUMAN PALEONTOLOGY
T. White 5 units TT 2-3:30 60 Evans
(Cross listed with Integrative Biology C185.)
Students taking this class for the Anthropology major are required to register in Anthro C100, not IB C185.
A detailed investigation of the fossil record for human evolution. Concepts of stratigraphy, geochronology, evolutionary theory, taxonomy, paleoenvironmental analysis, taphonomy, paleolithic archaeology, and phylogenetic reconstruction will be introduced. The history of fossil hominid discoveries and the current status of interpretations of the fossil hominid record will be presented.
One laboratory section per week is required. The times will be determined the first week of classes.
Requirements: One textbook, two midterm examinations, and a final examination are required.
ANTHRO 109: DIETARY ANTHROPOLOGY
K. Milton 4 units TuTh 11-12:30 2060 VLSB (note change of room)
"Nutrition as a biological process is more fundamental than sex," (A. Richards, 1948). This course examines the dietary behavior of humans (with brief attention to features of diet in non-human primates), with an emphasis on present-day human diets and attitudes toward food but also considering the role of diet in human evolution. Topics to be examined include factors underlying food selection and cuisine, diet breadth, food avoidance and food taboos, dietary politics, body image, food festivals and customs and unusual behaviors with respect to food. There will be a reader and perhaps one or more paperback texts.
Requirements: Midterm and final.
ANTHRO 112: SPECIAL TOPICS IN BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "INTRODUCTION TO BIO-ARCHAEOLOGY"
C. Larsen 4 units TuTh 9:30-11 20 Barrows
This course focuses on what anthropologists have learned about the history of health and the human condition based on the study of ancient skeletons. Over the semester, we will look at change in health and behavior over time, focusing on key adaptive transitions in the human past, such as the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
Prerequisites: None are required, but a rudimentary (or better) knowledge of human osteology would be helpful.
Requirements: There will be a midterm examination and a final examination, along with a 5 to 10 page research paper.
Required text: Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton, C.S. Larsen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Professor Clark Larsen is a specialist in bioarchaeology, the field of anthropology that focuses on the study of human remains from archaeological contexts. He has long been fascinated with just about anything ancient, especially bones and teeth of earlier humans, and what they tell us about our past. For the last 15 years or so, he has directed the La Florida Bioarchaeology Project, a multidisciplinary research project that has investigated the impact of European contact on native populations from the present-day states of Georgia and Florida. He has recently begun a project looking at population collapse in medieval Denmark at the time of the Black Death, via the study of skeletons dating from the 10th through 15th centuries. Professor Larsen is a visiting professor at Berkeley whose permanent home base is in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
ANTHRO 115: INTRODUCTION TO MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
N. Scheper-Hughes 4 units TuTh 2-3:30 105 North Gate
Medical Anthropology applies anthropological thinking and practice to the study of pain, illness, suffering, and healing. It explores the body as both biologically given and culturally and historically situated so that we may speak of local, as well as universal, biologies. Medical anthropology is a radical undertaking which begins from an epistemological openness, deriving from anthropology' comparative method, about the causes, meanings and consequences of disease and epidemics. Bio-medicine is viewed as one of many effective systems of interpreting and responding to illness and other forms of human affliction.
Pain, suffering, and misfortune shake us out of our accustomed ways of experiencing ourselves and our ways of perceiving reality. These events pose a challenge to the sufferer and render individuals uncommonly reflexive about the meanings of life, society, and the beyond-death. Hence, illness, healing and death have particular salience for the student of human society and culture.
This demanding, upper division undergraduate course introduces the student to a particular, critical-interpretive approach to the field of medical anthropology. It will treat topics ranging from the anthropology of the body, emotions, and illness, and the social construction of disease, to the organization of medical knowledge, medical technology, and power and epidemics, and social control. The course is broadly comparative, treating illness, misfortune, and healing in a number of societies from highland New Guinea to modern India, but a particular focus of the course is on understanding the social dimensions of illness and healing in our own society.
The first section of the course introduces the critical medical anthropology through an anthropology of the mindful body; the social meanings and the social uses of illness; sickness and power&emdash;the regulation and control of dis-eased and distressed bodies and minds; the body in western, biomedical clinical practice; the biomedical "invention" of new diseases.
This is followed by a brief section on the interpretation and meanings of misfortune, sickness, and death in non-western societies. It explores the logic of witchcraft and sorcery as explanations of sickness and other unfortunate events. It will examine alternative, non-biomedical models of healing, including shamanism in terms of the efficacy of symbols and rituals.
The last part of the course will deal with critical issues in the so called still 'developing' world: hunger, infant mortality, and epidemics in terms of microparasites and macroparasites, including the pathogenic effects of "economic development" and capitalist expansion on the ways people live, sicken, and die.
Requirements: The course is open to upper division and to graduate students: to students in the humanities, social sciences, biological sciences and 'pre-med', medical, and public health students. The course assumes a background and familiarity with basic anthropological and social science concepts and ideas. There is a demanding reading schedule and participation in discussion groups is highly recommended. Grades are based on a midterm, a final, take-home essay exam, in addition to two brief research papers (10-12 pages each).
Required texts:
Recommended texts:
Arthur Kleinman, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition (This book is recommended as background reading to be used as a model in the preparation of your first research report on illness narratives.)
The above books are available at local booksellers on Bancroft Avenue and the ASUC Textbook Store.
ANTHRO 119: SPECIAL TOPICS IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY : "DREAMS, SELVES, AND OTHER REALITIES: INTERCULTURAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF THE IMAGINARY"
S. Pandolfo 4 units TuTh 3:30-5 308 Leconte
In the contemporary world different systems of knowledge, philosophies and techniques of the self, understandings of normality and pathology, illness and healing, are increasingly engaged in a dialogue with each other in the lives, on the bodies, and in the imagination of people. The terms of this dialogue are often unequal, conflictual and painful, yet they are also productive of new subjectivities and new voices.
Through a discussion of select anthropological, ethno-psychiatric, psychoanalytic and historical works on dreaming, selves, spirit possession, ecstasy and madness in comparative perspective, we will investigate the changing way in which different cultures and discourses draw, maintain or transgress the boundaries of self and Other.
Required texts (among others): C. Levi-Strauss, L. Levy-Bruhl, M. Leenhardt, S. Freud, C. Jung, G. Roheim, G. Deveraux, R. Caillois, M. Griaule, R. Bastide, G. Canguilhem, M. Foucault, C. Ginzburg, V. Crapanzano, W. Doniger-O'Flaherty, J. Boddy, J. Favret-Saada.
ANTHRO 121C: HISTORICAL ARTIFACT IDENTIFICATION AND ANALYSIS
L. Wilkie 4 units MW 9-10 101, 2251 College
lab, MW 10-12 55 Kroeber
Instructor Approval Only: attend first class meeting to apply for admission to course. The course meets the method requirement for anthropology majors.
This course is designed to provide the student with an introduction to the analysis of historical ceramics, glass, metal, worked shell and bone, and other artifacts from historical contexts. The greatest emphasis will be on materials dating from 1790-1930, with a geographical focus on materials recovered from historical sites in California. A paper which incorporates original materials analysis and interpretation of a historical assemblage will be produced as part of the course.
ANTHRO 122A: ARCHAEOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICA: "PREHISTORY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST"
M. S. Shackley/J. Habicht-Mauche 4 units W 12-3 127 Dwinelle
Prehistory of the American Southwest is co-taught as a distance learning course by Profs. M. Steven Shackley (UCB) and Judith Habicht-Mauche (UCSC). Classes will be held contemporaneously at both campuses and transmitted over UC's fiber optic system (Anth 122A at UCB and Anth 194 A&B at UCSC).
This distance learning course is a survey of current knowledge of the prehistory of the greater American Southwest. Recent research and CRM archaeology is redefining the concepts of Hohokam, Anasazi, Mogollon, Salado, Patayan, Sinagua, as well as the Paleoindian and Archaic periods. The course will be strongly based on multi-media presentation and links to the world wide web, and focus on recent research in this remarkable region. Each student will be required to have active internet access, and the course reader will be on-line.
Requirements: Mid-term and final exams, as well as a term paper will be required. Course requirements will vary somewhat between campuses.
ANTHRO 122B: CULTURE CONTACT IN NORTH AMERICA
K. Lightfoot 4 units MW 10-12 20 Barrows
The purpose of this course is to examine critically the implications of Native American and European encounters in North America. A brief historical perspective on culture contact studies is presented that outlines pertinent theoretical and methodological issues. Culture contact studies are ideal for examining research issues concerning the creation of pluralistic colonial communities, the effects of lethal epidemics, intensification of regional trade, innovations in material culture, the construction of both group and individual identities, and strategies of cooperation and resistance. These issues are considered in detail in several case studies from New England, the Southeast, the Midwest, the Southwest, the Pacific Coast, and Hawaii. Case studies will involve the analysis of pertinent sources (archaeological, ethnohistorical, ethnographic).
Requirements: Two mid-term exams, and a final exam.
Required text: A course reader containing relevant articles will be assembled for the class.
ANTHRO 123E: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
M. Stevanovic 4 units TuTh 11-12:30 101, 2251 College
This course treats the East Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea Basins as a geographical unit and will provide the archaeological evidence for its prehistoric and historic inhabitants. It will discuss the characteristic variability of the Mediterranean and Black Sea coast and its northern and eastern hinterland, and the ways that this has acted as both barrier and encouragement to settlement and communication between the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe through time. The course will discuss the constant interplay between coast and hinterland, and the economic and social strategies that have characterized the different zones. The course will cover the period from the first human populations of the coast and islands of the Mediterranean to the maritime civilizations and early urban centers of the early historic period that brought even the remote islands and peninsulas at its periphery into a large world system. It is advisable--although not essential--to have taken an introductory course in archaeology. Some prior knowledge of the geography of the region is also highly recommended.
Requirements: Map quiz (5%); Panel participation (15%); 8-10 page paper (30%); Final Exam: map quiz, short questions and essay questions (50%)
Required text: A reader of required readings will be prepared for the course.
Dr. Mirjana Stevanovic is a recent Ph.D. from the Anthropology department at UCB. She has worked closely with Professor Ruth Tringham in the field for many years in Southeast Europe. Currently, Dr. Stevanovic is the field director of the American Excavation at Catalhoyuk, Turkey. Dr. Stevanovic is a specialist in the analyses of prehistoric architecture. She is concerned with the subjects of initial sedentism and early urbanism, and the early stages of social complexity. She considers the regions of Southeast Europe and the Near East that provide rich and well-preserved remains of material culture, especially architecture to be extremely important and resourceful for the studies of emerging social complexity which subsequently developed both in the state societies of the Mediterranean and on the other non-state societies in the Black Sea area.
ANTHRO 128: SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: "THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF NORTH-EASTERN SIBERIA"
S. Arutiunov 4 units TuTh 12:30-2 308 LeConte
The course covers the territory of Yakutia and the Russian Far East, with a special emphasis on the area of Chukotka and Kamchatka Peninsulas. It examines the Paleolithic cultures of this area; the transition to the Neolithic; the problems of tracing the ancestors of Amerinds in the Old World, and cultural diversity of the late Neolithic. Concerning the latter, we shall consider possible influences from ancient China, the cultures of the "checkered pottery" of the Lena river basin in Yakutia and adjacent areas; their probable connections with Chukotkan and Alaskan culture around the second and first millennia BC; and devote special attention to the problem of Eskaleut genesis and the development of maritime adaptation. Accordingly, in more detail we shall talk about Ancient Eskimo (Old Bering Sea and other related cultures) and the continuity of their legacy in the modern ethnographic situation.
ANTHRO 133: FIELD COURSE IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL METHODS
P. Kirch 4 units Unscheduled Off Campus
Field semester in Hawaii by application only.
ANTHRO 134: ANALYSIS OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD: "MICROMORPHOLOGY FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF COMPLEX SETTLEMENTS AND LANDSCAPES"
W. Matthews 4 units F 10-12 101, 2251 College
Instructor Approval Only: attend first class meeting to apply for admission to course. The course meets the method requirement for anthropology majors.
This course will enable students to learn and explore use of the microscope in detecting traces of behavior and environment within settlements and landscapes. We will focus on micromorphological study of large (13.5 x 6.5 cm) resin-impregnated thin sections through depositional sequences. This technique will enable students to analyse at high-resolution diverse sediments and bioarchaeological and micro-artifactual remains within their microstratigraphic context. Analysis of component morphology and micro-contextual relationships is furnishing new information on the pre-depositional, depositional and post-depositional histories of archaeological deposits and site formation. We will explore how analysis of variation in the character of microstratigraphic sequences provides tangible information on changes in uses of space and microenvironment within different areas and life-histories of buildings, settlements and landscapes. The case-studies examined will be drawn from key early agricultural and urban sites in Western Asia, including Catalhoyuk in Turkey and Tell Brak in Syria.
The course will include two inter-related components, a lecture and discussion meeting followed by a laboratory session. The course will progress from step by step introduction to different archaeological deposits and stages in thin section description, to full description of specific context types, and a final period of individual selected research. We will discuss the relevance of each category of observation to a range of archaeological contexts and questions, and examine associated concepts. The subjects and materials which will be examined include architectural materials, fire-installations and combustion, discard, sequences of floors and deposits within domestic and ritual contexts and external areas, settlement abandonment and collapse, ethnoarchaeology and experiment, post-depositional alterations, and landscapes. Students may be graded according to participation, and results in laboratory exercises, tests and a mid-term and final paper.
Analysis of these materials and subjects will provide students with skills for studying depositional sequences in other complex settlements and semi-arid environments, including the American South-West.
Prerequisites: Anthropology 2.
ANTHRO 138B: FIELD PRODUCTION OF ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM
T. Anderson 5 units MW 2-4 155 Kroeber
This class is a collaborative, hands-on experience in ethnographic video production. Students work together in teams to produce short video projects in the Bay Area. Projects will be chosen from proposals submitted by students of 138A. Students share equally the responsibilities of field work, directing, camera, sound recording, and editing. Please note that students will often need to meet with the instructor and/or with their teammates outside of class time.
Prerequisites: Anthropology 138A and the submission of a proposal.
ANTHRO C147B: GENDER CULTURE AND COLONIALISM
L. Cohen 4 units MW 12-2 10 Evans
This course looks at how sexuality and gendered self-expression intersect with the material structures of political economy and biology and the ideological structures of cultures.
Most Americans and increasingly much of the rest of the world divide people in sexual terms into straight, lesbian and gay, and sometimes bi. The literary critic Eve Sedgwick, one of the earliest leaders of the intellectual movement sometimes known as Queer Theory, called this divide the "homosexual/heterosexual binarism." Thought many of us experience this divide as logical and obvious, in many societies and in the past it has not been as salient a mode of social organization or personal identification as it is in the modern West and is becoming elsewhere. Simply put, in much of the world and in much of history, the division of gay and straight makes little if any sense.
The anthropologist Gayle Rubin once called the way a society places people into sexual roles and categories its "sex/gender system." Sedgwick's "homosexual/heterosexual binarism" could be considered a dominant feature of our contemporary American sex/gender system. Many anthropologists and historians have explored the diversity of such systems across society and history, with mixed results. On the one hand, exploring this diversity allows us to explore critically how modern Western models of the binarism have become the unquestioned template for current biological modeling in the search for the "gay gene" and "gay brain." If we discover that to be straight or gay as we understand these categories is not a universal of human experience, what are the implications for gay gene arguments? Must we abandon biological inquiry, or are there other ways of linking critical social and biological research?
On the other hand, the concept of sex/gender systems has problems. The notion that gender and sexuality are organized as a unified cultural system has proved increasingly inadequate either as a way to understand any given society or to compare ideas and practices between societies. Anthropological descriptions of variable sex/gender systems have come under increasing fire from several quarters.
One particularly important area of critique has emerged out of postcolonial theory. Describing the sexual particularities of colonized and subject populations and communities has been utilized historically as a mode of dehumanizing them and justifying their domination. Sir Richard Burton, the famous Victorian explorer and rake, went as far to describe the topics as one big steamy, seamy "Sotadic Zone," a zone where "The Vice" of homosexuality was ubiquitous. In other words, the natives were all inverts, to use the language of the time. Given this legacy, does an anthropology which obsesses over people's sex lives merely revisit this unhappy colonial terrain? What about human rights abuses, and AIDS prevention? Don't these justify a new global sexual science, or are they excuses for new voyeuristic practices? A second area of critique emerges out of ethnic studies and its reconceptualization of what Gloria Anzaldue called the Borderlands-la Frontera. What does a focus on systemic difference do to people and communities who fall between the cracks-economic, national, sexual? Another derives from psychoanalytic and philosophical theories of what it means to desire, theories that closely examine the relationship of our desire and the object of our desire to language.
Within anthropology, research has increasingly moved from efforts to understand sex and gender in terms of a narrow set of questions-around kinship and marriage, the normal and abnormal, and in terms people use to define sexual behavior-to broader efforts engaging all aspects of social and economic life. This course introduces students to this wealth of scholarship and debate. It alternates week by week between reading ethnographies and reading general theoretical debate.
Readings: Course reader, required and recommended texts.
ANTHRO 148: ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE ENVIRONMENT
D. Moore 4 units TuTh 12:30-2 155 Kroeber
Surveys anthropological perspectives on the environment and examines differing cultural constructions of nature. Coverage includes theory, method, and case materials extending from third world agrarian contexts to urban North America. Topics may include cultural ecology, political ecology, colonialism and conservation, third world environmental struggles, the cultural politics of nature, and environmental imaginaries.
ANTHRO 151: ANTHROPOLOGY OF TOURISM
N. Graburn 4 units W 10-11, F 10-12 155 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.
Course Style:
The first part of the course will consist mainly of lectures and some videos, with opportunity for student feedback and questions. The second 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").
Requirements: 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.
Possible required texts:
MacCannell, D. 1999 The Tourist: a New Theory of the Leisure Class, New York: Schocken Paperbacks (?), 3rd edition.
Smith, V. (ed) 1989 Hosts and Guests: the Anthropology of Tourism Philadelphia, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press Paperback, 2nd edition.
Sinclair, Thea M (ed.) 1997 Gender, Work and Tourism, Routledge.
On Reserve:
Graburn, N.H.H. 1988 Anthropological Research on Contemporary Tourism: Student Paper from Berkeley Special Issue of Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers Nos. 67-68. Berkeley.
Graburn, N.H.H. 1983 "The Anthropology of Tourism"special issue of Annals of Tourism Research Vol. 10 No. 1.
Another short Tourism READER for this course will also be available for later in the term. This collection of articles and the Smith (ed.) volume pertain for the most part to the second half of the course on the impacts of Tourism.
Important journals on reserve in the Anthropology Library, Kroeber Hall, include:
ANTHRO 153: EDUCATION AND CULTURE
J. Ogbu 4 units MWF 11-12 160 Kroeber
This course is designed to examine formal education from anthropological perspectives. It deals with cultural, social, and psychological factors in education from a cross-cultural point of view. The course is divided into four major sections: 1) overview and background of the field; 2) aims, methods and analytic frameworks; 3) substantive areas of study (e.g., evolution of education; sociocultural organization of schools; institutional linkages--i.e., with the economy, polity, etc.; discontinuities in culture, language, cognition, and motivation and the relevance to educability; minority education; etc.); 4) education and social change. Illustrations of major points in the course will be drawn from ethnographic studies of schooling in the United States but will not be limited to this geographical region. Note that this is not a course on "American educational problems." The overall aim of the course is to familiarize students with the development and nature of anthropology of education. Students more interested in learning how to use anthropological research to solve school problems, rather than how anthropologists go about studying and explaining the processes of education, should not take this class.
Prerequisites: Anthropology 3, or consent of the instructor.
Requirements: Two midterm essay-type examinations, each has a value of 25% of the course grade; and a 3-hour final examination of essay type. The final examination will be 50% of the course grade.
Required texts: Education and Culture, a Reader prepared specifically for this course by the instructor. "Anthropology of Education: Contemporary Perspectives," a volume in International Encyclopedia of Education, Pergamon Press, 1994. Selections edited by the instructor.
This course deals with systems of social inequality: power, privilege, poverty, vulnerability and oppression in human societies. Such systems will be described and analyzed both comparatively (i.e., cross culturally) and developmentally (i.e., as they have evolved through time). We will consider social inequality in egalitarian, ranked and stratified societies; in those whose livelihood is based on foraging, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture and industry; societies inhabiting various parts of the world, in various eras. Kinds of inequality to be investigated include: age, gender, kinship and role, class, status and power, ethnicity, race, caste, estate, servitude, internal and external colonialism, and situationally negotiated status.
ANTHRO 162-1: TOPICS IN FOLKLORE: "THE PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF FOLKLORE"
A. Dundes 4 units TuTh 12:30-2 50 Birge
This course is a specialized one designed to acquaint students with the psychoanalytic approach to folklore. It is assumed that the students already have some knowledge of folklore genres and folklore scholarship. For that reason, it is not an ideal first course in folklore. Students interested in folklore per se would do better to wait to take Anthropology 160, The Forms of Folklore, next fall. Students who have not taken Anthropology 160 or some similar introductory folklore course are advised to check with the instructor before enrolling in the course for credit. A background in psychoanalytic theory, however, is not a prerequisite for the course. There will be a midterm, final exam, and a research paper.
ANTHRO 162-2: TOPICS IN FOLKLORE: "FOLK BELIEF"
C. Goldberg 4 units MWF 9-10 155 Kroeber
Folk beliefs are traditional ideas that do not conform to the prevailing scientific world view. This course will cover notions such as luck, omens, second sight, magical medicine, and traditional reactions to the dead and to supernatural spirits. Tools for analysis will include technical concepts such as sympathetic magic and animism in addition to symbolism, functionalism, psychology, and pragmatism. Approximately half of the material will come from Euro-American folklore, and the other half will come from subcultures (including the subculture of childhood) and occupational groups, various New Age belief systems, and foreign cultures. Grades will be based on class presentations, a midterm and a final.
ANTHRO 170: CHINA (ADDED CLASS: CCN 02701)
X. Liu 4 units MWF 1-2 111 Kroeber
This class focuses on the changes in Chinese society brought about by the economic reforms beginning in the late 1970's. It covers social, economic, and political changes taking place both in the countryside and in the cities. Three main themes of discussion are concerned with the nature of gift in Chinese society, the prolem of gender, and question of urban space.
Required texts:
Yan, Y-X., 1996. The flow of gifts: reciprocity and social networks in a Chinese village. Stanford University Press.
Judd, E. R., 1994. Gender and power in rural North China. Stanford University Press
Davis, Dl. S., et al. eds., 1995. Urban spaces in contemporary China: the potential for autonomy and community in post-Mao China. Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press.
ANTHRO 177: MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
R. Gonzalez 4 units TuTh 9:30-11 22 Warren
The landscapes--geographic and cultural--that constitute present-day Mexico have been created and recreated in the shifting contexts of migration, commerce, conquest, and war. This course will critique some of the concepts underlying the idea and the reality of the Mexican nation by examining its history, its land, and its people through various anthropological lenses. We will begin with an overview of key 20th century works by Mexicans and North
Americans who formulated analytical concepts, often with instrumental goals in mind (such as nation-building and "development"). The problematic role of Mexico's indigenous peoples as subjects of anthropological inquiry and
intervention will be an important theme for discussion. As the course proceeds, we will examine the significance of recurrent dichotomies that have circulated in intellectual circles and in the popular consciousness, including village/city, North/South, Indian/mestizo-Spaniard, and woman/man. In the second half of the course, we will review a series of relatively recent events and social dramas--the 1968 massacre at Tlatelolco, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, the economic crises of 1982 and 1996, "free" trade, guerrilla uprisings in Chiapas and Oaxaca, and accelerated migratory patterns, among others--that have partially ruptured long-standing paradigms and have prompted intellectual and popular reconceptualizations of contemporary Mexico.
Required texts:
Additional readings will be on reserve in the Anthropology Library; a course reader will also be available for purchase.
Roberto Gonzalez recently received his Ph.D. from the UC Berkeley anthropology department. His dissertation research focuses on the cultural and political economic aspects of food and farming among the Zapotec people of northern Oaxaca, Mexico. Other topical interests include the anthropology of science and technology and the history of anthropology. In recent months he has collaborated with a community-based Zapotec organization in the preliminary planning of a four year college in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, a predominantly indigenous region. He has also written about adolescent health in rural northeastern California, the social history of coffee in northern Oaxaca, and work life in a General Motors automotive assembly plant.
ANTHRO 188: TOPICS IN AREA STUDIES: "PEOPLES AND CULTURES OF THE CAUCASUS"
S. Arutiunov 4 units TuTh 9:30-11 101, 2251 College
The course encompasses both Northern Caucasus and the nations of the Transcaucasia, but the main emphasis is on the peoples of the Northern Caucasus. We begin with brief review of the prehistory, paleolithic and neolithic cultures in the area. The review is followed by a discussion of the linguistic alignments and their historical evolution, of the Caucasus as a part of the Ancient Mediterranean world, and the adoption of Christianity in the fourth century AD. Special attention is paid to the processes of Indo-Europeanization of Proto-Caucasian populations and the Scythian-Alanian legacy, including Nart epics. The modern patterns of distribution of the population and its cultural profiles are formed by the time of the 16-17th centuries when the process of islamization also basically ends.
The prehistory is important since it often serves as a basis for modern political claims of many nations and nationalities in the Caucasus area. We shall consider basic features of the economy, material culture, beliefs and behavioral patterns of Georgians, Armenians, Azeris, Abkhasian-Adygean peoples of the Northwestern Caucasus, Turkic-speaking highlanders (Balkars, Karachais), Ossets, Vainakhs (Chechens, Ingush), and the linguistic and cultural diversity of Dagestan.
We shall also talk about displacements and distortions brought about by the Communist experiments in the Caucasus and on the other hand, the accompanying processes of modernization, education, and the formation of new behavioral stereotypes which co-exist with the traditional ones.
Finally, against this cultural-anthropological background, we shall regard current ethnic conflicts such as the Georgian-Abkhazian, Ingush-Ossetian, and Russian-Chechenian Wars; the growing tension in Dagestan; other less violent and less known confrontations in this area; and perspectives of their future development and solution.
ANTHRO 189-1: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "CULTURE AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER"
J. Borneman 4 units WF 12-2 182 Dwinelle
This course focuses on the relation of local and global cultural processes to international order. While "peoples" everywhere have always lived in local cultures embedded within larger orders, the increased intensity and scale of interaction between local and global process is now changing the way in which "peoples" and "cultures" are being constituted. Not only are contacts between peoples more frequent, but also groups are more mobile, individuals more autonomous, and people, ideas, and things travel more quickly than ever before. Additionally, most people now interact with numerous inter and trans-national regimes that regulate commerce, human rights, and religious and group identifications. Traditionally, scholars have thought of these interactions as intrinsic to "Modernism": a regime of centralizing, uniformizing, rules and practices, of increasing rationality and differentiation of political, religious, economic, and cultural domains. Today, most scholars agree that, while modern processes may still globalize the local, they do not uniformize or fully rationalize local processes. Instead, modernity produces new kinds of variation in social identifications, heterogeneity in political and economic form, and temporal disjunctures in domains of experience. The contemporary period includes diverse historical trajectories, selves, and forms of belonging (e.g., religious, ethnic, territorial, national, sexual) co-existing simultaneously in a space that is increasingly both local and global. This global space itself is now--after Colonialism and after the Cold War--is being fundamentally reorganized. Former empires and nation-states are imploding, primarily along ethnic and class lines, forms of capital are being refigured, "people" are reconstituting social groups, and new technologies offer alternative ways of managing life.
We will focus on frameworks that help to account for the formation and interaction of peoples and international regimes. Further, we will enter in debates about the meaning of "culture," specifically with respect to how culture becomes meaningful for individual actors situated in historically specific yet global worlds. This seminar hopes to use anthropological perspectives to inform the study of international orders, and conversely, to use transnational processes to open up more fruitful areas of anthropological research.
Course structure and requirements:
This course will be organized as a lecture, but the instructor will expect students to have read the material before class and he will call on them. Attendance is therefore mandatory. In addition to active participation and engagement with the material, students will be required to write one short review essay of 3-5pp. on one the themes from the course as a midterm, and another review essay (8-10 pp.) as a final. Students with a B+ grade or higher will have the alternative, in consulation with the professor, of completing a research paper of 10-15 pp. as the last exercise. No incompletes will be accepted. You are required to purchase two books (Malkki, Purity and Exile; Borneman, Subversions of International Order), and a reader. As much as possible, the books and recommended articles will be on reserve.
Professor John Borneman is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University (1991-present). He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1989. His research and teaching specialties include culture and international order; authority and identification, narrative theory and ethnographic method; visuality, political and legal anthropology; urban studies, sexuality; Europe; Germany.
ANTHRO 189-2: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "LANGUAGE AND CULTURE"
L. Lindstrom 4 units TTh 3:30-5 182 Dwinelle
Language is integral to culture, and linguistics has long had close connections with American academic anthropology. Sociolinguistics is the study of language in action--the ways in which people create and maintain both relationships and shared meaning by talking. This course explores important areas of sociolinguistic research, notably relations between language style, identity, and power. All of us have a verbal repertoire--or a set of linguistic styles that both assert and demonstrate our gender, regional, class, and ethnic identities. Furthermore, language is integrally involved in the reproduction of power structures, yet is also a means of resistance to domination. We read analyses of important American speech styles, such as African-American Vernacular English (aka "Ebonics") and of the social effects of American "genderlect." The course also introduces sociolinguistic methods ranging from overviews of national language policy to the discourse analysis of everyday conversation. Students take two essay exams and carry out several linguistic research projects in their own speech communities. For additional information about the course (until 12/20/98), email lindstroml@centum.utulsa.edu.
Lamont Lindstrom. Professor of Anthropology, the University of Tulsa. A.B., M.A., PhD. University of California at Berkeley (1981). Cultural Studies, Sociolinguistics, Pacific Studies. Also taught at Rhodes College, Memphis and the University of Papua New Guinea. Author of Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond (1993), Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific Society (1990), and Kwamera Dictionary (1987), co-author of Kwamera (1994), Kava: The Pacific Drug (1992), and Island Encounters: Black and White Memories of the Pacific War (1990), editor of Drugs in Western Pacific Societies: Relations of Substance (1987), and co-editor of Chiefs Today: Traditional Pacific Leadership and the Postcolonial State (1997), Culture, Kastom, Tradition: Developing Cultural Policy in Melanesia (1994), The Pacific Theater: Island Representations of World War Two (1989) and the forthcoming Big Wok: Storian blong Wol Wo Tu long Vanuatu-a collection of Pacific War oral histories published in Bislama, the Pidgin English of Vanuatu. Writes a monthly column for Tulsa Family News. Visiting fellowships at the East-West Center, the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawaii, the MacMillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies of Canterbury University, and the Kagoshima University Research Center for the South Pacific. He can be reached (until 12/20/98) at lindstroml@centum.utulsa.edu.
ANTHRO 189-3: SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: "THE PASSING OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PARADIGMS"
X. Liu (CANCELLED, SEE ANTHRO 170: CHINA)
ANTHRO C193: APPLICATION OF COMPUTING TECHNIQUES IN TECHNICAL REPORT AND GRANT PROPOSAL WRITING IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
E. Hammel 4 units Tu 2-3 155 Kroeber
The course meets the method requirement for anthropology majors.
This course is an introduction to the use of computing and modern information resources in writing technical reports and grant proposals in the social sciences, with special attention to factors involving population, the environment, and social and economic systems. There is one main 1-hour lecture per week and one lecture in a demonstration lab setting, with 2 hours of supervised and about 4 hours of self-paced lab work per week. There are regular lab exercises but no examinations. The major lab exercise is the writing of a report on a subject involving population and the environment or the embedding social and economic systems, the subject to be agreed upon between student and instructor. All lab work will be posted to students' own home pages on the World Wide Web using techniques of electronic desktop publishing. Each lab exercise must be completed before the next scheduled laboratory. The major (term) paper must be posted before the end of Week 13. In Week 14 students will read and critique 5 other student papers, posting these critiques to their own home page and sending them by electronic mail to the authors. In Week 15 students may revise their papers for final submission and posting. Successful completion of the weekly lab exercises and the major term paper are each weighted 50% in calculating the course grade. No late work will be accepted. Regular letter grades will be assigned.
No prior computing experience is necessary, although students will find the work easier if they have had some experience in word processing and the use of spreadsheets or other computing tools. There are two sets of lab sections, one for Macintoshes and PC Windows machines (all lab work is actually done on PCs using Mac-PC compatible tools insofar as possible); the other set of sections is conducted on Sun workstations using UNIX. Prior computing experience is especially useful for students wishing to use the UNIX workstations.
Students are expected to search for and use information sources on the Internet, in local machine readable archives, and the in library. Some particularly useful data sources, such as extracts from the United States Census, summaries of world population and socio-economic data produced by the Population Reference Bureau or the UN or World Bank, etc., will be placed online for student use.
Some examples of potential topics for the term paper are:
Distribution of toxic waste sites in California and their relationship to the ethnicity or income levels of the nearby population.
Infant mortality rates in the Bay Area and their relationship to income levels, ethnicity, drug use levels, crime rates, and other socioeconomic indicators.
Population growth in Africa (or Latin America, or South Asia, or Southeast Asia, etc.) and its relationship to soil productivity and deforestation.
Impact of consumer demand in developed countries on agricultural practice (deforestation, cattle-raising, commercial agricultural production) in less developed countries (the "MacDonald's Effect").
Population growth, dietary habits of the industrialized nations, and deep sea fish stocks.
Population growth, industrialization, and energy demands in developing countries and implications for global warming and ozone layer reduction.
Ground water pollution, industrial development, and differences between capitalist and communist economic systems 1970-1990.
Female death rates in the ages 15-40 and government policies on contraceptive availability and abortion, worldwide.
Survival rates age 20-65 and over 65, by ethnicity and region in the United States, and expected payoff from retirement systems. Are working age adults in some ethnic groups or regions paying for the retirement of elderly persons in other ethnic groups or regions?
ANTHRO 196: UNDERGRADUATE SEMINAR: "THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF SCIENCE"
J. Marks 4 units W 4-6 115 Kroeber
While ideally scientists have a set of goals that involves objectively exploring the universe, the practice of science encodes social values derived from 18th century Europe, and takes place within a bureaucratic hierarchy. This creates conflicts of interest for scientists, producing results and behaviors sometimes at odds with what scientists are "supposed" to do. The non-normative scientific behaviors that result, such as implicit sexist and racist values in scientific theories, dishonesty, and media attention, can best be understood in this context. Readings and discussion will be on topics in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science, focusing on examples from heredity and evolution.
Requirements: About 40-80 pp. of reading/week (course reader available at Copy Central on Bancroft). Vigorous class participation. One 15-page term paper.
Each week, two students will be semi-randomly chosen to lead discussion on that week's readings. Preparation for each meeting should consist of doing the reading, and reflecting on the connections among the assigned readings for the week, and the issues they raise.
The student presentations may bring together issues discussed during the semester, notably science as a process, the behavior of scientists and scientific administrators, popular views of science, its abuse, and/or the role of science in society (e.g., The Bell Curve). Or they may analyze one major case of scientific misconduct, in terms of what was done, how it was revealed, how it was portrayed by the media, and the reaction of the scientific community. Possible subjects might involve: Gallo and HTLV, Gupta and the "misplaced fossils", Baltimore and the congressional investigation, Kammerer and the midwife toads, cold fusion, Burt and the twin studies. These will be written up as a term paper. Other topics may also be acceptable.
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