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Anthropology:

Science Description :

Anthropology studies humankind from a comparative perspective that emphasizes the diversity of human behavior and the importance of culture in explaining that diversity. While the discipline encompasses the biological nature of our species and the material aspects of human adaptation, it takes as fundamental the idea that we respond to nature and natural forces in large part through culture. Anthropology, then, is the study of human beings as cultural animals.

UnderGraduates Courses:

- Introduction to Anthropology, Fall 2004

Readings

Lecture notes

Assignments

Study materials

- Delaney, Carol. Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology . Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2004, chapter 1. ISBN: 0631222375.

- Myerhoff, Barbara G. Number Our Days. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980, chapter 1. ISBN: 0671254308.

- Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, pp. 1-31, 33-46.

- Yan, Yunxian. The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 74-97.

Peters, Charles. How Washington Really Works. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1993, pp. 3-15, 17-33. ISBN: 0201570858.

- Walley, Christine J."Searching for 'Voices': Feminism, Anthropology, and the Global Debate over Female Genital Operations." Cultural Anthropology 12, no. 3: 405-38.

- Gusterson, Hugh. Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, chapter 1-4. ISBN: 0520081471.

- Shweder, Richard A. "What About 'Female Genital Mutilation'? And Why Understanding Culture Matters in the First Place." Daedalus 129 (Fall 2000): 209-29.

- Roth Pierpont, Claudia. "The Measure of America." New Yorker. March 8, 2004.

- Zemon Davis, Natalie. The Gift in 16th century France. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, pp. 34-42. ISBN: 0299168808.

1- Introduction: Anthropology and Its Divisions

2- Being Cultural

3- Evolution and Adaptation

4- Film: Number Our Days

5-Doing Fieldwork

6- Ethnography

7-Writing and Pain

8- Uniqueness and Cultural Difference

9-Race and Biological Difference

10-Giving and Receiving

11-Potlatch and Kula

12-Morality and Cultural Relativism

13-Film on Exchange, with Discussion

14-Anthropological Studies of Science

15-Thinking Symbolically

16-Kinship and Marriage

17-TBA

18-Film: The Nuer

19-The Nuer of the Sudan

20-Film: Strange Practices

21-Making Sense of the Nuer

22-Making More Sense of the Nuer

23-Problems with Culture

24-More Problems with Culture

25-Wrap-up

1-(Due Session #4) Response Paper (1-2 pages)

2-(Due Session #8) Response Paper (2 pages)

3-(Due Session #14) Gift Exchange (4 pages)

4-(Due Session #17) Moral judgements and cultural relativism (5 pages)

5-(Due Session #21) What are they arguing about? (5 pages)

6-(Due Session #23) Nuer Paper (5 pages)

Final Exam Study Guide

Graduates Courses:

- Social Theory and Analysis, Fall 2004

Readings

Assignments

Study materials

- Introduction and Assignments

- The Social, the Ethnographic Method and the Durkheimean Challenge

- Disciplines, Communities of Expertise and Epistemological Cultural Critique

- Ecology and Systems: You Can't Change Only One Thing

- System Transformation, Social Formations, Multiple Historical Horizons: The Marxian Challenge

- Meaningful Social Action in Post-Bureaucratic Worlds: The Weberian Challenge

- Bodies, Multitudes, Codes and Flows: The Challenge of 1970s-90s French "Theory"

- Material-Semiotic Objects: Cyborg and Companionate Anthropologies

- Trauma, Human Rights, the Humanitarian Industry, and the Reconstruction of Society after Violent Distruction

1- Select a passage from the reading that strikes you as puzzling or jargon ridden. Rewrite the passage as best you can in your own words. Analyze what your version does better and what it fails to capture of the original. The goal is to identify the stakes of the arguments, historical or social perspectives of the author(s), and the degree to which arguments are specific to their contexts or generalizable.

2- Find an item in the newspaper or current journal that relates to the week's reading. Apply the analysis of the week's reading to the current item.3-(Due Session #14) Gift Exchange (4 pages)

3- Take your own current intellectual research project, or experiences you have had in a lab or work situation, and creatively apply the week's reading to it; do this iteratively with different weeks' readings to gain a multiple theoretical perspective on your project.

- Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

- Max Weber (1864-1920)

- The Frankfurt School (Critical Theory)

- French Theory of the 1970s-2004 and Italian Theory of 1970s-2004

Graduates and undergraduate Courses:

- Documenting Culture, Spring 2004

Readings

Assignments

1- Introduction

2- Early Cinema

3- Ethnographic Film as Science and Beyond

4- Cinema Verite and Cine-fiction: The Films of Jean Rouch

5- Cine-fiction and Cinema Verite: The Films of Jean Rouch (cont.)

6- Direct Cinema in the US: Observing at Home

7- Communities and Conflict: Debating Nuclear Technologies
Guest Lecturer: Filmmaker Chris Boebel

8- Gender and Sexuality

9- Observing the 'Exotic' in the U.S.

1- What are the parallels and differences between the work of French director, Jean Rouch, (sometimes referred to as "cinema verite") and the work of direct cinema proponents centered in the United States? How are these parallels and differences expressed, not only in terms of their ideas and theories of filmmaking, but in the construction of the films themselves? What sorts of "truth" does each hope to capture?

2- Write an essay exploring the various ways that culture has been documented on film in this class thus far. What range of motivations have been expressed by the filmmakers you have seen? How do the different viewpoints of the filmmakers find expression in their choice of subject as well as filmstyle? Are there certain perspectives you feel to be more helpful than others?

For more information visit: www.ocw.mit.edu

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