The class meets from 1:45 to 4:05 in ZB214

Class notes are available by clicking on the date for the class meeting.

Reserves: Information about where to get the readings is also available here.

 

I - Introduction: Tools that are made by, and make, humanity

5/23 -- Technology: possibility and determination?

Marx, Karl "The first premises of the materialist method" in The German Ideology ([1846] 1932).

Varenne, Hervé "Difficult collective deliberations: Anthropological notes towards a theory of education." in Teachers College Record, 109, 7: 1559-1587

5/25 -- (Ethno-)Methodology for (de-)constructing human production

Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1979 (Chapters 1, 2, and postcript)

recommended

6/1 -- Human (dis-)abilities: expansions through tools and institutions

McDermott, R. and Varenne, H. "Culture as disability" Anthropology and Education Quarterly 26: 324-348. 1995.

II - Food production: tools and social structure

6/6 -- Hoes, plows and familial strategies

Goody, Jack Production and Reproduction New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976 (Chapters 1-5) 

6/8 -- Irrigation: Power and social structure

Wittfogel, Karl Oriental Despotism. Yale U. Press 1957 pp. 11-100

III - Play with the constraints of literacy

6/13 -- The power of the printed word

Ong, Walter Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York: Methuen. 1982

6/15 -- Possibilities in print: Play and control

Conklin , Harold "Bamboo literacy on Mindoro" Pacific Discovery 2: 4-11. 1949

Gundaker, Grey "Hidden Education Among African Americans During Slavery." Teachers College Record 109, 7: 1591-1612. 2007.

recommended

  • Kalmar, Tomas Illegal alphabets and adult literacy: Latino migrants crossing the linguistic border Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2001
  • Kuipers, Joel, and Ray McDermott "Insular Southeast Asian scripts." in The world's writing systems. Edited by P. Daniels and W. Bright, 474-484. New York: Oxford University Press. 1995

IV - Human production: the body in the machine

6/20 -- Industrialization I: The imagination of the machines

Marx, Leo The machine in the garden. Oxford University Press. 1964

6/22 -- Industrialization II: The experience of machines

Wallace, F.A.C. Rockdale Knopf 1978. pp. 73-239

V - Technological productions: the body in the machine

6/27 -- Living with the bomb

Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1979 (Chapters 3 to 6)

recommended

  • Gusterson, Hugh Nuclear rites: A weapons laboratory at the end of the cold war. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1996

6/29 -- The body and the machine

Rapp, Rayna Testing women, testing the fetus: The social impact of amniocenthesis in America. New York: Routledge, 1999 (Chapters 1,2,5,6,9)

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