[where to look for these sources]

I - Introduction: The problem of culture.

The major issue: consensus, or constraint?

 
  • Dewey, John Democracy and education. New York: The Free Press. 1966 [1916]. (Chapters One & Two [on line])
  • Varenne, Hervé "America and I" in America as a foreign culture. Ed. by P. DeVita and J. Armstrong, 29-38. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. 1992

Classical discussions in anthropology and sociology

 
  • Lévi-Strauss, Claude "Nature and culture," Chapter 1 of The elementary structures of kinship. Tr. by J. Bell and J. von Sturmer. Boston: Beacon Press. 1969 [1947].
  • Duranti, Alessandro Linguistic Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. (Chapter 2)
    recommended:
    • Boon, James "Further operations of 'culture' in anthropology: A synthesis of and for debate." Social Science Quarterly: 221-252. 1972
    • Singer, Milton "The concept of culture." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 3: 527-543.1968
    • Smelser, Neil "Culture: coherent or incoherent." in Münch, Richard, and Neil Smelser, eds. Theory of culture, 3-28. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 1992

2/6

Popular (high) culture: new developments in an old controversy

 
  • Fiske, John Understanding popular culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman. 1989. (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 6)

II -- Historical Roots: Intuitions and Developments

Intuitions and difficulties in the concept of 'A' culture

 
    recommended:
    • Benedict, Ruth Patterns of culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1934
    • Kroeber, A.L. "The superorganic." in The nature of culture. Edited by A.L. Kroeber, 22-51. Chicago: The University of Chicago. 1952 [1917]
    • Lévi-Strauss, Claude "Father Christmas executed"  in Unwrapping Christmas.   Edited by D. Miller, 38-51.   Oxford: Clarendon Press.  [first published in 1952]
    • Sapir, Edward Culture, language and personality. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1966 [1949]]

The act, others, and the self

 
    recommended:
    • Mauss, Marcel "A category of the human mind: The notion of person; the notion of self." in The category of the person. Edited by M. Carrithers, S. Collins and S. Lukes, 1-25. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1985 [1938

Language: pattern and change
 
    recommended:
    • Lévi-Strauss, Claude Structural anthropology. Tr. by C. Jacobson and B. Schoepf. New York: Basic Books. 1963 [1958] Chapter 2-5.

3/6

Speaking: possibilities elaborated in the use of language
 
  • Jakobson, Roman "Concluding statement: Linguistics and poetics." in Style in language. Edited by T. Sebeok, 350-377. New York: Wiley. (particularly the first 10 pages)
  • Duranti, Alessandro Linguistic Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. (Chapter 7)
      recommended:
      • Hymes, Foundations in sociolinguistics. Chapter 2. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1974.
      • Labov, William Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1972

3/13 [SPRING BREAK]

Systematization in interaction
 
    recommended:
    • Bateson, Gregory "Communication." in The natural history of an interview. Edited by Bateson, Birdwhistell, Brosin, Hockett, McQuown, and Fromm-Reichmann. Chicago: University of Chicago Library Microfilm Collection of Manuscripts Cultural Anthropology, series 15, Nos. 95-98
    • Goffman, Erving Interaction ritual: Essays in face-to-face behavior. Chicago: Aldine. 1967. (Chapters 1 & 2)
    • Nadel, S.F. "Social control and self-regulation" in Modern systems research ... 401-408

Speaking together: a joint construction
 
  • Duranti, Alessandro Linguistic Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. (Chapter 8)
  • recommended:
    • Garfinkel, Harold "Studies of the routine grounds of everyday activities" and "What is ethnomethodology?" in Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1967
    • Goodwin, Charles "The interactive construction of a sentence in a natural conversation," in Everyday Language, 97-121. Edited by G. Psathas. New York: Irvington Publishers, 1979
    • Sacks, Harvey "On doing 'being ordinary'," in Structures of social action. Edited by J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage, 413-429. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1984b
    • Sacks, Harvey "An analysis of the telling of a joke's telling in conversation." in Exploration in the ethnography of speaking. Ed. by R. Bauman and J. Sherzer, 337-353. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
    • Scheflen, Albert "On communicational processes." in Nonverbal behavior. Edited by A. Wolfgang, 1-16. New York: Academic Press. 1979

III - The Contemporary Problematics of Culture

4/3

Internal complexities: what difference gender?
 
  • Lamphere, Louise et al.  Situated Lives.  New York: Routledge. 1997
    (read minimally the introduction and chapters by Rapp, Ginsburg, Comaroff, as well as one chapter at least in each of the sections of the book)
  • recommended: Rosaldo, Michelle, and Louise Lamphere, eds. Woman, culture, and society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1973.

Institutionalizing pattern: dominance, hegemony and the power of history
 

Williams, Raymond Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1977. (Parts I [particularly Chap. 1,2,4] & II; [particularly Chap. 1,2,4,6,7,8])

  • recommended:
    • Wuthnow, Robert "Infrastructure and superstructure: Revisions in Marxist sociology of culture." in Münch & Smelser, 145-172]

Generating difference in use: the local construction of culture in resistance
 
  • recommended:
    • Bakhtin, MikhailRabelais and his world. Tr. by H. Iswolsky. Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press. 1968 [1936]

Local transformation: Culture in process?
 
  • Miller, Daniel "Appropriating the state on the council estate," Man, 23: 353-372, 1988
  • Myerhoff, Barbara "Life not death in Venice," in The anthropology of experience. Edited by V. Turner and E. Bruner, 261-285. University of Illinois Press, 1986
  • recommended:
    • Geertz, Clifford "'From the native's point of view': On the nature of anthropological understanding." in Meaning in anthropology. Edited by K. Basso and H. Selby, 221-237. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1976
    • Rosaldo, Michelle "Toward an anthropology of self and feeling." in Culture theory. Edited by R. Shweder and R. LeVine, 137-157. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1984
    • Varenne, Hervé "Collective representation in America anthropological conversations about culture: Culture and the individual." Current Anthropology 25: 281-300. 1984

(Post-?) Modern Investigations

5/1

Popular possibilities and their paradoxes
 
  • Drummond, Lee American dreamtime. Lanham, MD: Littlefield. Chapters 5 and 7
  • Ducille, Ann "Dyes and dolls." Differences 6: 46-68. 1994

5/8

Culture and Communication: The dark side of human construction
 

COURSE MAP

 

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