this class meets on Tuesdays, from 5:10 to 6:50 in Grace Dodge 363

[where to look for these sources]

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I - Introduction: The problem of culture as communication

1/27 -- The major issues: consensus, or constraint? Reproduction of the learned or production of the new?

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

2/3 -- 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 Sciences3: 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

2/10 -- Popular (high) culture: new developments in an old controversy

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

recommended:

 

II -- Historical Roots: Intuitions and Developments

2/17 -- Intuitions and difficulties in the concept of 'A' culture

Benedict, Ruth "Configurations of culture in North America," American Anthropologist 34: 1-27. 1932

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]
  • Sapir, Edward Culture, language and personality. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1966 [1949]]

2/24 -- The act, others, and the identified self

Mead, G.H. Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1934. (Chapters 3, 7, [8, 9,] 10, 11, 22)

Bateson, Gregory "Why do Frenchmen" in Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Balantine Books, 1972 [1951]

recommended:

  • Mead, G.H. "The social self." The journal of philosophy, psychology and scientific methods 10: 374-380, 1913
  • 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]

3/3 -- Language: pattern and change

Saussure, Ferdinand de Course in General Linguistics. Tr. by W. Baskin. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1966 [1915]. Introduction (Chapters 1-3), Part I (Chap. 1-2), Part II (Chap. 4), Part III (Chap. 1-2).

recommended:

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

3/10 -- 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, Dell, Foundations in sociolinguistics. Chapter 2. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1974.
  • Labov, William Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1972

3/17 [SPRING BREAK]

3/24 -- Speaking together as a matter of collective patterning

Duranti, Alessandro Linguistic Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. (Chapter 8)

recommended:

  • 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 "An Analysis of the Course of a Joke's Telling in Conversation." in Explorations 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 - Contemporary problematics - 1: Artifacts and their consequences

3/31 -- Making cultural facts

Latour, Bruno Reassembling the social. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. (Particularly chapters 2, 4, 5, 7)

recommended:

  • 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
  • Garfinkel, Harold

4/7 -- 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:

  • recommended: Rosaldo, Michelle, and Louise Lamphere, eds. Woman, culture, and society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1973.

4/14 -- (Dis-) Ability

McDermott, R. and Varenne,H. "Culture as disability" Anthropology and Education Quarterly 26: 324-348. 1995. (expanded version published on line by Serendip)

recommended:

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

 

IV - Contemporary problematics - 2: The ongoing evolution of artifacts

4/21 -- Generating difference in use: the local construction of culture in resistance

Bakhtin, Mikhail "Discourse in the novel" in The dialogic imagination. Tr. by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1981 (particularly the first 75 pages)

recommended:

  • Bakhtin, MikhailRabelais and his world. Tr. by H. Iswolsky. Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press. 1968 [1936]
  • Boon on P.T. Barnum
  • De Certeau, Michel The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1984 [1980]

4/28 -- 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

5/5 -- 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

recommended:

5/12 -- Education as cultural production

•  Varenne, Hervé "Difficult collective deliberations: anthropological notes towards a theory of education."  Teachers College Record (2007)

COURSE MAP

 

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