Class notes are available by clicking on the date for the class meeting. Information about where to get the readings is also available here.

Introduction

5/29 What is happening? What do we talk about when we talk about "family"? Cultural landscapes of the family: patterned controversies and dueling hegemonies
  • Whitehead, Barbara "Dan Quayle was right." Atlantic Monthly, April 1993.

recommended:

  • Bumpass, Larry "What's happening to the family? Interactions between demographic and institutional change." Demography 27: 483-498.1990

  • Varenne, Hervé "Love and liberty: The contemporary American family" (in History of the family. Edited by A. Burguiere, C. Klapisch-Zuber, M. Segalen and F. Zonabend. London: Polity Press, (1996)
 
6/3

The culturing of nature: Incest and parental love

  • Daly, Martin and Margo Wilson The truth about Cinderella: A Darwinian view of parental love. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
  • Lévi-Strauss The elementary structures of kinship Chapters 1,2,3 Tr. by J. Bell and J. von Sturmer. Boston: Beacon Press. 1969 [1947].
 
6/5 The labor of birth: The social construction of biological processes
  • Jordan, Brigitte. Birth in Four Cultures. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1993. (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, 7)

recommended:

  • Cotter, Mary Labor negotiations: A study of interactions around pre-natal care and childbirth. Doctoral dissertation. New York: Teachers College, 1996.
 
6/10 Infancy and language acquisition: Learning, participation and the children's struggle as they play and resist
  • Ochs, Elinor and Bambi Schieffelin "Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories and their implications." in Culture theory. Edited by R. Shweder and R. LeVine, 276-320. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984
 
6/12 Childhood, caretaking and nannies: The sociology of childhood: The complexities of approaching childhood as a joint construction by children, parents and those who control parents (other parents near and far; the State).
  • Boon, James "Anthropology and nannies." Man 9: 137-39. 1974
  • Drummond, Lee "Transatlantic nanny: notes on a comparative semiotics of the family." American ethnologist 5: 30-43. 1978

recommended:

  • Scheper-Hughes, Nancy "(M)Other love" Death without weeping. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1992
  • Netting, R., R. Wilk, and E. Arnould "Introduction" and Chapter One (in Households, ed. by Netting, R., R. Wilk, and E. Arnould. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 1984
 
6/17 Courtship: The dilemmas of adolescence: gender, love, and the first steps towards marriage and divorce on a stage (schools and colleges) setting their soon to be achieved social position.
  • Canaan, Joice "Why a 'slut' is a 'slut': Cautionary tales of middle-class teenage girls' morality." in Symbolizing America, ed. by H. Varenne, 184-208. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. 1986.
  • Holland, Dorothy, and Debra Skinner "The cultural models behind Americans' talk about gender types," in Cultural models in language and thought, ed. by D. Holland and N. Quinn, 78-111. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1987
 
6/19 Family education and social reproduction: Class struggles through families and schools
  • Varenne, Hervé "Families, education and the State in America." New York: IUME, Teachers College, Columbia University (pp. 6-37)
 
6/24 Love and divorce: Cultural possibilities in America: expansions and change
  • Weston, Kath Families we choose: Lesbians, gays, kinship. New York: Columbia University Press. 1991
 
6/26 Cycles of exchange: The extension of family and its possible functions in the modern world. 
  • Stack, Carol All our kin. New York: Harper and Row. 1975
 
7/1

Couple talk: Cultural justifications for marriage and divorce. Everyday interaction and its consequences.

  • Varenne, Hervé "Talk and real talk: The voices of silence and the voices of power in American family life." Cultural Anthropology 2: 369-394. 1987
 
7/3 Family policy in the United States: Independence, control, resistance, regulation
 

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May 29,2002