SYLLABUS,ANT430,UNLV

ANT 430/630 HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY

PALMER, FALL, 1999

10:00 TR, WRI 203

Office Hours: TR 3:50-4:45, F 10:30-11:30 and by appointment

Teaching Assistant: Anja Vogel, offfice hours 10:30-1:00 MW, WRI 304C.

(This syllabus is also available at http://www.nevada.edu/~gbp)

GOALS

Anthropology has a perspective that is unique among the social sciences. In this course we discover this perspective by studying the thinking of prominent anthropologists in the 19th and 20th Centuries. The historical approach reveals how the anthropological perspective has evolved and how it has come to assume its present configuration as a constellation of diverse approaches. We will also examine intellectual conflicts in the form of major issues that have riven the field, particularly those differences in American, English and French approaches and the struggle between positivists and postmodernists. Anthropology itself has been shaped by ethnicity and gender, so we will examine differences between male and female anthropologists. Finally, we will attempt to discover where anthropology fits in relation to other fields of scholarship. What part is science, what part humanism? What do we owe to sociology, psychology, and biology?

REQUIRED READINGS

Mcgee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 1996. Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. Mayfield.
Orans, Martin, Not Even Wrong: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman, and the Samoans. Chandler and Sharp Publishers, Inc. 1996.
Mead, Margaret. 1971. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. Morrow, William & Company.

ANT 630, grad students only; consider purchasing

Bohannon, Paul. 1988. High Points in Anthropology. 2nd Ed. Alfred A. Knopf.
Erickson, Paul A. 1998. A History of Anthropological Theory. Broadview.

ASSIGNMENTS: CHAPTER SQUIBS

The weekly short papers are what I call "squibs". They should be typed and double-spaced. The MAXIMUM length is four pages, no minimum. The papers are simply evaluated on the basis of how well they respond to the question or problem within this limit. In the upper left hand corner include just the following information:

Your Name
McGee & Warms, pp. 5-40 (or whatever) (It is important to include the page numbers.)
Date
ANT 430 (or 630)

You may be able to answer most of the questions posed to you by reading the introductory chapter for each week, but you can improve your papers (not to mention your class discussion) by including specifics and even short quotes (cited by page) from the assigned chapters.

Further commentary on the readings (or class discussions, lectures, and tapes) is welcome. It may be almost anything, such as why the anthropologist's ideas are right or wrong, how the anthropologist set the field on the right or wrong path, how the author of your text misrepresented the anthropologist, or why he should have been more critical, how the anthropologist relates to other fields of knowledge or to history, or why you find the anthropologist's ideas particularly difficult to understand (if you choose this topic, analyze your own difficulties closely, finding the place in the text where you began to find yourself lost).

ASSIGNMENTS: RESEARCH PAPERS

Those seeking an "A" grade and graduate students must write a research paper. Others may do so out of interest or to improve their grades. The research paper is not required for undergraduates. A paper may be a study of an anthropologist or it may be a study of an issue. The paper must be 10-15 pages in length (grads should write longer papers) and should include information from sources (journal articles and books) not read in class. Materials from the internet should be used only as a means of discovering published materials or to liven up a paper. They may not be used as the basis for the substance of a paper because materials published on the internet do not yet meet normal scientific standards. A bibliography will be provided. Use primary sources (written by the subject him/herself) as much as possible. Try to get a draft ready by mid-term so that I can give you commentary and editing suggestions. You must let me know your topic by mid-term so that I can schedule you for a 5 to 10 minute presentation which will take place near the end of the semester. If you don't have a topic by mid-term you will not be eligible to write a research paper. If you are an anthropology major (or even perhaps if you are not), you should write your paper with an eye toward publication. Russ Rader published his paper for this class in the 1998 Journal of California Anthropology. It is posted in the case outside the anthropology department.

GRADING

Grades will be based on the chapter squibs, research papers, attendance, and contributions to class discussions. In my experience, people vary greatly in their strengths and weaknesses, so I see no point in assigning a certain number of points to each category.

SCHEDULE OF READINGS, TAPES

Sept 2, Read McGee & Warms, pp. 5-40; first squib due; topic: If Spencer and Tylor could see contemporary American life and culture, how would they explain it (or some aspect of it)? Maximum 4 pages.

Sept 7, Tape: Franz Boas [GN 21 B62 F7];

Sept 9 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 41-82; write squib comparing ideas of Morgan to those of Marx or Freud. Tape Franz Boas: The Shackles of Tradition [GN 21 B56].

Sept 16 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 83-127; write squib on how history and the individual are included or not included in theories of Durkheim, Mauss & Weber, compared to 19th century evolutionists.

Sept 23 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 128-153; assume that Boas, Kroeber, and Radin are teaching here in the department of anthropology at UNLV. How would each explain contemporary American life and culture (or some aspect of it)? Maximum 4 pages.

Sept 28 Tape: Off the Verandah. [Bronislaw Malinowski] [GN 21 M25 O33].

Sept 30 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 154-201; Write a squib comparing the British anthropologists Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, and Evans-Pritchard to their American contemporaries Boas, Kroeber, and Radin. Why do you think the British and Americans arrived at such different approaches to understanding people? If you were applying to graduate school in the 1920s or 1930s, which author would you chose to study with, and why? Tape: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard: Strange Beliefs [GN 21 E93 S77]

Oct 5 Tape: Tape: Margaret Mead:Coming of Age [GN 21 M36 C64]

Oct 7 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 202-214; Mead, Ch I-III; Orans, Introduction & Ch 1-2. Write a squib that discusses how the theories of anthropology may be affected by the gender of the theoreticians. It might be particularly useful to compare Benedict and Mead to Boas, Kroeber, and Lowie because Benedict and Mead were students of Boas.

Oct 12 Tape: Margaret Mead and Samoa [GN 671 S2 M3];

Oct 14 Read Mead, Ch VII, XI, X; Orans, Ch 3-5; Write a squib discussing your views of the controversy over the work of Margaret Mead.

Oct 19 Tape: Anthropology on Trial [GN 345 A54 1984b]

Oct 21 Read Mead Ch XI, XIII; Orans, Ch 6-9. Write a squib discussing your views of the controversy over the work of Margaret Mead, including some discussion of how your views have evolved since last week.

Oct 28 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 221-257. Write a squib in which you discuss what the ideas of Steward and White owe to those of Morgan and Marx and how the two 20th century theorists differ from the two 19th century ones.

Nov 4 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 267-295. Write a squib in which you use the ideas of Fried and Harris to explain the evolution of the city of Las Vegas.

Nov 9 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 310-335. Write a squib in which you discuss how the ideas of Levi-Strauss fit into the field of anthropology and how they change the picture that we have been developing of human culture and the individual.

Nov 16 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 345-366. Do one of the following: (1) Find a friend who speaks another language, preferably NOT a common European language (Spanish, French, German, etc.) and record as many terms for colors as you can, along with exact meanings of there are any beyond the color itself (ex. "bone white"); (2) Find a child 4 years old or younger and elicit color terms by showing the child objects of different colors. Record the terms. (3) Find a dictionary of another language and copy all of the color terms that you can find along with exact meanings. (4) Do (1) with anybody at all. In all of these, please follow the following convention: Underline or italicize the term itself and put the gloss in single quotes, as in the following example: blond 'light yellow' a color that applies only to hair or wood. You will be asked to hand in your list of terms, along with your comments on what the list says about the color categories of your consultant or the language you studied.

Nov 23 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 367-429. Write a squib in which you apply the thinking of Edward Wilson and Jerome Barkow to the feminist critique as presented by Slocum, Ortner and Llewelyn-Davies. Are these two groups working together or at cross purposes? Should they be allies or mortal enemies?

Dec 2 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 430-479. Write a squib comparing the ideas of Douglas, Turner, and Geertz to those of Levi-Strauss.

Dec 9 Read McGee & Warms, pp. 480-512. Write a squib on what post-modernism can do for anthropology. Tape: Anthropology and the Future [GN 33.6 A57]

Dec 14, 10:10 AM. Final Exam. Bring blue-books sufficient for two hours. This will be an open-book, open-note exam. It's contribution to your record will be approximately 10% (unless someone unexpectedly demonstrates complete ignorance of the topic or fails to show at all, in which case the effect will be decisive).

Sources:

Consult the indices of the pertinent anthropological journals from among the following: American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology (a particularly good source for debates over issues), Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Linguistics, American Antiquity, Ethnology, Man (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute), Anthropological Linguistics, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Human Organization, Journal of Economic Development and Cultural Change, Science, Journal of American Folklore, Scientific American, Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, American Journal of Sociology, Anthropos, Daedalus, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

If your subject is not too recent, you may find information in one of the following:

Helm, June, ed. (1966) Pioneers of American Anthropology. U. of Washington Pr. [Lurie, Fletcher, Parsons, Densmore, etc.]

Kuper, Adam (1995) Anthropology and Anthropologists. Routledge. [British anthropology]

Langness, L. L. (1987) The Study of Culture. Chandler and Sharp.

Lowie, R. H. (1937) The History of Ethnological Theory. HRW.

Parezo, Nancy (ed.) (1993) Hidden Scholars: Women Anthropologists and the Native American Southwest.

Penniman, T.K. (1935) A Hundred Years of Anthropology. London: Duckworth.

Stocking, G. W. (1968) Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. Free Press.

Stocking, G. W. (1992) The Ethnographer's Magic and Other Essays in the History of Anthropology. U. of Wisconsin Press.

Voget, F. (1975) A History of Ethnology. HRW. .

Also, check computer listings in library, humanities and social sciences indexes on compact disk in library reference section (2nd fl, old library), and, for older materials, the card catalog. The library computer can now tap into California systems as well, so learn how to do that. Scan the bibliographies of the sources that you find.

DISABILITIES

If you have a documented disability that requires assistance, you will need to go to the Disability Resource Center (DRC) for coordination in your academic accommodations. The DRC is located in the Reynolds Student Services Center rm 137. The DRC phone is 895-0866 or TDD 895-0652.

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