ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY IN CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE

ANTHROPOLOGY 439

COURSE DESCRIPTION



An explanation of current theory in social and cultural anthropology. Emphasis is placed upon examining theories in the light both of contemporary ideas about theoretical adequacy and of the historical development of anthropological and social thought. Designed especially for undergraduate concentrators in anthropology and anthropology graduate students.

There will be a one-hour mid-term examination (30% of course grade), a three-hour final examination (50% of course grade) and a term paper (20% of course grade).

PRINCIPAL TOPICS



I. What is a theory? (Considerations from the philosophy of science).

II. Cultural discovery and variation: substantive & conceptual precursors of anthropology.

III. Early evolutionism: Marx, Morgan, etc. But, for structural marxists and current marxist Anthropology (see, also, VII)

IV. The transitional evolutionism of Tylor, Fraser, etc.; Galton's problem; the problem of belief, rationality and prelogicality (see, under X).

V. The French positivists: Durkheim and his followers (see, also, IX, for Lévi-Straussian Structuralism).

VI. British, American and Continental Schools of Culture History: the problem of culture; the relation of trait to context; the Boasian reaction in America to extreme evolutionism and extreme diffusionism.

VII. Neo-Evolutionism: White, Steward, Neo-marxists; determinism and causality; environment and ecology. Cultural Materialism and Energy theories; for 'social theory' see also Ix,

VIII. American culturalist schools: Kroeber, Benedict, Mead, Redfield, etc.: pattern, ethos, and personality in culture - the anthropology of Gregory Bateson.

IX. Functional and structural schools: Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, the later functionalists and Structuralism: idea, behaviour and model.

X. Formalists: The New/Cognitive Ethnography, data processing, and the influence of modern linguistics.

XI. Interpretivism, Deconstructionism, Critical Anthropology; Symbolic Interactionism and its relatives. 'Social Theory' belongs both here and under VII and IX.

REFERENCE LIST



All book items are on reserve in the Education /Social Science Library. 'R' (after an article selection) means it is also on Reserve there. 'RR' means it is in our department Reading Room, either on reserve for the class or in a journal kept in that room. Roman numbers after a selection indicate the Principal Topics of the Course to which the selection is relevant. Two or more numbers often indicates important connexions between Principal Topics. If there is no 'R' or 'RR' following an article listing, or if one carrying the annotation 'RR' is not actually in our departmental Reading Room, you should apply to the instructor for the copy. In addition, I have written a number of lectures for this class, and these are on reserve in the Reading Room; they are on Macintosh diskettes, and you may print them out for yourselves freely. Adams, Richard N.
1988 THE EIGHTH DAY: SOCIAL EVOLUTION AS THE SELF- ORGANIZATION OF ENERGY. Austin: University of Texas Press. R VII

Appell, George N.
1989 Facts, fictions, fads and fallacies: but where is the evidence. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 91,1: 195-198. I

Ardener, Edwin
1972 The New Anthropology and its Critics. Man n.s. 6,3: 449- 467. RR X Ballonoff, Paul, ed.
1974 MATHEMATICAL MODELS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. University of Illinois Anthropology Series, 9. R X

The New Anthropology and its Critics. MAN, n.s. 6,3:449-467. R X Barbosa de Almeida, Mauro W.
1990 Symmetry and entropy: Some mathematical metaphors in the work of Lévi-Strauss(with Barbut, Marc

1970 On the Meaning of the Word Structure in Mathematics. Michael Lane, ed., STRUCTURALISM. London: Jonathan Cape: 367-388. I, IX, X comment by Lehman). RR IX, X

Bateson, Gregory
1972 STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND. New York: Ballantine Books . R I, VIII Behavior Science Research
1991 Volume 25: Cross-cultural and Comparative Method: Theory & Method. RR I, VIII

Bloch, Maurice
1991 Language, anthropology and cognitive Science. Man (ns) 26,2: 183-198. RR X

Bohm, David
CAUSALITY AND CHANCE IN MODERN PHYSICS. New York: Dover Publications. R I

Bolton, Ralph 1989 THE CONTENT OF CULTURE: CONSTANTS & VARIANTS. New Haven: HRAF. VI

Bourdieu, Pierre
1990 THE LOGIC OF PRACTICE. Stanford University Press. R VII

Bruner, Edward M. 1990 The scientists vs. the humanists. Anthropology Newsletter (February), page 28. RR XI

Burke, Peter
1993 History & Social Theory. Cornell University Press. R VI Chomsky, N.A.

1986 KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE. New York: Praeger. R I

Cooke, P.
1990 Locality, structure, and agency. CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 5,1:3-15. RR XI

Dougherty, Janet W.D., ed.
1985 DIRECTIONS IN COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. R X

Durkheim, Emile
1969 PRIMITIVE CLASSIFICATION. University of Chicago Press. R V, IX

Ellen, Roy F., ed.
1984 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH. New York and London: Academic Press. R I

Ellen, Roy F.
1986 What Black Elk Left Unsaid: The Illusory Images of Green Primitivism.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY 2,6: 8-13. R VII

Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
1962 SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND OTHER ESSAYS. London: Faber and Faber. R IX

Firth, Raymond, ed.
1957 MAN AND CULTURE (on the work of Malinowski). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. R IX

Firth, Raymond, ed.
1973 SYMBOLS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. R IX

Flynn, P.
1991 THE ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL MOVEMENT.N.Y. : Mouton de Gruyter. XI

Fox, Robin
1989 THE SEARCH FOR SOCIETY: QUEST FOR A BIOSOCIAL SCIENCE AND MORALITY. Rutgers University Press. general and VII.

Friedman, Jonathan
1974 Marxism, Structuralism and Vulgar Materialism. MAN n.s. 9,3:444-469. RR VII

Friedman, Jonathan
1980 Paranoid Materialism: a Review Article on Marvin Harris's Cultural Materialism ETHNOS 45, 3&4:244-256. R VII

Friedman, Jonathan
1987 An Interview with Eric Wolf. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 28,1:107-118. VII

Gellner, Ernest
1985 RELATIVISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. Cambridge University Press [see also John Davis (1991) An Interview with Ernest gellner. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 32,1: 63-71 RR]. R I, IX

Giddens, Anthony
1984 THE CONSTUITUTION OF SOCIETY. Berkeley: University of California Press. R VII, IX

Godelier, Maurice
1988 THE MENTAL AND THE MATERIAL. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. R VII

Hage, Per, and F. Harary, ed.
1984 STRUCTURAL MODELS IN ANTHROPOLOGY. Cambridge University Press. R X, I

Harris, Marvin
1968 THE RISE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. R II, III, VII & general

Harris, Marvin
1992 Anthropology and the Theoretical and Paradigmatic Significance of the Collapse of Soviet and East European Communism. AA 94,2: 295- 305. RR VIII

Ingold, Tim
1986 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL LIFE. Cambridge University Press. R VI, VII

Ingold, Tim
1990 An anthropologist looks at biology. Man (n.s.) 25,2:208-229. RR VII

Jacobson, David
1991 READING ETHNOGRAPHY. Albany: SUNY Press. R XI

Jordan, David K., and Marc J. Swartz, eds.
1990 CULTURE AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF PERSONALITY. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. T VIII

Kay, Paul, ed.
1971 EXPLORATIONS IN MATHEMATICAL ANTHROPOLOGY. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. R X

Keesing, Roger M.
Paradigms Lost: The New Ethnography and the New Linguistics. SOUTHWESTERN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY 28,4:299-332. RR X

Keesing, Roger M.
1987 Anthropology as Interpretive Quest. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 28,2: 161- 176. RR XI,X

Keesing, Roger M.
1992 Radical Cultural Difference: Anthropology's Myth? paper for a conference on intercultural communication, University of Duisberg (Germany) (get from Lehman) I,X

Kuklick, Henrika
1992 The Savage Within: the Social History of British Anthropology, 1885- 1943. Cambridge University Press. R VI

Kuhn, Thomas
1970 THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS. University of Chicago Press.R I

Lakatos, Imre, and A. Musgrave, eds.
1970 CRITICISM AND THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE. Cambridge University Press. R I

Leach, Edmund R.
1970 CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS. New York: Viking Press. R IX

Leach, Edmund
1984 Glimpses of the Unmentionable in History of British Social Anthropology. ANNUAL REVIEW OF ANTHROPOLOGY 13:1-23. RR IX, VI

Leaf, Murray J.
1979 MAN, MIND AND SCIENCE: A HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY. New York: Columbia University Press. R I, IX

Lévi-Strauss, Claude
1967, 1976 STRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (I).New York: Doubleday-Anchor Books. R IX
STRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY (II). New York: Basic Books. R IX

Lowie, Robert
1937 HISTORY OF ETHNOLOGICAL THEORY.New York: Farrar and Rinehart. R I, VI

Marcus, George, and Michael M.J. Fischer
1986 ANTHROPOLOGY AS CULTURAL CRITIQUE: AN EXPERIMENTAL MOVEMENT IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES. University of Chicago Press. R XI

Mauss, Marcel
1967 THE GIFT.New York: Norton. R V, IX

Nadel, Siegfried F.
1957 THEORY OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE. London: Cohen & West. R IX, X
Needham, Rodney
1969 The Future of Social Anthropology: Disintegration or Metamorphosis? ANNIVERSARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY: TWELVE ESSAYS PUBLISHED ON THE OCCASION OF THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LEIDEN ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Leiden. R IX

Newmeyer, Frederick J.
1986 HasThere Been a 'Chomskyan Revolution' in Linguistics? LANGUAGE 62,1:1-18. I
Ortner, Shelly
1984 Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties. COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN SOCIETY AND HISTORY 26: 126-166. R I, XI

Ottonello, Edward
1975 Cultural Materialism, Falsificationism and Scientific Progress. JOURNAL OF THE STEWARD ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY 6, 2: 76-89 [and see F.K. Lehman, 1976, reply to Ottonello, 8,l:53-66, On Falsification and Science, Again.RR I, VII

Pattee, Howard, ed.
1973 HIERARCHY THEORY. New York: George Braziller. R I

Popper, Karl
1968 THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION. New York: Harper Torchbooks. R I

Radcliffe-Brown, A.R.
1952 STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETY.London: Oxford. R IX

Read, Dwight W.
1989 Statistical Methods and Reasoning in Archaeological Research: Praxis and Promise. JOURNAL OF QUANTITATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY 1,1. X

Romney, A. Kimball
1989 Quantitative Models, Science and Cumulative Knowledge. JOURNAL OF QUANTITATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY 1,1. RR X

Roth, Paul A.
1989 Ethnography without tears. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 30,5: 555-570. RR XI

Sahlins, Marshall
1977 CULTURE AND PRACTICAL REASON. University of Chicago Press. R VII, IX, XI

Schmidt, Wilhelm
1939 THE CULTURE-HISTORICAL METHOD OF ETHNOLOGY. New York: Fortuny's. R VI

Shimkin, Demitri B., S. Tax and J. W. Morrison, eds.
1978 ANTHROPOLOGY FOR THE FUTURE. URBANA: Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Research Report Number 4. R I, IX, X

Shweder, Richard, and Robert Le Vine, eds.
1984 CULTURE THEORY. Cambridge University Press. R XI

Siegel, Bernard, ed.
ANNUAL REVIEW OF ANTHROPOLOGY (volumes 1-4, 1972-1975). R

Skorupski, John
1976 SYMBOL AND THEORY. Cambridge University Press. R I, IX, X

Sperber, Dan
1974 RETHINKING SYMBOLISM. Cambridge University Press. R I, IX, X

Sperber, Dan
1985 Anthropology and Psychology: Towards an Epidemiology of Representations. MAN, n.s. 20,1: 73-89. RR X, I

Sperber, Dan
1985 ON ANTHROPOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE. Cambridge University Press. R X, I

Spiro, Melford E.
1986 Cultural Relativism and the Future of Anthropology. CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 1,3: 159-186. RR I, VIII

Steward, Julian
1955 THEORY OF CULTURE CHANGE. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. R VII

Stocking, George
1968 RACE, CULTURE AND EVOLUTION: ESSAYS IN THE HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY. New York: Free Press. R II, VI, VIII

Stocking, George
1987 VICTORIAN ANTHROPOLOGY. New York: The Free Press. R II, VI, VIII

Strenski, J.
1982 Malinowski: Second Positivism, Second Romanticism. MAN n.s. 17,4:766- 771. IX

Tilley, Christopher, ed.
1990 READING MATERIAL CULTURE: STRUCTURALISM, HERMENEUTICS, AND POST- STRUCTURALISM. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. R XI

Trautmann, Thomas
1992 The Revolution in Anthropological Time. Man (NS) 27,2: 379-398. II RR

Trigger, Bruce G.
1991 Constraint and Freedom - a new synthesis for archaeological explanation. AA 93,3: 551- 569. general

Turner, Terrence
1990 A CRITIQUE OF PURE CULTURE. Oxford and Providence: Berg Publishers. general and IX

Urry, James
1992 Before Social Anthropology: Essays on the History of British Social Anthropology. New York: Gordon & Breach, Harwood Academic Publishers. R VI

Wallace, Anthony F. C.
1970 CULTURE AND PERSONALITY (2nd edition). New York: Random House. R VIII, X

Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

1992 Reflections on Fifty Years of Anthropology. N.Y: Wenner-Gren Foundation. *see especially the papers on Social/Cultural Anthropology by Elizabth Colson(49-61) and Fredrik Barth (62-70).

Whitten, Norman E.
1988 Toward a Critical Anthropology (review). AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST 15,4: 732-742. RR XI

Wikan, Unni
1992 Beyond Words: the Power of Resonance. AE 19,3: 460-483. RR X, XI

Wolf, Eric R.
1988 Inventing Society. AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST 15,4: 752-761. RR VII

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Anthropology 339 Autumn, 1995