Sociocultural Anthropology
Please refer to the online directory of courses for times and classroom locations. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/
Regular Registration Dates for fall term 2012: Monday, August 27-Friday,
August 31
ANTH V1002x The Interpretation of Culture (sec 001) 3 pts. Brinkley Messick. The anthropological approach to the study of culture and human society. Case studies from ethnography are used in exploring the universality of cultural categories (social organization, economy, law, belief system, art, etc.) and the range of variation among human societies.
ANTH V1002x The Interpretation of Culture (sec 002) 3 pts. Stephen Scott. The anthropological approach to the study of culture and human society. Case studies from ethnography are used in exploring the universality of cultural categories (social organization, economy, law, belief system, art, etc.) and the range of variation among human societies.
ANTH V2004x Introduction to Social and Cultural Theory 3 pts. Partha Chatterjee. Introduces students to crucial theories of society, paying particular attention to classic social theory of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Traces a trajectory through writings essential for an understanding of the social: from Saussure, Durkheim, Mauss, Marx, Freud, and Weber, on to the structuralis ethnographic elaboration of Claude Levi-Strauss, the historiographic reflections on modernity of Michel Foucault, and contemporary modes of socio-cultural analysis. Explored are questions of signification at the heart of anthropological inquiry, and to the historical contexts informing these questions. Discussion Section Required.
ANTH V2008x Film and Culture 3 pts. Margaret McLagan. How have cultures been represented through film? This course offers a
selective introduction to the past and present of ethnographic and
documentary filmmaking. It also considers Hollywood depictions of "other"
cultures and the growing number of films by directors working within their
own communities. Film & Culture joins scholarly and filmmaking
sensibilities to examine the relation of cultural identity to portrayal in
film.
ANTH V2010x Major Debates in the Study of Africa 3 pts. Mahmood Mamdani. This course will focus on key debates that have shaped the study of Africa in the postcolonial African academy. We will cover six key debates (a) history before external impact; (b) agency and responsibility in different kinds of slave trade; (c) State Formation (conquest, slavery, colonialism); (d) underdevelopment (colonialism and globalization); (e) nationalism and the anti-colonial struggle; (f) pan-Africanism and globalization. The approach will be multidisciplinary and readings will be illustrative of different sides in the debate
ANTH V2015x Chinese Society and Culture (formerly ANTH
V3015) 3 pts. Junjie Chen. Social organization and social change in China from late imperial times to
the present. Major topics include family, kinship, community, stratification,
and the relationships between the state and local society.
ANTH V2016x Gendered Migration in Transnational Asia 3 pts. Hsun-Hui Tseng. What makes women's migration experience different from men's in global capitalism today? The course will investigate contemporary women's transnational migration from developing countries to newly developed countries in Asia and beyond. We will discuss issues related to labor and marriage migrations, as well as trafficking in women, on both macro- and micro-levels. We are going to ask: how does the global economic restructuring shape the gendered migration today? What makes female labor different from male labor in the global labor market? What are push-and-pull factors that trigger these women to leave their hometown to be workers or wives in foreign countries? What difficulties do they experience after entering host societies and what impact would the migration flow bring to both laborer/bride receiving and sending countries? Moreover, we will explore the global market formation of transnational commodified marriages between women from developing countries and men from more developed countries. We will look at Filipina, Vietnamese and Chinese women migrating to Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the United States in particular. Throughout the semester, we will read empirical works from many disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, political economy and women's studies as well as primary source materials including news reports, online forums and watch documentaries and film clips.
ANTH V2027x Changing East Asia Foodways 3 pts. Drew Hopkins.
Changing East Asian Foodways" provides an introduction to the Historical
Anthropology of East Asian cultures through an examination of changing
foodways among the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Hong Kongese, Taiwanese
and overseas Chinese, the responses of these groups to the global spread
of fast food and café culture, and the role that East Asian food
cultures have played in the social construction of difference and
similitude in the Western cultures in which immigrants from East Asia
have settled.
ANTH V2035x Introduction to the Anthropology of South Asia 3 pts. Katherine Ewing. This course provides a broad introduction to the anthropology of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. We will explore social and cultural formations such as caste, class, marriage and the family; as well as the organization of cultural diversity by colonial rule, nationalism and modern statehood, ethnic and religious conflict, and transnational circulations. In addition to secondary sources, students will be particularly encouraged to engage with primary sources such as treatises, speeches, poetry, music, and film. Through learning about the ethnography of the South Asia region, students will also gain an understanding of contemporary theoretical debates in anthropology, which include: the legacies of colonial rule in postcolonial societies, the social power of analytical categories, and the impact of globalization.
ANTH V3040x Anthropological Theory I (formerly ANTH V3011 Social Relations: Living in Society) 4 pts. Lesley Sharp. Prerequisite: an introductory course in anthropology. Institutions of social life. Kinship and locality in the structuring of society. Monographs dealing with both literate and nonliterate societies will be discussed in the context of anthropological fieldwork methods. (This course is open to anthropology majors; others require advanced permission of the instructor)
ANTH V3863x Ethnography of Indigenous Australia. 4 pts.
Michael Taussig. Instructor's permission required. Indigenous Australia has been of immense importance in the history of
Anthropology as well as in the sociology of religion and psychoanalysis (eg.
Durkheim' s Elementary Form , and Freud's Totem and Taboo). Long an icon of
radical Otherness in the Western imagination (see the movie Walkabout, for
instance), indigenous Australians now contest the moods and tropes of that
imagination with alternative modes of memory, film, visual art, and
storytelling.
ANTH V3873x Language and Politics 4 pts. Stephen Scott. Language is central to political process. While all agree that language is
used to symbolize or express political action, the main focus of this course
is on how language and other communicative practices contribute to the
creation of political stances, events, and forms of order. Topics addressed
include political rhetoric and ritual, political communication and publics,
discrimination and hierarchy, language and the legitimation of authority, as
well as the role of language in nationalism, state formation, and in other
sociopolitical movements like feminism and diasporic communities. Since this
course has the good fortune of coinciding with the 2012 U.S. Presidential
election, we will make significant use of campaign rhetorics as a means of
illustrating and exploring various themes.
ANTH V3883x Anthropology of Cultural Biology Living Diversity 4 pts. Paige West. Today localities with high incidences of genetic, species, and ecosystem
diversity more often than not map directly onto localities with high
incidences of human cultural and linguistic diversity. These localities are
generally in parts of the world that have been, until quite recently, at the
frontiers of resource extraction, human migration and resettlement, and
capital expansion. Extraction, migration' and economic expansion tend to
result in a decrease in both biological and cultural diversity. People living
in these diverse areas often fall into the lowest categories of indicators
for poverty and are often desirous of economic development. Equally often
they are targeted for economic development interventions by expansionist
states and resource-hungry businesses. Conservation organizations often
target these localities for protection because of the various forms of
diversity found in them and because they also often have high numbers of
species with restricted ranges. This course examines the articulation of
biological, linguistic, and cultural diversity.
ANTH V3886x Signs and Wonders 4 pts. Brian Goldstone. This course explores the dynamic interplay between "signs" - as evidence,
knowledge, meaning, rationality - and "wonder(s)" - as passion, affect,
sensation, but also as object, phenomenon, catalyst, and event - across a
plurality of sites and registers: medieval theology, early modern science,
the colonial encounter; skepticism, mysticism, demonology, and fascism;
psychoanalysis, art, poetry, film; digitality, virtuality, and special
effects; Enlightenment Europe, Evangelical America, postcolonial Africa, and
beyond. What does wonder look like at the interface of madness, terror, and
the sublime? What is this passion, this pathos, that can lead both to
tireless critical inquiry and to unquestioning, indeed totalitarian,
discipleship? How do signs and wonders become political technologies? At the
outer reaches of knowability, how have marvels, wonders, miracles, and
monstrosities been constructed, sensed, mastered, and mass-mediatized in
different times and places? And finally, if, as Socrates believed, philosophy
begins in wonder, can we say the same for anthropology? What exactly is the
sensation - the awe, curiosity, fascination, even horror - of anthropology's
encounter with its worlds? Along with ethnographic and historical texts,
readings will include Lévi-Strauss, Viveiros de Castro, Ingold, Lingis,
Daston and Park, Greenblatt, Rubenstein, Benjamin, Freud, Tarde, Deleuze, and
Canetti.
Anth V3889x The Productivity of Crisis 4 pts. Sarah Muir. In
what sense are crises productive? How is it that destruction, loss, and
rupture can serve as the constituent features of a social order? We will
approach these questions by revisiting and reclaiming several key
texts-from within and beyond anthropology----on the intertwined problems
of crisis and social reproduction.
ANTH V3891x Anthropology of Art 4 pts. Zhanara Nauruzbayeva. Art has been understood and conceptualized in a variety of ways.In Western
public culture, art has been commonly regarded in terms of autonomous
creativity and individual genius. In former socialist countries, the state
emphasized the social obligations of the artist to the collective good.
Antlyopologists challenged these understandings of art as an activity
separate from the everyday life by providing accounts of contexts where
creativity is intrinsically connected to ritual life, and artifacts are an
expression of the connection to the land and ancestry. In light of trade,
colonialism, and more recently, economic globalization, there has been a lot
of traffic in people and commodities between these aesthetic and
socioeconomic regimes-also the subject of prolific anthropological inquiry.
This course offers an exploration of all these discussions, and ptopor"t an
understanding of art as embedded in its surrounding social context rather
than existing as a universal self-standing category.
ANTH V3893x The Bomb 4 pts. Karen Seeley. The first part of the course focuses on the history of the creation of the atomic bomb and the aftermath of its use during World War II. We look at the socialization of the scientists involved in the birth of the bomb; at the devastation it wrought in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and at the physical and psychological injuries that afflicted its survivors, especially the immediate and long-term effects of radiation poisoning and trauma. The course then considers the Cold War period, examining civil defense campaigns, the cultural features of weapons laboratories, and the devastating physical and environmental contamination suffered by communities--disproportionately composed of indigenous populations-where such weapons repeatedly have been tested. The second part of the course explores the transformative cultural and psychological consequences of living with the bomb. Readings consider the evidence of spontaneous psychic adaptations to life in the nuclear age. They also examine governments' deliberate attempts to shape citizens' cognitive and emotional lives. How do states produce political subjects who comply with military imperatives? What role does the continual manufacture of foreign threats and enemies play in this process? While acknowledging the powerful forces that seek to control public perceptions of nuclear arms by minimizing their destructive potential, the course concludes by considering organized resistances to increasing nuclear proliferation and to militarism. Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. Enrollment limit is 20..
ANTH V3921x Anticolonialism 4 pts. David Scott. Through a careful exploration of the argument and style of three vivid anticolonial texts, C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins, Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism, Albert Memmi's Colonizer and Colonized, and Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, this course aims to inquire into the construction of the image of colonialism and its projected aftermaths established in anti-colonial discourse.
ANTH V3926x Rewriting Modernity: Transculturation and the Postcolonial Intellectual 4 pts. Hlonipha Mokoema. This course is an examination of how postcolonial intellectuals have participated in the creation and contesting of alternative/multiple/'fugitive' modernities
ANTH V3947x Text, Magic, Performance 4 pts. John Pemberton. This course pursues interconnections linking text and performance in light of magic, ritual, possession, narration, and related articulations of power. Readings are drawn from classic theoretical writings, colonial fiction, and ethnographic accounts. Domains of inquiry include: spirit possession, trance states, séance, witchcraft, ritual performance, and related realms of cinematic projection, musical form, shadow theater, performative objects, and (other) things that move on their own, compellingly. Key theoretical concerns are subjectivity--particularly, the conjuring up and displacement of self in the form of the first-person singular "I"--and the haunting power of repetition. Retraced throughout the course are the uncanny shadows of a fully possessed subject. Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
ANTH V3978x Dialogic Imagination in Opera 4 pts. Elaine Combs-Schilling. Students must attend operas outside class time. Drawing on theories of Bakhtin and Eco, analyzes the production logic of three opera performances in terms of communication media utilized; the class, status and gendered perspectives mobilized; and the devices used to engage or distance the audience. Performance rather than musicological angles stressed. Enrollment limited to 14. Priority given to upper class anthropology and music majors. Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor via email at: mec3. Must state year and major and why you with to join the class.
ANTH V3989x Introduction to Urban Anthropology 4 pts. John Pemberton. This seminar is an introduction to the theory and methods that have been developed by anthropologists to study contemporary cities and urban cultures. Although anthropology has historically focused on the study of non-Western and largely rural societies, since the 1960s anthropologists have increasingly directed attention to cities and urban cultures. During the course of the semester, we will examine such topics as: the politics of urban planning, development and land use; race, class, gender and urban inequality; urban migration and transnational communities; the symbolic economies of urban space; and, street life. Reading will include the work of Jane Jacobs, Sharon Zukin, and Henri Lefebvre. Enrollment limit 25.
ANTH V3999x Seminar In Anthropology I 4 pts. Elaine Combs-Schilling. This is a seminar at which senior anthropology majors will develop a research project and write a thesis in consultation with a professor. Students must have at least a 3.6 GPA in the major and a preliminary project concept. This is a year-long course: a mark given at the end of the first term of a course in which the full year of work must be completed before a qualitative grade is assigned. The grade given at the end of the second term is the grade for the entire course. Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. Students must sign-up in the department prior to registering. Enrollment limit is 17.
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Archaeology
ANTH V1007x The Origins of Human Society 3 pts. Severin Fowles. An archaeological perspective on the evolution of human social life from the first bipedal step of our ape ancestors to the establishment of large sedentary villages. While traversing six million years and six continents, our explorations will lead us to consider such major issues as the development of human sexuality, the origin of language, the birth of "art" and religion, the domestication of plants and animals, and the foundations of social inequality. Designed for anyone who happens to be human. Mandatory Recitations sections and $25.00 laboratory fee.
ANTH V3064x Death and the Body 3 pts. Elizabeth Martin. This class explores the ways in which archaeologists use the dead body to explore past beliefs and social practices, critically assessing these approaches from the broader perspective of anthropological and sociological theories of the body's production and constitution. We'll look at the ways in which social status, gender and personhood are expressed through the dead body and through practices of body modification and display. In this context we'll also consider the social relations of archaeological exhumation, the conflict that can arise over the excavation of human remains, and their treatment as courtroom evidence in forensic archaeology. $25.00 mandatory laboratory fee
ANTH W4065x Archaeology of Idols 3 pts. Severin Fowles. Explores 40,000 years of the human creation of, entanglement with, enchantment by, and violence toward idols. Case studies roam from the Paleolithic to Petra and from the Hopi to the Taliban, all the while placing the sculpted, painted, or otherwise constructed devotional objects of the past into dialogue with contemporary social theory on the problem of representation, iconoclash, fetishism and the sacred.
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Biological/Physical Anthropology
Courses in Biological/Physical Anthropology not offered fall term 2012.
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