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380
SYMBOLIC AND INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGY
(4 hrs. or 1 unit) Professor
Alma Gottlieb
Office: 386C Davenport Hall;
PH: 244-3515 This course
explores a range of symbolic and interpretive approaches within anthropology.
The course is divided into two sections.
In the first section we will briefly review early precursors of symbolic
and interpretive anthropology, including early French symbolist and surrealists,
Freud, Weber, Cassirer, Langer, Durkheim and Mauss, and Maurice Halbwachs.
Then we will jump to the first wave of contemporary symbolic and
interpretive anthropologists, focusing on Berger and Luckmann, Mary Douglas,
Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Roy Wagner and Sherry Ortner.
During the remainder of the course we will concentrate on works by more
recent and contemporary authors. Throughout
the course, we will consider such topics as: the cultural construction of
memory; the cultural constitution of space and place; the symbolics of
power/representing the colonial encounter; the efficacy of ritual and
performance; the politics and art of writing the ethnographic text; and,
throughout, the powers and limitations of symbolic and interpretive approaches
in anthropology. PREREQUISITES:
All students should have some background in cultural anthropology.
Undergraduates students should have already taken at least one of the
following: ANTH 230, 321, 363 (or equivalent elsewhere).
Graduate students in departments other than anthropology are encouraged
to consult with the instructor to see if their background is optimal before
enrolling for this course. Readings will
include a course pack of articles and the following books (tentative list): Emile Durkheim
and Marcel Mauss, Primitive Classification Maurice Halbwachs,
On Collective Memory Peter L. Berger
and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality Roy Wagner,
The Invention of Culture James Clifford
and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Politics and Poetics of
Ethnography Barbara Myerhoff,
Remembered Lives: The Work of Ritual, Storytelling, and Growing Older James Fernandez,
Persuasions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture Rosalind
Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and Historical Imagination in
Sierra Leone |