Rutgers

University
Department of Anthropology
Spring 2018

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

070:101 (4 credits)
MTh 12:35-1:55pm
HCK-101


Instructor: Prof. Bridget Purcell
Contact: bridget.purcell@rutgers.edu
Office hours: Tuesday 12-1pm, or by appointment
208 D, Biological Sciences Building (32 Bishop Street)


Head TA: Marian Thorpe
marian.thorpe@rutgers.edu
Wednesday 11am-12pm, Thursday 2:30-3:30pm
204 C, Biological Sciences Building

TA: Raúl Rodríguez Arancibia
rar265@anthropology.rutgers.edu
Monday 11am-1pm
310 Ruth Adams Building


Course Description: This course explores key themes in cultural anthropology—a field
dedicated to the study of social differences. How do anthropologists understand the
tremendous variety of human experiences (cultural, ethnic, racial, gendered, class,
religious), and their relationship to political, economic, and historical contexts? How do
they use field-based evidence to de-naturalize and relativize taken-for-granted ways of
being? And what are the political and ethical stakes of this work? In lectures, you will gain
familiarity with the discipline’s core questions and methods—exploring their historical
emergence and transformation, and examining their imbrication with power and politics.
In recitations, you will learn to thread connections between course themes and your own
social settings, thus gaining hands-on experience with some key anthropological methods
(like participant observation) and types of writing (like field notes). Students will emerge
from this course prepared to think comparatively across cultural contexts; apply
anthropological insights to their own daily lives; and open their imaginations to other ways
of being.

Please note: This is an internet and laptop-free class. Please turn off or silence all
electronic devices before entering the classroom. This goes for both lecture and recitations.

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Assignments and Grading: The success of this course relies on your commitment to
complete all required readings, to be fully present at each class meeting, and to engage
creatively with course themes in your recitations. Grading will be based on:

• Participation in recitation sections (20%): Your lively and thoughtful
participation in recitations is both encouraged and expected. You should come to
each class prepared to discuss your understanding of the readings and lectures, to
articulate the author’s key arguments, and to pose questions on points of particular
interest or confusion. You are also responsible for completing short weekly
exercises assigned by your recitation leader. Please note: there will be no recitations
Weeks 1, 7, and 14.

• Midterm (25%): An in-class midterm on Thursday, 3/8 will review concepts and
themes covered in the first six weeks of class (readings, lectures, and films).

• Final Exam (35%): A two-part final exam, consisting of a take-home essay
component (15%) and an in-class multiple choice component (20%), will review
concepts and themes covered in the second half of class (weeks 8-14). We will
distribute the essay questions on Thursday 4/26, and they are due in class on
Monday 4/30. The in-class multiple-choice component is scheduled for Thursday,
May 3, from 9:30-11am.

• 4 quizzes (20% total): There will be four in-class, multiple choice quizzes, worth
5% each. They will cover that day’s readings only. Quizzes may not be made up
unless your absence is reported in advance. Students must provide documentation
in the event of emergencies or other extenuating circumstances.

Course Materials: All readings and other materials are available on Sakai, under
Resources.

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SAS Core Curriculum Learning Goals
• Understand different theories about human culture, social identity, economic
entities, political systems, and other forms of social organization. [SCL]
• Employ tools of social scientific reasoning to study particular questions or
situations, using appropriate assumptions, methods, evidence, and arguments. [SCL]

Department Learning Goals
• Identify, explain, and historically contextualize the primary objectives, fundamental
concepts, modes of analysis, and central questions in the major field and
demonstrate proficiency in the use of this knowledge
• Demonstrate proficiency in the use of critical thinking skills
• Express knowledge and proficiency in speaking about central issues in the major
field

Course-specific learning goals
• Provide an overview of key concepts and methods in cultural anthropology
• Encourage critical thinking on key anthropological and social scientific debates
• Become familiar with both the universal processes through which human beings
constitute themselves through culture, and the great diversity of cultural forms that
result
• Critically analyze issues of ethnographic authority and the politics of representation
and display of cultural, racial, ethnic, gender, and class difference
• Examine the changing ways anthropologists have studied distant and “foreign”
peoples and assess this “we/they” dichotomy in the context of todays’ increasingly
interconnected world

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 Introduction & Overview:
Anthropology and the Other(wise)

Thurs 1/18

No reading, no recitations this week.


Week 1:
Encountering the Other in an Age of European Expansion

Mon 1/22

Tylor, E.B. 1920. “The Science of Culture” in Primitive Culture. J. Murray, pp. 1-2, 14-25.

Diamond, Jared. 2012. “Why Do We Find Traditional Societies So Fascinating?” and “Types
of Traditional Societies.” In The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional
Societies? Viking. pp. 1-7.

Thurs 1/25

Boas, Franz, 1920. “The Methods of Ethnology.” Savage Minds Occasional Papers #9. pp. 1-7.

Recommended:

Boas, Franz, 1889. “On Alternating Sounds.” American Anthropologist Vol 2., pp. 47-53.


Week 2:
Culture, Comparison, Relativism

Mon 1/29

Kroeber, Theodora. 1961. “Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in
North America.” In Violence in War and Peace (2003) (Eds Nancy Scheper Hughes and
Philippe Bourgois). Blackwell, pp. 54-60.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 2003. “Ishi’s Brain, Ishi’s Ashes: Anthropology and Genocide.” In
Violence in War and Peace (Eds Nancy Scheper Hughes and Philippe Bourgois). Blackwell,
pp. 61-68.

Thurs 2/1

Benedict, Ruth. 1934. “The Integration of Culture” and “The Individual and the Pattern of
Culture.” In Patterns of Culture: An Analysis of Our Social Structure as Related to Primitive
Civilizations. pp. 41-51, 232-257.

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 Week 3:
Social Facts and Body Techniques

Mon 2/5

Durkheim, Emile. 1895. “What is a Social Fact?” in The Rules of Sociological Method. The
Free Press, pp. 1-13.

Durkheim, Emile. 1914. “The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions.” In Émile
Durkheim, 1858-1917 (Ed Kurt Wolff). Ohio State University Press, pp. 35-45.

Thurs 2/8

Mauss, Marcel. 1935. “Techniques of the Body.” Economy and Society. 2(1), pp. 70-88.


Week 4
From Science to Interpretation

Mon 2/12

Evans Pritchard, E.E. 1940. “Introductory - Part III” In The Nuer: A Description of the Modes
of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford University Press, pp. 7-15.

Geertz, Clifford. 1972. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Daedalus 101, pp. 1-37.

Thurs 2/15

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In
The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books. pp. 1-32.

Emerson, R.M., R.I. Fretz, and L.L. Shaw. 1995. “Fieldnotes in Ethnographic Research” in
Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-10.


Week 5
Culture as Text:
Symbols and Structures

Mon 2/19

Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. Introduction and “Secular Defilement.” Routledge.
pp. 1-6.

Eckert, Penelope. 1989. “Symbols of Category Membership” in Jocks and Burnouts: Social
Categories and Identity in the Highschool. Teachers College Press, pp. 49-72.

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Thurs 2/22

Goffman, Erving. 1976. "Gender Display." In Gender Advertisements. p. 1-9.

Film: “Codes of Gender”


Week 6
Culture as Praxis:
Embodiment and Materiality

Mon 2/26

Jackson, Michael. 1983. “Knowledge of the Body.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 18(2), pp. 327-345.

Entwistle, Joanne. 2015. “The Dressed Body.” Vestoj.

Thurs 3/1

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. "Belief and the Body." in The Logic of Practice. pp. 66-79.

Miller, Daniel. 1998. "Making Love in the Supermarkets." in A Theory of Shopping. pp. 339-
344.


Week 7
Taking stock, Looking ahead

Mon 3/5

Midterm review – no reading. Extended office hours in lieu of regular recitation sections.

Weds 3/8

In-class midterm


**SPRING BREAK**

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 Week 8
Questioning Colonial Legacies

Mon 3/19

Lewis, Diane. 1973. “Anthropology and Colonialism.” Current Anthropology 14(5), pp. 581-
591.

Thurs 3/22

Asad, Talal. 1973. “Introduction” and “Two European Images of Non-European Rule” in
Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. pp. 9-19, 103-118.


Week 9
Decolonizing Representation:
Flipping the Lens

Mon 3/26

Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. “After Objectivism.” Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social
Analysis. Beacon Press, pp. 46-67.

Film: “Cannibal Tours”

Thurs 3/29

Bashkow, Ira. 2006. “The Cultural Construction of Whitemen” in The Meaning of Whitemen:
Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-25.

Bloch, Maurice. "Why Do Malagasy Cows Speak French?" pp. 193-195.


Week 10
From Culture to Inequality:
Anthropology in the Age of Globalization

Mon 4/2

Guest, Kenneth. 2014. "Globalization." in Cultural Anthropology. pp. 19-22, 28-31.

Farmer, Paul. 2009. “On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below”
Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 3(1), pp. 11-28.

Film: “Island of Flowers”

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Thurs 4/5

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological
Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others.” American Anthropologist 104(3), pp. 783-
790.


Week 11
Applied Anthropology:
Ethnography as Public Critique

Mon 4/9

Bourgois, Philippe, and Jeff Schonberg. 2009. Righteous Dopefiend. University of California
Press. pp. 1-15, 26-45, 80-93, 111-115.

Thurs 4/12

Bourgois, Philippe. 2009. Righteous Dopefiend (Conclusion). University of California Press.
pp. 297-320.

Hansen, Helena. (2017). “Assisted Technologies of Social Reproduction: Pharmaceutical
Prosthesis for Gender, Race, and Class in the White Opioid Crisis.” Contemporary Drug
Problems 44(4), pp. 321-338


Week 12
Other Worlds

Mon 4/16

Gordon, Avery. 2018. The Hawthorn Archive: Notes from the Utopian Margins. pp. 25-27.

Tsing, Anna. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in
Capitalist Ruins. pp. 1-25, 137-144.

Film: “Leviathan”

Thurs 4/19

Luhrmann, Tanya. 2012. “Preface” and “The Skill of Prayer” in When God Talks Back:
Understanding the Evangelical Relationship with God. pp. xi-xxv, 189-226.

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 Week 13
Virtual Realities

Mon 4/23

Turkle, Sherry. 2011. "Always On" in Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology
and Less from Each Other. p. 151-170.

Thurs 4/26

Bonilla, Yarimar and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, hashtag
ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States.” American
Ethnologist 42(1), pp. 4-17.


Week 14
Open Endings

Mon 4/30

Final exam review. No sections this week. Final essays due in class.

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 Appendix A
Additional Course Policies

Absence reporting: If you should need to miss class for any reason, submit an absence
report indicating the date and reason at http://sims.rutgers.edu/ssra. You should do this
prior to the class meeting, or on the day of the absence, at the latest. This is a courtesy that
facilitates communication with your instructors, but it does not excuse the absence. In
some limited circumstances (religious observance, serious illness, certain athletic events),
your absence may be formally excused, given appropriate documentation. In cases where
you must miss class for periods longer than one week, you will as per university policy be
directed to see a Dean of Students for assistance to help verify these circumstances. There
will be no makeup assignments, quizzes, or exams without a documented approved,
excused absence, which you must provide before the due date.


Academic Integrity: Any violation of University principles of academic integrity will result
in an automatic F in the course, and referral to the university disciplinary committee. You
are responsible for familiarizing yourself with these principles and policies, which are
detailed at http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/.


Classroom Etiquette: Be in the classroom by the start of the class. If you are late, you may
be marked absent and/or forfeit the opportunity to take a quiz. Students can expect to
attend class in an environment free of disturbances, distractions, and any form of
discrimination, and in which all class members are respectful of each other’s points of view.
Students should feel comfortable asking questions during lectures, and should be prepared
to answer questions and engage in discussions in a respectful manner.


Accommodations: Students seeking accommodations should consult with the Office of
Disability Services at http://disabilityservices.rutgers.edu, dsoffice@rci.rutgers.edu, or
(848) 445-6800. Requests for accommodations must be submitted before tests or
assignments. Students who suspect they may have an undiagnosed learning disability or
other disability may visit the Office of Disability Services for assessment and guidance.

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