ANTH 303 Anthropological Theory Fall 2019
I acknowledge that St FX is in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
Oct.
30: Roseberry, William (1982) “Balinese Cockfights and the
Seduction of Anthropology.” Social Research. 49(4):1013-1028.
http://pao.chadwyck.com/PDF/1354736278175.pdf
Reminder that next
week, Nov. 4, I will be late to class, which will start at 1 pm. This
will also affect office hours on Monday and Tuesday.
The
following questions will help guide our discussion as we try to make
sense of this, and other, theories. In addition, we will apply the
theory to your anthropological question:
How can this theory be seen as a product of the historical period in which it was created?
What questions does this theory ask?
What information does this theory see as important?
What are other relevant assumptions made by the theory?
How does the theory analyse this information to answer the questions it sees as important?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach?
Some concepts from Roseberry:
- note how he anatomizes Geertz (pp. 1017-1019)
- challenges Geertz’ selectivity in choosing the cultural “text” he will analyse
- challenges Geertz for ignoring historical context, especially
with respect to: earlier practice of lords to tax markets and
cockfights; Dutch colonial experience; Indonesian dominance
- challenges Geertz for not engaging with status formation
- similarly, says Geertz does not engage with a variety of forms of inequality
- challenges idea of culture as text: “a text is written; it is not writing” (p. 1022)
- Roseberry wants process studied, not just product
- who is writing, for whom,
at what historical point; how does the story change over time
- further, Roseberry insists that culture is material social process
- importance of “cultural materialism” à la Raymond Williams versus Marvin Harris
- social reproduction
- importance of history
- Roseberry was a marxist anthropologist who was strongly influenced by Eric Wolf
Applying Roseberry to your questions.
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