NOTES ON TESTS AND ASSIGNMENTS

• Students are expected to attend all classes and are responsible for material discussed in class whether they are present or not.

• Make-up group work and small assignments will not be given. If you miss an assignment and have a legitimate excuse supported by adequate documentation, the value of the other components of the course will be reworked.

• You must contact your instructor as soon as possible (i.e. ahead of time, when known) with the reasons for missing a test or assignment due date. Be prepared to provide documentation.

• Written assignments are due at the beginning of class on the day specified. Only under exceptional circumstances supported by documentation will late assignments be accepted. They may be subject to a 5% per day penalty. Papers handed in after the last day of the term in which they are due will receive a 0.

• You must keep a copy of assignments when you hand them in. If a paper is lost and you do not have a replacement, you will receive a 0. Keep the returned marked assignment until the end of the course.

• Please note the University’s policy on plagiarism and cheating. It is covered in Section 3.8, "Academic Integrity Policy" in the Academic Calendar.

Group work/small assignments: There will be several small assignments, carried out either in groups or individually, throughout the course. These will be explained in class.

1. Choose a specific society and examine the implications for members of this society of NOT marrying. The readings from the January 20 class will be particularly helpful as you frame this essay. You must develop an argument derived from the evidence. One possible way of approaching this is to answer the question: Does not marrying affect an individual positively, negatively or not at all? You must do your own library research for this topic, using ethnographic sources about the society you have chosen to work on.

2. SERVICE LEARNING OPTION: You must apply by 15 January to do this by submitting a one page statement indicating why you are interested in doing service learning on this topic.

This topic involves interviewing a senior citizen about his or her experience of family life in his or her youth. You will compare it to your own experience of family life to develop an essay on how kin patterns have changed or not in the intervening years. You may wish to focus on a specific aspect, such as child care responsibilities, how kin make use of one another or not, and so on. You must be able to commit to preparing a transcript or other written version of the information you receive from the interviewee to that person, and may be required to prepare an electronic version of the interview, either in audio or audiovisual form for the person. You will be required to pass ethical review of your project.

Term paper proposal: This is the first stage of the term essay. The outline MUST include:

a) a title (one that lets the reader know what the paper is about);

b) an introduction to the topic and why it is important to study;

c) a thesis statement (one sentence of no more than 35 words stating what you will argue in your paper);

d) an outline of the sections of your paper that makes it clear how you will structure your argument; include references to the sources you will use in each section and how they will be used (e.g. for theory, for comparative purposes, for ethnographic data, etc.);

e) a list of the major sources that you plan to use in your essay. Note that you must use the proper bibliographic form for your list of sources. You MUST use ethnographic sources to provide the data you will analyse. You should have between 4 and 6 sources, although you may have fewer for the service learning option.

The whole assignment should be about 3 to 5 pages long. The major purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to articulate the topic; develop a strategy for answering a question about it; and locating appropriate sources to assist you in the analysis.

Exam: The exam will be composed of short written answer and essay questions.

Please note the University's Academic Integrity Policy – see Section 3.8 in the Academic Calendar.

You are expected to attend all classes.

6 January: INTRODUCTION:

Required reading: Peletz, Michael (1995) "Kinship Studies in late twentieth-century anthropology." Annual Review of Anthropology 24:343-72. JSTOR

Additional readings: Patterson, Mary (2005) "Introduction: Reclaiming Paradigms Lost." The Australian Journal of Anthropology. 16(1): 1-16. Proquest/ABI/Inform

Sweetser, Dorrian Apple 1966 "On the Incompatibility of Duty and Affection: A Note on the Role of the Mother's Brother."American Anthropologist. 68(4):1009-1013 JSTOR (example of structural functionalist approach) Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1949) "A Further Note on Joking Relationships." Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 19(2):133-140. JSTOR (example of structural functionalist approach)

McKinnon, Susan (2000) "Domestic Exceptions: Evans-Pritchard and the Creation of Nuer Patrilineality and Equality" Cultural Anthropology 15(1): 35-83. (Critiques Evans-Pritchard’s structural functionalist approach) Drummond, Lee (1978) "The Transatlantic Nanny: Notes on a Comparative Semiotics of the Family in English-Speaking Societies." American Ethnologist. 5(1): 30-43. JSTOR (Example of Schneider’s approach)

Schneider, David (1968) American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. (Schneider’s culturalist approach).

Hong Zhang (2005) "Bracing for an Uncertain Future: A Case Study of New Coping Strategies of Rural Parents under China's Birth Control Policy." The China Journal, 54: 53-76. JSTOR. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20066066

Additional reading: Bossen, Laurel (2005) "Land and Population Policies and the Sex Imbalance in Rural China." National Museum of Ethnology Osaka 20: 1-3.

24 Feb.: What makes kin? Knowledge? Shared substance?

Required readings:

Carsten, Janet (2007) "Constitutive Knowledge: Tracing Trajectories of Information in New Contexts of Relatedness." Anthropological Quarterly. 80(2):403-426 Proquest/ABI/Inform

Weismantel, Mary (1995) "Making Kin: Kinship Theory and Zumbagua Adoptions." American Ethnologist. 22(4): 685-704. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/646380

10 Mar.: The impact of new reproductive technologies

Required readings:

Ragoné, Helena (1996) "Chasing the Blood Tie: Surrogate Mothers, Adoptive Mothers and Fathers." American Ethnologist 23(2); 352-365 JSTOR http://www.jstor.org/view/00940496/ap020090/02a00090/0

Inhorn, Marcia (2004) "Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies: Male Infertility and Stigma in Egypt and Lebanon." Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 18(2):162–182. Anthrosource http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdfplus/10.1525/maq.2004.18.2.162

Additional reading:

Edwards, Jeanette (2004) "Incorporating Incest: Gamete, Body and Relation in Assisted Conception." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 10(4): 755-774. Wiley Interscience.

17 Mar.: The state: fertility, population control

Required readings:

Feldman-Savelsberg, Pamela and Flavien T. Ndonko (2000) "Sterilizing Vaccines or the Politics of the Womb: Retrospective Study of a Rumor in Cameroon." Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 14(2):159-179. Anthrosource. http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdfplus/10.1525/maq.2000.14.2.159

Krause, Elizabeth L and Milena Marchesi (2007) "Fertility Politics as ‘Social Viagra’: Reproducing Boundaries, Social Cohesion, and Modernity in Italy." American Anthropologist. 109(2):350-362. Anthrosource. http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdfplus/10.1525/aa.2007.109.2.350

Additional reading:

Gammeltoft, Tine M. (2007) Prenatal Diagnosis in Postwar Vietnam: Power, Subjectivity, and Citizenship. American Anthropologist 109(1): 153-163. Anthrosource.

24 Mar.: Adoption

Required readings:

Leinaweaver, Jessaca B. (2007) "On moving children: The social implications of Andean child circulation." American Ethnologist. 34(1):163-180 Anthrosource http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/pdfplus/10.1525/ae.2007.34.1.163

Volkman, Toby Alice (2003) "Embodying Chinese Culture: Transnational Adoption in North America." Social Text 21.1 (2003) 29-55 Project Muse. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/social_text/v021/21.1volkman02.html

Additional reading:

Fonseca, Claudia (2003) "Patterns Of Shared Parenthood Among The Brazilian Poor."

Social Text 21(1): 111-127. Project Muse. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/social_text/v021/21.1fonseca.html

31 Mar.: Incest

Required readings:

Hutchinson, Sharon (1985) "Changing Concepts of Incest among the Nuer."American Ethnologist, 12(4): 625-641. JSTOR

Gilgun, Jane F (1995) "We Shared Something Special: The Moral Discourse of Incest Perpetrators." Journal of Marriage and the Family. 57(2): 265-281. JSTOR. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022_2445%28199505%2957%3A2%3C265%3AWSSSTM%3E2.0.CO%3B2_%23

FICTIVE KIN

7 April: The example of compadrazgo

Required reading:

Killick, Evan (2008) "Godparents and Trading Partners:Social and Economic Relations in Peruvian Amazonia." Journal of Latin American Studies. 40, 303–328. Cambridge journals.

Additional reading: Albro, Robert (2000) "Fictive Feasting: Mixing and Parsing Bolivian Popular Sentiment" Anthropology & Humanism. 25(2): 142-157

Anthrosource.

More readings in the area of the anthropology of kinship:

Johnson, Colleen L (2000) "Perspectives on American Kinship in the Later 1990s." Journal of Marriage and the Family. 62(3): 623-639 JSTOR

Voget Fred (1953) "Kinship Changes at Caughnawaga." American Anthropologist. 55(3):385-394. JSTOR.

Vincent, Susan (2000) "Flexible families: Capitalist development and crisis in rural Peru." Journal of Comparative Family Studies. 31(2): 155-170. Proquest/ABI/Inform.

Peletz, Michael G (1987) "The Exchange of Men in 19th-Century Negeri Sembilan (Malaya)" American Ethnologist. 14(3): 449-469 (JSTOR)

Free virtual issue of Cultural Anthropology with the following articles:

Fisher, Daniel (2009) "Mediating Kinship: Country, Family, and Radio in Northern Australia." Cultural Anthropology. 24(2): 280-312. Essay available at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122324020/HTMLSTARTSupplemental Material available at: http://culanth.org/?q=node/225