DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

ST. FRANCIS XAVIER UNIVERSITY

FALL 2011

ANTH 425 Power and Change

Power and change can be volatile processes. This course allows students to understand and

analyse them from an anthropological point of view. We will examine theories of power and

change, and processes at levels from the individual to beyond the state.

 

INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Susan Vincent [Office: JBB 335L; tel: 867- 5281; email: svincent@stfx.ca]

 

READINGS: All readings are available through the library's electronic database.

 

EVALUATION:

  • Reading arguments: 10%

  • Participation: 10%

  • Presentation: 10%

  • Paper proposal (due 6 October): 10%

  • Paper (due 15 November): 30%

  • Take home exam (due 8 December): 30%

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    NOTES RE TESTS AND ASSIGNMENTS:

    1. These dates are fixed and cannot be changed.

    2. Assignments must be submitted in HARD COPY. Electronic submissions will NOT be

    accepted.

    3. Be courteous: inform me AS SOON AS POSSIBLE of the reasons in case you must

    miss a test or assignment. If possible, let me know ahead of time. Be prepared to

    provide documentation. Written assignments are due at the beginning of class on the day

    specified. I WILL NOT ACCEPT LATE PAPERS.

    4. You are required to keep a copy of assignments when you hand them in. Keep the

    returned marked assignment until the end of the course.

     

    Classroom Equity Policy

    For all members of our class to learn effectively, this classroom must be a safe learning environment. To ensure safety for all students, the policy in this class is that no one shall be discriminated against or harassed on the basis of age, race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, physical disability or mental disability, an irrational fear of contracting an illness or disease, ethnic, national or Aboriginal origin, family status, marital status, source of income, political belief, affiliation or activity, an individual's association with another individual or class of individuals having any one or more of the characteristics referred to in the list above.

    (Discrimination is the distinctive treatment of a person with one or more of the above characteristics which, in the view of a reasonable person, has the effect of imposing a burden, obligation or disadvantage or limits and withholds benefits and advantages to an individual or a class of individuals. Harassment (including sexual harassment) is offensive or objectionable conduct or comment toward another person or persons that is known or ought to be known from the perspective of a reasonable person in the position of the complainant to be intimidating, offensive or unwelcome.)

    (For more information on St. Francis Xavier University Discrimination & Harassment Policy, please refer to Marie Brunelle, the Human Rights and Equity Advisor (mbrunell@stfx.ca) or go on line http://www.mystfx.ca/campus/stu%2Dserv/equity/

    "This Policy shall not be applied in such a way as to detract from the right to engage in the frank discussion of potentially controversial matters, including, but not limited to age, race, politics, religion, sex and sexual orientation. These are legitimate topics within the University setting, and this Policy shall not be applied so as to have the effect of limiting appropriate discussion of them or of prohibiting bona fide instructional techniques, such as the use of irony, the use of conjecture and refutation, or the assignment of readings that advocate controversial positions, provided that such discussion and instruction are conducted in a mutually respectful and non-coercive manner.

     

    TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE

    Theoretical positions: are power and change evolutionary processes? Is power a structure? Is power a process? Is change the result of political struggle?

    Sept. 8 Introduction

     

    Sept. 13 Gledhill, John (2009) "Power in Political Anthropology." Journal of Power 2(1): 9-34 Taylor and Francis/Informaworld .http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17540290902760857

     

    Sept. 15 A structural functionalist view: Read Gluckman, Max (1963) "Papers in Honor of Melville J. Herskovits: Gossip and Scandal." Current Anthropology, 4(3): 307-316. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2739613

    Additional reading: Gluckman, Max (1955) "The Peace in the Feud."Past and Present 8:1-14 JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/649774.pdf

    van Vleet, Krista (2003) "Partial Theories: On Gossip, Envy and Ethnography in the Andes." Ethnography. 4(4):491 - 519. Sage

     

    Sept. 20 Foucault: Read: Abelès, Marc (2009) "Foucault and political anthropology." International Social Science Journal 59(191): 59-68. Wiley

    Additional readings: Foster, Kevin Michael (2003) "Panopticonics: The Control and Surveillance of Black Female Athletes in a Collegiate Athletic Program." Anthropology & Education Quarterly. 34(3): 300-323. Anthrosource.

    Redfield, Peter (2005) "Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis." Cultural Anthropology. 20(3): 328-361. Anthrosource.

    Shore, Cris and Susan Wright (1999) "Audit Culture and Anthropology: Neo-Liberalism in British Higher Education." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 5(4): 557- 575 JSTOR URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2661148

     

    Sept. 22 Marxism: Read Wolf, Eric (1990) "Distinguished Lecture: Facing Power – Old Insights, New Questions." American Anthropologist. 92(3): 586-596. JSTOR.

    Additional reading: Gledhill, John. (2005) "Some histories are more possible than others: Structural power, big pictures and the goal of explanation in the anthropology of Eric Wolf." Critique of Anthropology. 25(1):37-57. Sage

     

    Sept. 27 Gramsci and hegemony: Read Kurtz, Donald V. (1996) "Hegemony and Anthropology: Gramsci, exegeses, reinterpretations." Critique of Anthropology. 16(2):103 - 135. Sage.

    Additional reading: Nader, Laura, et al. (1997) "Controlling Processes: Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power [and Comments and Reply]." Current Anthropology. 38(5): 711-737. JSTOR.

     

    Sept. 29 Applying the theories: In-class exercise.

     

    Some classical anthropological debates:

     

    Oct. 4: The standard cultural ecology political framework and a marxist critique

    Read: Anderson, Robert (1963)" Review of Profiles in Ethnology by Elman R. Service." American Anthropologist 65(6): 1360-61.

    Ekholm, Kasja and Jonathan Friedman (1985) "Towards a Global Anthropology." Critique of Anthropology 5(1): 97-119 Sage.

     

    Oct. 6: PAPER PROPOSAL DUE!!!

    War in small scale societies: the famous case of the Yanomami

    Read: Ferguson, R. Brian (2001) "Materialist, cultural and biological theories on why Yanomami make war." Anthropological Theory 1(1): 99-116.

     

    Identity politics: Micro and macro politics of race, class, gender

     

    Oct. 11 Read Abu-Lughod, Lila (2010) "The Active Social Life of’ ‘Muslim Women's Rights’: A Plea for Ethnography, Not Polemic, with Cases from Egypt and Palestine." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 6(1): 1-45 Project Muse.

     

    Oct. 13 Read Dunk, Thomas (2002) "Hunting and the politics of identity in Ontario." Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. 13(1): 36-66. ABI/Inform, Proquest Research Library

     

    Oct. 18 Read Stoler, Ann (1989) "Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-Century Colonial Cultures."American Ethnologist 16(4): 634-660. JSTOR

    Additional readings: Alcalde, M. Cristina.(2006) "Migration and Class as Constraints in Battered Women's Attempts to Escape Violence in Lima Peru." Latin American Perspectives. 33: 147- Sage

    Alcalde, M. Cristina (2007) "'Why Would You Marry a Serrana?' Women's Experiences of Identity-Based Violence in the Intimacy of their Homes in Lima" Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 12(1): 1-24. AnthroSource.

    Cattell, Maria G. (1992) "Praise the Lord and Say No to Men: Older Women Empowering Themselves in Samia, Kenya." Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 7: 307-330 Springer online

    Hale, Charles (1994) "Between Che Guevara and the Pachamama: Mestizos, Indians and identity politics in the anti-quincentary campaign." Critique of Anthropology 14(1): 9-39. Sage

    Kingfisher, Catherine (2007) "Discursive constructions of homelessness in a small city in the Canadian prairies: Notes on destructuration, individualization, and the production of (raced and gendered) unmarked categories."American Ethnologist 34(1): 91-107. Anthrosource

    Sacks, Karen Brodkin (1989) "Toward a Unified Theory of Class, Race, and Gender."American Ethnologist 16(3): 534-550. JSTOR

     

    Oct. 20 Class, workers, workplace politics

    Read: Burawoy, Michael and Pavel Krotov (1992) "The Soviet Transition from Socialism to Capitalism: Worker Control and Economic Bargaining in the Wood Industry." American Sociological Review, 57(1):16-38. JSTOR Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2096142.

    Additional readings: Burawoy, Michael (1979) Manufacturing Consent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Burawoy, Michael (1985) The Politics of Production. London: New Left Books.

    Gill, Lesley (2009) "The limits of solidarity: Labor and transnational organizing against Coca-Cola." American Ethnologist 36(4):667-680. AnthroSource.

    Mollana, Massimiliano (2009) "Community unionism versus business unionism: The return of the moral economy in trade union studies." American Ethnologist 36(4): 651-666. AnthroSource.

     

    Oct. 25: So if there is power, is there also resistance?

    Read: Abu-Lughod, Lila (1990) "The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women." American Ethnologist. 17(1): 41-55 JSTOR.

    Additional readings: Ortner, Sherry (1995) "Resistance and the problem of ethnographic refusal." Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(1): 173-193. JSTOR.

    Seymour, Susan (2006) "Resistance" Anthropological Theory 6(3):303-321. Sage journals online. DOI: 10.1177/1463499606066890

     

    State processes of power and change

     

    Oct. 27 Nations and states: Read Anderson, Benedict R O'G (1999) "Indonesian nationalism today and in the future." Indonesia.67: 1-12. JSTOR

     

    Nov. 1 State power: Read Sider, Gerald (2006) "The Production of Race, Locality, and State: An Anthropology." Anthropologica. 48( 2): 247-263. ABI/Inform/Proquest Research Library

    Additional readings: Ong, Aihwa (2006) "Experiments with Freedom: Milieus of the Human." American Literary History 18(2):229-244; doi:10.1093/alh/ajj012 Oxford Journals.

    Rai, Candice (2011) "Positive loitering and public goods: The ambivalence of civic participation and community policing in the neoliberal city." Ethnography 12(1): 65-88.

    Worby Eric (1998) "Tyranny, Parody, and Ethnic Polarity: Ritual Engagements with the State in Northwestern Zimbabwe." Journal of Southern African Studies 24(3):561-578. JSTOR

     

    Nov. 3 Fear and terror 1: Read Klinenberg, Eric (2001) "Dying Alone: The Social Production of Urban Isolation." Ethnography 2(4): 501-531. Sage.

     

    Nov. 8 Fear and terror 2: Read Green, Linda (1994) "Fear as a Way of Life." Cultural Anthropology. 9(2): 227-256. AnthroSource.

    Additional readings:

    Isla Alejandro (1998) "Terror, Memory and Responsibility in Argentina." Critique of Anthropology. 18(2):134 - 156. Sage Margold, Jane A (1999) "From 'Cultures of Fear and Terror' to the Normalization of Violence: An ethnographic case." Critique of Anthropology. 19(1): 63-88 Sage

    Nagengast, Carole (1994) "Violence, Terror, and the Crisis of the State." Annual Review of Anthropology. 23:109-136. JSTOR

     

    Nov. 10: Is terrorism overdone? Read: Mahmood, Cynthia (2001) "Terrorism, myth and the power of ethnographic praxis." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. 30(5): 520-545. http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/dcrawford/mahmood.pdf

     

    Nov. 15-17 Should anthropologists participate in the war on terror? Read: González, Roberto (2007) "Towards mercenary anthropology? The new US Army counterinsurgency manual FM 3-24 and the military-anthropology complex." Anthropology Today 23(3): 14-19.

    McFate, Montgomery (2007) "Building bridges or burning heretics? A response to González in this issue." Anthropology Today 23(3): 21.

    Robben, Antonius (2009) "Anthropology and the Iraq war: An uncomfortable engagement." Anthropology Today 25(1) 1-3.

    Sluka, Jeffrey (2010) "Curiouser and curiouser: Montgomery McFate’s Strange Interpretation of the Relationship between Anthropology and Counterinsurgency." PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33(s1): 99-115.

    Additional readings:. Aretxaga, Begoña (2001) "Terror as thrill: First thoughts on the ‘war on terrorism.’" Anthropological Quarterly 75(1): 138-150.

    Bourque, Susan C and Kay B. Warren (1989) "Democracy without Peace: The Cultural Politics of Terror in Peru." Latin American Research Review 24(1): 7-34.

    Zulaika, Joseba and William Douglass (1996) Terror and taboo: The Follies, fables and faces of terrorism. New York: Routledge.

     

    Nov. 22-24 Making a military: Read Kanaaneh, Rhoda (2005) "Boys or men? Duped or ‘made’? Palestinian soldiers in the Israeli military." American Ethnologist. 32(2): 260-275. JSTOR.

    Lutz, Catherine (2002) "Making War at Home in the United States: Militarization and the Current Crisis." American Anthropologist 104(3): 723-735 AnthroSource

    Additional readings: Gill, Lesley (1997) "Creating Citizens, Making Men: The Military and Masculinity in Bolivia." Cultural Anthropology. 12(4): 527-550. AnthroSource

    Lutz, Catherine (2006) "Empire is in the details." American Ethnologist 33(4):593-611. AnthroSource

    Razack, Sherene (2000) "From the ‘Clean Snows of Petawawa’: The Violence of Canadian Peacekeepers in Somalia." Cultural Anthropology. 15(1):127-163. Anthrosource.

    Rosen, David M (2007) "Child Soldiers, International Humanitarian Law, and the Globalization of Childhood." American Anthropologist. 109(2):296-306. JSTOR

    Wilson, Richard A. (2001) "Children and War in Sierra Leone: A West African Diary." Anthropology Today 17(5): 20-22. JSTOR

     

    Nov. 29 Revolution: Read Nash, June (1995) "The Reassertion of Indigenous Identity: Mayan Responses to State Intervention in Chiapas." Latin American Research Review. 30(3): 7-41. JSTOR

    Additional reading: Starn, Orin (1991) "Missing the Revolution: Anthropologists and the War in Peru." Cultural Anthropology.6(1):63-91. JSTOR

     

    Dec. 1 Conclusion

     

    EXPLANATION OF ASSIGNMENTS

    Exam: The final exam will be composed of essay questions.

     

    Participation and assignments: Students are expected not only to attend class, but to participate in class discussion. This class will be run as a seminar, with input from everyone. You will be expected to have prepared by reading the required readings before class and thought about them. You will also be expected to be able to comment on current events, linking themes from the course to items in the news. There may also be assignments on occasion to provide opportunities to work through some of the material.

     

    Reading arguments: For the reading arguments assignment, students must provide two sentences about five of the required readings in the course. The first sentence states the argument of the reading. The second sentence gives your argument about the reading. It must begin "I agree/disagree with (author) because (the basis for your agreement or disagreement)." Each sentence must be 45 words or less. You may choose which readings you do this assignment on, but must complete five throughout the course. You will be given a pass or fail, depending on whether you can capture the argument of the reading, and on whether you can put together a good reason for agreeing or disagreeing with it.

     

    Presentation: You will present one of the required readings in class on the day scheduled for that reading. Ideally this reading will be one related to your essay topic, however only one student may present on a reading. We will schedule the reading presentations through in-class discussions by September 22. Your presentation will be 15 minutes in length. It will not simply summarize the reading, but will point to key arguments and evaluate those arguments. You will NOT use audiovisual props such as PowerPoint. You will be expected to summarize the main argument, outline the theoretical approach, explain the kind of evidence the author uses to support it, and critique the argument. To help in your critique you might want to search for articles which engage with the author or the theoretical perspective used by the author. After the presentation you will lead class discussion.

     

    Term paper proposal: Due 6 October. 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 MUST use at least one required reading from the theory section of the course for your theoretical framework. You should have between 5 and 10 sources.

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

     

    Term paper: Write a paper which is 12-15 pages in length on one of the topics of the course or another topic approved by me. You MUST present your topic to me for approval by 29 September. Style and format MUST follow the guidelines available at http://www.stfx.ca/academic/anthropology/Essay%20Style%20Guide.html. This is American Anthropologist style, and a more detailed presentation of the style can be found at http://www.aaanet.org/publications/style_guide.pdf