September 7, 2016

Anthropology 2000

Ethnological Theory

Fall 2016

Meets Mondays, 3:00-5:20 p.m.

Mr. Kertzer (David_Kertzer@Brown.edu)
Office hours: Wednesdays 3:30-5:00 p.m. and by appointment; Giddings third floor

An examination of the intellectual roots and the development of theory and method in
anthropology. We focus on the years from the origins of the discipline in the nineteenth century
to 1940, with an emphasis on sociocultural anthropology.

Format: This is a graduate seminar entailing the close critical reading of influential texts and
placing them in historical context. Students should come to each class prepared to discuss the
assigned readings and bring a copy of each of those readings to class. The instructor will
normally begin each session by providing historical context for the topic of the day. Students
who are preparing a short paper on the day’s topic will then be called upon to discuss their own
papers, after which all students will participate with the instructor in the examination of the
week’s readings.

Attendance and Time Devoted to the Course: Students with more than one unexcused
absence will not receive credit for the course. It is expected that students will spend at least 180
hours in work devoted to this course, including the time of seminar meetings.

Papers: There are four short (4-5 page) papers reflecting on some aspect of the topic of the day.
These papers may be based entirely on assigned course readings or involve bringing in other
materials related to the week’s topic. Students should meet with (or communicate by email with)
the instructor one week before each paper assignment to settle on a particular topic. One paper
should be prepared for each of the following periods: (1) September 19-October 3; (2) October
17-October 24; (3) October 31-November 14; and (4) November 21-December 5. Students have
until noon Thursday of the week of their paper’s oral (Monday) presentation to hand in a final
written version of their paper. Oral presentations are not to involve the reading of the full paper
but more informal discussion of key points.

Final Examination: The final examination questions will be distributed at 9 a.m. on December
12. The completed exam, either in electronic, printed, or handwritten form, will be due at 5 p.m.
that day. Students may consult the readings and their course notes. The questions will aim at the
synthesis of broad course themes.

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Grading: Papers 10% each; final exam 30%; class participation 30%.

Readings: Other than a few books to purchase, the rest of the readings are available
electronically on the course Canvas web site.
Books to purchase

Durkheim, Emile. 1915 (2008). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Freud, Sigmund. 1913. Totem and Taboo. New York: Norton.

Freud, Sigmund. 1930 (2010). Civilization and its Discontents. New York; Norton.

Mead, Margaret 1928 Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for
Western Civilization. New York: W. Morrow & Co.
Benedict, Ruth 1934. Patterns of Culture. Mariner Books.

*Readings marked with an asterisk are optional.

Class Meetings

September 12 Introduction: SCIENCE, DESCRIPTION, AND EXPLANATION

Braithwaite, R.B. 1953. Scientific Explanation, pp. 1-21 (chapter 1: “Introductory,.” New York:
Harper.
Popper, Karl. 1957. The Poverty of Historicism, pp. 130-47 (“The Unity of Method” and
“Theoretical and Historical Sciences). New York: Harper & Row.

September 19 PRECURSORS
de Montaigne, M. (1588) Essays of M. De Montaigne, Book 1, Chapter XXX: “Of cannibals”
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3581/pg3581.html or pdf:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0030

Hobbes, Thomas. 1649, Leviathan, chapters 13-15, 17. [available free from Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm: or at
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hobbes/thomas/h68l/contents.html

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Locke, John. 1690. Two Treatises on Government, Book II, chapters 1-4 and 7-9.
http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/locke/ or https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-
h.htm
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1762. The Social Contract, Book I.
http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon_01.htm#009 or
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46333/46333-h/46333-h.htm#BOOK_I

September 26 MARX AND ENGELS

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1888 ed. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Parts I and II.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61 pdf:
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1519915.files/WEEK%206/Marx%20Engels-
Communist%20Manifesto.pdf
Engels, Friedrich. 1886. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Chapters 1,
2, and 9. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33111/33111-h/33111-h.htm
Marx, Karl. 1998 . The German Ideology. Prometheus Books. (Pdf:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf)
Preface; Part IA The Illusions of German Ideology First Premises of Materialist Method;
History: Fundamental Conditions Private Property and Communism; Part IB: Ruling Class and
ruling ideas
*Marx, Karl. 1859. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. [pdf:
http://sites.middlebury.edu/econ0450f10/files/2010/08/Karl-Marx-grundrisse.pdf]

October 3 CULTURAL EVOLUTION (ROSH HASHANAH; RESCHEDULE IN OCT 5-7))

Maine, Henry. 1861. Ancient Law. Chapter 5: “Primitive society and ancient law”

Tylor, Edward. 1871. Primitive Culture, vol. 1. Chapter 1: “The Science of Culture”

Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1877. Ancient Society. Chapter 1: “Ethnical periods”

Frazer, James. 1890-1915. The Golden Bough. Chapter 3: “Sympathetic magic”

Darwin, Charles. 1859. The Origin of Species. Chapter 14: Conclusions.

*Darwin, Charles. 1871. Descent of Man (conclusions).

*Trigger, Bruce. 2006. A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Chapter 5 (Evolutionary archaeology).

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*Willey, Gordon and Jeremy Sabloff, 1993. A History of American Archaeology, Chapter 2 & 3
(The speculative period & The classificatory-descriptive period).

October 17 WEBER AND DURKHEIM

Weber, Max. 1958 [orig. 1904]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated
by Talcott Parsons. New York: Scribner’s. “Introduction” and Chapters 1-2.
Weber, Max. 1946 [orig. 1919]. “Science as a Vocation” in From Max Weber: Essays in
Sociology, H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, editors. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.
129-156.

Weber, Max 1947. “Charismatic Authority” in Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic
Organization, edited by Talcott Parsons. Glencoe: Free Press, pp. 358-372.

Durkheim, Emile 1938 [orig. 1895]. The Rules of the Sociological Method. Chapter 1: “What is a
social Fact?” and Chapter 5: “Rules for the Explanation of Social Facts”.

October 24 DURKHEIM AND HIS LEGACY

Durkheim, Emile. 1915. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Introduction and Conclusions.
Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York:
Norton, 1967, “Introductory,” pp. 1-45.
Van Gennep, Arnold. 1960 [orig. 1909]. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. Chapter 10 “Conclusions”.
George Stocking, “The Dark-Skinned Savage: The Image of Primitive Man in
Evolutionary Anthropology.” In Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution, pp. 110-132.

October 31 SIGMUND FREUD

Freud, Sigmund. 1913. Totem and Taboo. New York: Norton.
Freud, Sigmund. 1930. Civilization and its Discontents. New York; Norton.
*Freud, Sigmund. 1927. The Future of an Illusion. New York; Norton

November 7 FRANZ BOAS AND HIS INFLUENCE

Boas, Franz. 1887. “The principles of ethnological classification.” In [1989] George Stocking,
ed., A Franz Boas Reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 61-67.

Boas, Franz. 1889. “The aims of ethnology.” In A Franz Boas Reader, pp. 67-71.

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Boas, Franz. 1896. “The limitations of the comparative method in anthropology.” Science
4:901-8.

Boas, Franz. 1965 [orig. 1911]. “The race problem in modern society,” Chapter 13 in Franz
Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: Free Press.
Kroeber, Alfred. 1917. “The Superorganic,” American Anthropologist 19:163-213
Lowie, Robert. 1920. “Conclusion,” Primitive Society. New York: Boni and Liveright.
*Boas, Franz. 1920. “The methods of ethnology.” American Anthropologist 22:311-322

*Boas, Franz. 1940 (2014). Race, Language and Culture. White Press.
*Franz Boas, “The instability of human types” and “Race, language, and culture,” in Boas,
The Mind of Primitive Man, 1911

November 14 BOASIANS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN

ANTHROPOLOGY
Mead, Margaret 1928 Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for
Western Civilization. New York: W. Morrow & Co. Especially chapters 1, 7, 13.
Benedict, Ruth 1934. Patterns of Culture. Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin Company.
*Hurston, Zora Neale. 1927. “Cudjo’s Own Story of the Last African Slaver” The Journal of
Negro History Vol. 12, No. 4 (October): 648-663. (accessible through JSTOR)

*Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1941. “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language.”
In Language, Culture, and Personality Essays in Memory of Edward Sapir, ed. by Leslie Spier.
Madison, Wisconsin.
http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mousesite/Secondary/Whorfframe2.html
*Sapir, Edward. 1949 [orig: 1938]. “Why Cultural Anthropology Needs the Psychiatrist.” Pp.
569-77 in Selected Writings of Edward Sapir, David Mandelbaum, ed., Berkeley: University of
California Press.
*Parsons, Elsie Clews. 1939. Pueblo Indian Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

November 21 BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. New York: Dutton.
“Introduction: The subject, method and scope of this enquiry.”

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1954 [orig. 1926]. “Myth in primitive psychology.” In Bronislaw

Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion. New York: Anchor.

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Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1931. “The Role of Magic and Religion.” Encyclopedia of the Social
Sciences, vol. 4, pp. 634-42. Pdf www2.fiu.edu/~bassd/malinowski.pdf
Malinowski, B. 1939. "The Group and Individual in Functional Analysis." American Journal of
Sociology 44:738-64.
*Kenyatta, Jomo. 1965 [orig. 1938]. Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikugy, with
introduction by Bronislaw Malinowski.. New York: Vintage books

November 28 RADCLIFFE-BROWN
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. New York: The
Free Press. “Introduction,” pp. 1-14; “The Mother’s Brother in South Africa” [1924], pp.
15-31; “The Sociological Theory of Totemism,” [1929], pp. 117-32; “On the Concept of
Function in Social Science,” [1935], pp. 178-187; “On Social Structure” [1940], pp. 188-
204.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1989. A Diary in the Strictest Sense of the Term. Stanford: Stanford
University Press. Raymond Firth “Introduction” and “Second Introduction”; Malinowski: skim.

December 5 AFRICA AND BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Fortes, Meyer and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, 1940. “Introduction,” pp. 1-24 in African Political
Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1937. “The notion of witchcraft explains unfortunate events,” chapter in
Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940. The Nuer:A Description of the Modes of Livlihood and Political
Institutions of a Nilotic people. Oxford. “Introduction.”
Evans-Pritichard, E.E. 1940. “The Nuer of the Southern Sudan.” Pp. 272-96 in Meyer Fortes
and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, eds., African Political Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press.