[M] = Malinowski, Bronislaw. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Waveland Press Inc., 1984. ISBN: 9780881330847.
[W] = Walley, Christine J. Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780226871806.
| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | No readings assigned. |
| Section 1: The Family | ||
| 2 | The Family (I) |
[M] Chapter II: The Natives of the Trobriand Islands. [Preview with Google Books] [M] Chapter III: The Essentials of the Kula. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 3 | The Family (II) |
[M] Chapter II: The Natives of the Trobriand Islands. [Preview with Google Books] [M] Chapter III: The Essentials of the Kula. [Preview with Google Books] Recommended, not required: Parsons, Talcott. “The Kinship System of the Contemporary United States.” American Anthropologist 45, no. 1 (1943): 22–38. |
| 4 | The Family (III) | Rakopoulos, Theodoros. “Antimafia Families: Cooperative Work and Flexible Kinship in Sicily.” Critique of Anthropology 37, no. 2 (2017): 115–31. |
| 5 | The Family (IV) |
Fennell, Catherine. “The Family Toxic: Triaging Obligation in Post-Welfare Chicago.” South Atlantic Quarterly 115, no. 1 (2016): 9–32. Zaloom, Caitlin. “Finance.” Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology webpage, August 7, 2017. |
| 6 | The Family (V) |
[W] Introduction. [Preview with Google Books] [W] Chapter 1: A World of Iron and Steel: A Family Album. |
| 7 | The Family (VI) |
[W] Chapter 2: It All Came Tumbling Down: My Father and the Demise of Chicago’s Steel Industry. [W] Chapter 3: Places Beyond. |
| 8 | The Family (VII) | No readings assigned. |
| 9 | The Family (VIII) |
[W] Chapter 4: The Ties That Bind. [W] Conclusion: From the Grave to the Cradle. |
| 10 | The Family (IX) | No readings assigned. |
| Section 2: Things (Creation and Circulation) | ||
| 11 | Things (Creation and Circulation) (I) |
Peebles, Gustav. “A Wicked Cheat: ATMs and the Neo-Feudal Economy.” Harper’s, June 2004. Morris, Jeremy. “Moonlighting Strangers Met on the Way: The Nexus of Informality and Blue-Collar Sociality in Russia.” Chapter 3 in The Informal Post-Socialist Economy: Embedded Practices and Livelihoods. Edited by Jeremy Morris and Abel Polese. Routledge, 2016. ISBN: 9781138204041. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 12 | Things (Creation and Circulation) (II) |
[M] Chapter 4: Canoes and Sailing. [M] Chapter 5: The Ceremonial Building of a Waga. [M] Chapter 6: Launching of a Canoe and Ceremonial Visiting—Tribal Economics in the Trobriands. |
| 13 | Things (Creation and Circulation) (III) |
Kumler, Aden. “Sacrament to Street Food: The Troubled History of the Waffle.” Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture 58: Theft (2015): 63–71. One of these two—reading roles assigned in class: Le Goff, Jacques. “Between the Devil and Mammon: Usury and the Usurer,” “The Moneybag: Usury,” and “The Thief of Time.” Chapters 1–3 in Your Money or Your Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages. Translated by Patricia Ranum. Zone Books, 1988. ISBN: 9780942299144. Thompson, E. P. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past & Present 38 (1967): 56–97. |
| 14 | Things (Creation and Circulation) (IV) | No readings assigned. |
| 15 | Things (Creation and Circulation) (V) |
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. “Interest in Cattle.” Chapter 1 in The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford University Press, 1969. ISBN: 9780195003222. Pedersen, Morten Axel, and Lars Højer. “Lost in Transition: Fuzzy Property and Leaky Selves in Ulaanbaatar.” Ethnos 73, no. 1 (2008): 73–96. |
| 16 | Things (Creation and Circulation) (VI) | No readings assigned. |
| Section 3: Persons, Agents, Selves, Possessions | ||
| 17 | Persons, Agents, Selves, Possessions (I) |
Mauss, Marcel. “A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person; The Notion of Self.” Chapter 1 in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. Edited by Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes. Cambridge University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780521277570. [Preview with Google Books] Taylor, Charles. “The Person.” Chapter 12 in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. Edited by Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes. Cambridge University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780521277570. |
| 18 | Persons, Agents, Selves, Possessions (II) |
Ingold, Tim. “A Circumpolar Night’s Dream.” Chapter 6 in The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge, 2011. ISBN: 9780415617475. [Preview with Google Books] Recommended, not required: de la Cadena, Marisol. “Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond ‘Politics.’” Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 2 (2010): 334–70. |
| 19 | Persons, Agents, Selves, Possessions (III) |
Geertz, Clifford. “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power.” Chapter 6 in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. 3rd ed. Basic Books, 1985. ISBN: 9780465041626. Lepselter, Susan. “From the Earth Native’s Point of View: The Earth, the Extraterrestrial, and the Natural Ground of Home.” Public Culture 9, no. 2 (1997): 197–208. |
| 20 | Persons, Agents, Selves, Possessions (IV) |
Cherkaev, Xenia, and Elena Tipikina. “Interspecies Affection and Military Aims: Was There a Totalitarian Dog?” Environmental Humanities 10, no. 1 (2018): 20–39. Recommended, not required: Tsing, Anna. “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species: For Donna Haraway.” Environmental Humanities 1, no. 1 (2012): 141–54. |
| 21 | Persons, Agents, Selves, Possessions (V) | No readings assigned. |
| Section 4: Ethnography, Ethnographers, and How to Study “Culture” | ||
| 22 | Ethnography, Ethnographers, and How to Study “Culture” (I) | Boas, Franz. “The Potlatch.” Chapter 4 in Kwakiutl Ethnography. Edited and abridged with an introduction by Helen Codere. University of Chicago Press, 1975. ISBN: 9780226062372. |
| 23 | Ethnography, Ethnographers, and How to Study “Culture” (II) |
Briggs, Charles, and Richard Bauman. “‘The Foundation of All Future Researches’: Franz Boas, George Hunt, Native American Texts, and the Construction of Modernity.” American Quarterly 51, no. 3 (1999): 479–528. Recommended, not required: Boas, Franz. “Shamanism: I Desired to Learn the Ways of the Shamans.” In The Religion of the Kwakiutl Indians: 2. Translations. Columbia University Press, 1930. Internet Archive. |
| 24 | Ethnography, Ethnographers, and How to Study “Culture” (III) |
Boas, Franz. “On Alternating Sounds.” American Anthropologist 2, no. 1 (1889): 47–54. Sapir, Edward. “The Psychological Reality of Phonemes.” In Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality. Edited by David G Mandelbaum. Forgotten Books, 2017. ISBN: 9781528253918. [Preview with Google Books] Whorf, Benjamin Lee. “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language.” ETC: A Review of General Semantics 1, no. 4 (1944): 197–215. |
| 25 | Ethnography, Ethnographers, and How to Study “Culture” (IV) |
[M] Introduction. The Subject, Method and Scope of this Inquiry. [Preview with Google Books] Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Ethnographer.” In Collected Fictions. Translated by Andrew Hurley. Penguin Books, 1999. ISBN: 9780140286809. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. “Introductory.” In The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 5–15. ISBN: 9780195003222. |
| 26 | Ethnography, Ethnographers, and How to Study “Culture” (V) | No readings assigned. |
