Reading assignments should be completed before each session. The following are the readings assigned for each session, in addition to background readings for this class:
| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Introduction and Warm-up Exercises |
Fortun, Kim. “Ethnography In/Of/As Open Systems.” Reviews in Anthropology 32, 2 (2003): 171-190.
Fischer, M. M. J. “Emergent Forms of Life: Anthropologies of Late and Post Modernities.” Annual Reviews in Anthropology (1999). Dumit, Joe. “A Pharmaceutical Grammar.” ———. “Pharmaceutical Mind Sports.” |
| 3 | Interviewing, Transference/Countertransference |
Crapanzano, Vincent. Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago.
Fischer, Michael M. J. “Ethnicity and the Postmodern Arts of Memory.” In Writing Culture. Edited by James Clifford, and George Marcus. California, 1986. Good, Byron, et al. “Reflexivity, Counter-Transference and Clinical Ethnography.” In Physicians of Western Medicine. Edited by R. Hahn, and A. Gaines. 1985. Lotfalian, Mazyar. “Working Through Psychologial Understandings of the Diasporic Condition.” Ethos 24, no. 1 (1996): 36-70. |
| 4 | Oral History Problematics |
Bravo, Michael T. “The Anti-Anthropology of Highlanders & Islanders.” Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 29, no. 3 (1998): 369-89.
[Bravo, M. and Sverker Sorlin, ed. Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scienfic Practices. SHP, 2002.] White, Luise, ed. Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. California, 2000. Chapter. |
| 5 | Fieldwork Under Fire |
Daniel, E. Valentine. Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropology of Volence. Princeton, 1996.
Feldman, Regina. “Encountering the Trauma of the Holocaust: Dialogue and It’s Discontents in the Broszat-Friedlander Exchanges of Letters.” Ethos 28, no. 4 (2001): 551-74. [Dialogue via thirds.] |
| 6 | Knowledge Communities |
Bohanan, Laura [Elenore Smith Bowen]. Return to Laughter. 1964.
Goffman, Erving. Chapter 1 in Asylums. Doubleday, 1961. |
| 7 | Ethnomethodology: From the Native’s Point of View |
Garfinkel, Harold. Chapter 5 in Studies in Ethnomethodology. 1967.
Dumit, J., and W. Sack. “Analysis of Very Large Scale Conversations on the Web.” |
| 8 | Advocacy, Advertising, and Critique | Fortun, Kim. Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders. 2001. |
| 9 | Translation |
Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.”
de Man, Paul. “The Task of the Translator.” Yale French Studies 69 (1985): 25-46. |
| 10 | Restudies |
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. The Nuer; 1951. Hutchinson, Sharon. Nuer Dilemma: Coping with Money, War & the State. California, 1996. |
| 11 | Alternative Writing or Film Strategies |
Chagnon, Napoleon A., Gary Seaman, and Peter Biella. Yanomamo Interactive: The Ax Fight. Harcourt-Brace College Publishers, May 1996.
Clifford, James. “On Ethnographic Surrealism.” CSSH. repr Predicaments of Culture. 1981. Fischer, Michael M. J. “Filmic Judgment and Cultural Critique: The Work of Art, Ethics, and Religion in Iranian Cinema.” In Religion and Media. Edited by Hent de Vries, and Samuel Weber. Stanford University Press, 2001. |
| 12 | Wrap Up and Review |
Background Readings
Clifford, James. “On Ethnographic Surrealism.” Comparitive Studies in History & Society. repr. Predicaments of Culture. 1981.
Clifford, J., and G. Marcus, eds. Writing Culture. California, 1896.
Fischer, M. M. J. “Calling the Future(s): STS@the_Turn_[]000.mit.edu.” LE 8 (2000).
———. “In the Science Zone: The Yanomami and the Fight for Representation.” Anthropology Today (2001).
Fischer, Michael M. J., and George E. Marcus. “Introduction to the 2nd Edition.” In Anthropology as Cultural Critique. Chicago: 1999.
Goffman, Erving. Asylums. Doubleday, 1961. (On total institutions.)
———. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. 1959. (Dramatugical frames in interaction.)
Geertz, Clifford. “Deep Play,” and “Thick Description.” In The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, 1973.
Haraway, Donna. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouseTM. Routledge, 1997.
Latour, Bruno. Chapter 2 in We Have Never Been Modern. 1993. (On the coproduction of political and scientific authority.)
Marcus, George, ed. Critical Anthropology Now. SAR, 1999.
Recently Completed MIT - STS projects in Anthropology & Science Studies:
Schwarz, Heinrich. “Techno-Territories: The Spatial, Technological and Social Reorganization of Office Work.” 2002.
Rajan, Kaushik Sunder. “Biocaptial: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life.” 2002.
Kelty, Chris. “Scale & Convention: Programmed Languages in a Regulated America”. 2000.
Landecker, Hannah. “Technologies of Living Substance: Tissue Culture & Cellular Life in 20th c. Biomedicine.” 2000.
Mnookin, Jenifer. “Images of Truth: Evidence, Expertise & Technologies of Knowledge in the American Courtroom.” 1999.
