Anthropology 156a SECTION 2 (GRADUATE)
Power and Violence: Anthropology of Politics
Fall 2015
room: TBA
Tuesday and Friday: 12:30-1:50; Alternate Fridays: 10-10:50
Professor Elizabeth Ferry
Office: Brown 226
Office hours: Tues 11 -12 am; Thursday 10 am-12 pm
Course Description:
How do relations of power work among people and groups? How do those with greater access to power condition and constrain the activities and choices of those without such access? What happens when encounters among people and groups become violent? This course addresses these questions through readings by classic and contemporary social theorists and anthropologists and then seeks to apply their ideas to three cases: violence and injury in Chicago; sex tourism in the Dominican Republic; narco-culture in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Books:
(These books are available at the Brandeis University Bookstore and on library reserve)
Laurence Ralph, Renegade Dreams: Living through Injury in Gangland Chicago:
Denise Brennan, What’s Love got to do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic
Shaylih Muelhman, When I Wear my Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
All other readings will posted on LATTE.
Course Requirements:
Attendance and participation – 20%
1-2 page Final Paper Proposal (1-2 pages) – 20%
Final paper (25-30 pages) – 60%
Graduate Students are expected to attend and participate in the regular meetings of the course, and the extra graduate section meetings on Fridays from 10-10:50 (alternate Fridays for the First part of the semester, then some rearrangements for Thanksgiving and AAA – see syllabus)
* IF YOU ARE A STUDENT WITH A DOCUMENTED DISABILITY ON RECORD AT BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY AND WISH TO HAVE A REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION MADE FOR YOU IN THIS CLASS, PLEASE SEE ME.
*The use of laptops and other electronic devices (including phones) is not allowed in class except with special permission of the instructor.
Course Schedule:
PART ONE – BUILDING A TOOLKIT FOR THINKING ABOUT POWER AND VIOLENCE
8/28 – General Introduction
Week One:
9/1: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto”
9/4 Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women”
Grad Section: Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 [first manuscript]”
Week Two:
9/8: Weber, Max, selections from The Theory of Economic and Social Organization
9/11: Hughes-Freeland, Felicia, “Charisma and Celebrity in Indonesian Politics”
Fagen, Richard, “Charismatic Authority and the Leadership of Fidel Castro”
Week Three
9/15: NO CLASS
9/18: : Antonio Gramsci, selections; Jason Dittmer “Captain America”
Grad Section: T.J. Jackson Lears “The Problem of Cultural Hegemony;” Tania Li The Will to Improve, chapter 2
Week Four:
9/22 Foucault, Michel “Panopticism,” from Discipline and Punish;
9/25 Salzinger, Leslie, chapter from Genders in Production
Week Five
9/29 – “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color” Kimberle Crenshaw; Patricia Hill Collins, “Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination” From Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 221–238
10/2: Jean and John Comaroff, “Hegemony and Ideology;” Janet McIntosh, “Reluctant Muslims”
Grad Section: James Ferguson, “The Anti-Politics Machine;” Foucault, “On Governmentality”
Week Six:
10/6 Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace and Peace Research;”
Kleinman, Arthur, “The Violences of Everyday Life
10/9 Gloria Anzaldúa “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
Paper #1 due
Week Seven:
10/13: Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema;”
James Faris, The Gaze of Western Humanism
10/16: Film: Stranger with a Camera
Grad Section: Allen Feldman, “On the Actuarial Gaze: From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib;” Susan Gal and Judith Irvine, “Language Ideology and Linguistic Variation”
Week Eight:
10/20 discussion of film; midterm review
10/23 midterm – GRAD STUDENTS NOT REQUIRED TO ATTEND
PART TWO - USING THE TOOLKIT / CASE STUDIES
Week Nine
10/27 Renegade Dreams
10/30 Renegade Dreams
Grad Section: Pierre Bourdieu, “The Rules of Capital,” Angela Davis, “The Meaning of Freedom”
Week Ten
11/3: Ta-Nehisi Coates, “the Case for Reparations”
11/6: Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,”
Robin DiAngelo, “White Fragility”
Discussion of final paper
Week Eleven
11/10 What’s Love Got to Do with it?
11/13What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Grad Section: Helen Safa, “Questioning Globalization: Women and Export Processing in the Dominican Republic”
Gina Ulysse, “Meditation on Haiti (and Charleston) as a Certain Kind of Black
Week Twelve
11/17 David Valentine, “The Categories Themselves”
11/20 Film TBA
Grad Section: Discussion of final projects
Grad Paper proposal due.
Week Thirteen
11/24 When I Wear my Alligator Boots
11/27 NO CLASS
Week Thirteen:
12/1 When I wear my Alligator Boots
12/4 Jason Pine, “Embodied Capitalism and the Meth Body”
12/8 Conclusion
12/15 Grad final paper due
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