ANTHROPOLOGY 296 / 296H

Dr. Charles F. Urbanowicz/Professor of Anthropology

FALL 1999 WEB SYLLABUS

California State University, Chico/Office: Butte 317

Proseminar in the History of Theory and Method in Anthropology [TRACS #10212]

Office Hours: Mon & Wed} 8:30->9:30am & 3->4:30pm

ANTH 296: Mon & Wed} 4:30->5:45pm in BUTTE 319

Office Phone: (530) 898-6220 / Dept: (530) 898-6192

e-mail: curbanowicz@csuchico.edu

http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/

© Charles F. Urbanowicz/July 12, 1999} This copyrighted Web Syllabus, printed from http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/syllabi/SYL_296-F99.html, is intended for use by students enrolled at California State University, Chico, in the Fall Semester of 1999 and unauthorized use/publication is strictly prohibited; for a MOST IMPORTANT BRIEF DISCLAIMER ESSAY about these ANTH 296 web pages, please click here. PLEASE NOTE: when this Web Syllabus was being placed on the CSU, Chico WWW in July 1999, some campus changes were being discussed: as a result, when classes begin on August 23, 1999, this Syllabus may be located at: http://www-new.csuchico.edu/~curban/syllabi/SYL_296-F99.html.

DESCRIPTION of ANTH 296: Investigation of the history of the development of theory and method in anthropological thought and practice from the nineteenth century to the present. Seminar format. (The 1999-2001 University Catalog, page 195.) 

DESCRIPTION of ANTH 296H: This investigation of method and theory into anthropological thought of the last century is directed to individual research interests and problem development for the honors thesis. Seminar format.

ANTH 296 / ANTH 296H is the designated WP (Writing Proficiency) class for the Anthropology Major and the Department of Anthropology graduation literacy certification requires that you pass this course at the "C-" level. A "Criteria of Writing Proficiency" appears in this syllabus after the weekly assignments. The "World Wide Web" and the implications of this technology for Anthropology (and anthropologists!) will also be discussed throughout the semester. Please see below for some appropriate URLs that might be of value to you for this course, as well as others courses.

TWO REQUIRED TEXTS (AVAILABLE IN THE BOOKSTORE):

P. Bohannan & M. Glazer, Editors (1988) High Points in Anthropology.
L.L. Langness (1987) The Study of Culture: Revised Edition.

SEVEN TOTALLY OPTIONAL TEXTS (AVAILABLE IN THE BOOKSTORE):

Ute Gacs et al., (1989) Women Anthropologists: Selected Biographies.
R. J. McGee & R.L. Warms (1996) Anthropological Theory: An introductory History.
Jerry D. Moore (1997) Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists.
Douglas J. Preston (1986) Dinosaurs In The Attic.
George W. Stocking (1991) Victorian Anthropology.
Bruce Trigger (1989) A History of Archaeological Thought.
Eric Trinkhaus & Pat Shipman (1993) The Neanderthals: Changing The Image Of Mankind.

THIRTY-SIX ITEMS ON TWO-HOUR RESERVE FOR VARIOUS READING SELECTIONS:

D. Bidney (1953) Theoretical Anthropology [GN/24/B492/1967]
D.J. Boorstin (1983) The Discoverers [CB/69/B66/1983]
J. Clifford & G. Marcus (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography [GN/307.7/W75/1986]
E. Daniel & J. Peck (1996) Culture/Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Studies [GN/307.7/C85/1996]
R. Darnell (1974) Readings in the History of Anthropology [GN/17/D35]
A. de Malefijt (1974) Images of Man [GN/17/D44/1974]
M. di Leonardo (1991) Gender At The Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era [GN/33/G46/1991]
P. A. Erickson [with L. Murphy] (1998) A History of Anthropological Theory [GN/33/E74/1998]
R. Fox (1994) The Challenge of Anthropology: Old Encounters and New Excursions [GN/29/F69/1994]
R. Fox (1997) Conjectures & Confrontations: Science, Evolution, Social Concern [GN/468/F69]
U. Gacs et al. [Editors] (1988) Women Anthropologists: Selected Biographies [GN/20/W63/1988]
C. Geertz (1988) Works And Lives: The Anthropologist As Author [GN/307.7/G44/1988]
C. Geertz 1995) After The Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist [GN/21/G44/A3]
P. Golde (1986) Women in the Field: Anthropological Experiences [GN/20/G6/1986]
D. Hakken (1999), Cyborgs@Cyberspace? An Ethnographer Looks to the Future [QA/76.9/C66/H34/1999]
M. Harris (1968) The Rise of Anthropological Theory [GN/17/H3]
M. Harris (1999) Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times [GN/357/H39/1999]
Hayes & Hayes (1970) Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Anthropologist as Hero [GN/21/L4/H3]
H. R. Hays (1958) From Ape to Angel [GN/405/H34]
J. Helm (1966) Pioneers of American Anthropology
C. Herbert (1991), Culture And Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination In The Nineteenth Century [GN/357/H47/1991]
C. Hinsley (1981) Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian.... [GN/17.3/U6/H56]
A. Kardiner & E. Preble (1961) They Studied Man [GN/405/K3]
A.L. Kroeber & C. Kluckhohn (1952) Culture: A Critical Review [GN/27/K7]
A. Kuper (1973) Anthropology and Anthropologists [GN/17/K26]
G. Marcus & M. Fischer (1986) Anthropology As Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment In The Human Sciences [GN/345/M37/1986]
G. Marcus (1998) Ethnography Through Thick And Thin [GN/345/M373/1998]
M. Mead & R. Bunzel (1960) The Golden Age of American Anthropology [E/77/M48]
A. Montagu (1974) Frontiers of Anthropology [GN/17/M/59/1974]
Naroll & Naroll (1973) Main Currents in Cultural Anthropology [GN/17/N37/1973]
T.K. Penniman (1936) A Hundred Years of Anthropology [GN/17/P4]
H. Powdermaker (1966) Stranger and Friend [HM/73/P67]
S. Silverman (1981) Totems and Teachers: Perspectives on the History.....[GN/17/T69]
J.S. Slotkin (1965) Readings in Early Anthropology [GN/17/S46]
G.W. Stocking (1995) After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888-1951 [GN/308.3/G7/S74/1995]
F.W. Voget (1975) A History of Ethnology [GN/17/V63]

YOU SHOULD BE KNOW ABOUT the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1968) [REF/H40/A2I/5] AND the Annual Review of Anthropology [GN/1/B52] AND the miscellaneous publications and journals available in Butte 305 (Ethnographic Laboratory). (Incidentally, you might find information on the Annual Review of Anthropology at this URL: http://www.jstor.org/journals/00846570.html.)

THREE RECOMMENDED ITEMS INCLUDE:

An English Language dictionary.
William A. Strunk, Jr. (1979) The Elements of Style (3rd edition).
The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1999.

EVALUATION AND IMPORTANT DATES:

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #1

DUE ON 9/20/99 or 9/22/99 (5%).

EXAM I

ON 10/4/99 (25%).

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2

DUE ON 10/25/99 (10%).

EXAM II

ON 11/10/99 (25%).

THANKSGIVING BREAK!

11/22/99 -> 11/26/99

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #3

DUE ON 12/13/99 (25%).

PARTICIPATION / PAPER PRESENTATION

8/23/99 -> 12/13/99 (10%).

Reading assignment(s) should be completed by the day they are assigned since they will form the basis of discussion that day/week. There will be some lectures (and videos), but hopefully there will be more discussion than either lectures or videos! DURING WEEK 5, 1/2 the class will meet on 9/20/99 and 1/2 the class will meet on 9/22/99. This is done to create small discussion groups. PLEASE REMEMBER that WRITING ASSIGNMENT #1 (a critique) is DUE on the day you are assigned to attend class that week: we will discuss all readings to date (and your critique) on 9/20/99 or 9/22/99. Your preliminary term paper topic (your WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2) is DUE on 10/25/99 (beginning of Week 10). Based on your topic, specific days will be assigned for approximately 1/2 class-size discussions for Week 11 when 1/2 the class will meet on 11/1/99 and 1/2 the class will meet on 11/3/99 and WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2 and your TERM PAPER TOPICS will be discussed. On 11/8/99 the Term Paper PRESENTATION ORDER will be distributed for presentations beginning on MONDAY 11/15/99. Remember, in-class participation, including term paper presentation, contributes 10% towards your final grade. ALSO NOTE: if the above dates have to be changed for any reason you will be notified well-in-advance: no surprises are planned!

PLEASE CONSIDER the implications of the following: "One who makes a close study of almost any branch of science soon discovers the great illusion of the monolith. When he [or she] stood outside as an uninformed layman, he [or she] got a vague impression of unanimity among the professionals. He [or she] tended to think of science as supporting the Establishment with fixed and approved views. All this dissolves as he [or she] works his [or her] way into the living concerns of practicing scientists. He [and she] finds lively personalities who indulge in disagreement, disorder, and disrespect. He [and she] must sort out conflicting opinions and make up his [and her] own mind as to what is correct and who is sound. This applies not only to provinces as vast as biology and to large fields such as evolutionary theory, but even to small and familiar corners such as the species problem. The closer one looks, the more diversity one finds [stress added]." [Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried, 1971: 18]

ALSO, PLEASE THINK ABOUT the following from Margaret Mead [1901-1978]: "Anthropologists are highly individual and specialized people. Each of them [or us!] is marked by the kind of work he or she prefers and has done, which in time becomes an aspect of that individual's personality." ALSO CONSIDER the following statement made by the father of Ward Goodenough when the young Goodenough was considering his career: "Anthropology is a subject such that you can be interested in almost anything and its alright" (Anthropology Newsletter, October 1992, page 4); and, finally, consider these words of Clifford Geertz: "...and that this was the kind of freedom we could have in anthropology--to do anything and call it anthropology (which you still can do!)" (C. Geertz, An Interview with Clifford Geertz. Current Anthropology, Vol. 32, No. 5, 1991, page 603).

ALSO, ALSO, PLEASE THINK ABOUT / READ THE 42 "THOUGHTS" AT THE END OF THIS SYLLABUS: THEY WILL PLAY A PART IN DISCUSSIONS THROUGHOUT THE SEMESTER; ALSO: PLEASE READ THE QUOTATION STATEMENTS ASSOCIATED WITH EACH WEEK} THEY WILL ALSO PLAY A PART IN DISCUSSIONS THROUGHOUT THE SEMESTER!

SEVEN GOALS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT CSU, CHICO

1. An understanding of the phenomenon of culture as that which differentiates human life from other life forms; an understanding of the roles of human biology and cultural processes in human behavior and human evolution. 

2. A positive appreciation of the diversity of contemporary and past human cultures and an awareness of the value of anthropological perspectives and knowledge in contemporary society. 

3. A knowledge of the substantive data pertinent to the several sub disciplines of anthropology and familiarity with major issues relevant to each. 

4. Familiarity with the forms of anthropological literature and basic data sources and knowledge of how to access such information.  

5. Knowledge of the methodology appropriate to the sub-disciplines of anthropology and the capacity to apply appropriate methods when conducting anthropological research. 

6. The ability to present and communicate in anthropologically appropriate ways anthropological knowledge and the results of anthropological research. 

7. Knowledge of the history of anthropological thought. 

REMEMBER: INTERNATIONAL FORUM (SOSC 100-01}#14615) for One Unit every TUE from 4->5:20p.m. in Ayres Hall 120 and the ANTHROPOLOGY FORUM (ANTH 297-01}#10213) for One Unit every THU from 4->5:20p.m. in Ayres Hall 120.

  


SPECIFIC READING ASSIGNMENTS AND TOPICS FOR THE DAYS OF:

WEEK 1. 8/23/99 + 8/25/99} Introduction & Overview to the course.
The profession: 1967-1999+. Please glance at both required texts and some of the RESERVE items by Monday August 30, 1999. 

"....descriptions vary with the conceptual or theoretical framework within which they are couched. To evaluate a description properly one must know something about the theoretical framework that brought it into being." (D. Kaplan and R. Manners, Culture Theory, 1972: 22)

"The barbarous heathen are nothing more strange to us than we are to them.... Human reason is a tincture in like weight and measure infused into all our opinions and customs, what form soever they be, infinite in matter, infinite in diversity." (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne [1533-1592], Essays, page 53 [1959 paperback publication of a translation from 1603]. 

"Anthropology is the product of three great historical movements: the Age of Exploration, the Enlightenment, and Evolutionism." (Philip K. Bock, 1990, Rethinking Psychological Anthropology: Continuity and Change in the Study of Human Action, page 5)

Interesting (And Somewhat Appropriate) Web Sites Are:

http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Pub_Papers/4field.html [1992 Urbanowicz History of Anthropology paper]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/NatureCulture1970.html [1970 Urbanowicz on various "Ancestors"]
http://www.tamu.edu/anthropology/news.html [Anthropology in The News]
http://www.oakland.edu/~dow/anthap.htm [The ANTHAP - Applied Anthropology Computer Network]
http://www.aaanet.org/ [American Anthropological Association]

"The anthropologist is a human instrument studying other human beings and their societies. Although he [and she!] has developed techniques that give him [and her] considerable objectivity, it is an illusion for him to think he can remove his personality from his work and become a faceless robot or a machinelike recorder of human events." Hortense Powdermaker [1896-1970], 1966, Stranger And Friend: The Way Of An Anthropologist, page 19.)

"WHY STUDY THEORY? Theory is critical because, while anthropologists collect data through fieldwork, data in an of themselves are meaningless. Whether stated explicitly or assumed, theories are the tools anthropologists use to give meaning to their data. Anthropologists' understanding of the artifacts they collect or the events they record in the field is derived from their theoretical perspective." (R.J. McGee & R.L. Warms, 1996, Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History, page 1.)


WEEK 2. 8/30/99 + 9/1/99} History of theory continued, key concepts, and Pre/Post-Darwin.

Required Reading in: Langness: pp. xi-12, Ch. 1 (pp. 13-49), and glance at Ch 7 (pp. 188-217).
Required Reading in: Bohannan & Glazer: pp. 553-554.
Please glance at the Kroeber & Kluckhohn 1952 publication Culture; please glance at Slotkin, pp. v-243.

"The Enlightenment is commonly defined as a period that has emphasized the exercise of enlightened reason. It was not so much a doctrine of ideas as a method of pursuing ideas. Rigorous intellect without attachment to superstition or bias was its hallmark [stress added]." (Jack Watson & Grant McKernie, 1993, A Cultural History of Theatre, page 244).

ON certain individuals: "...of intelligence [who] notice more things and view them more carefully, but they comment on them; and to establish and substantiate their interpretation, they cannot refrain from altering the facts a little. They present things just as they are but twist and disguise them to conform to the point of view from which they have seen them; and to grain credence for their opinion and make it attractive, they do not mind adding something of their own, or extending and amplifying." (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne [1533-1592] French philosopher/essayist), Essays, translated by J.M. Cohen, 1958, page 108).

"Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." (Francis Bacon [1561-1626], English essayist and philosopher).

"The Persian Letters [published in 1721 by Montesquieu, 1686-1755] is among the earliest major works by students of man and society to apply what has been called the double optic of cultural relativism. It was this that enabled Montesquieu to regard his own society as a subject for investigation at least as problematical as any other." (Melvin Richter, 1977, The Political Theory of Montesquieu, page 31.)

"Who invented the telephone? Microsoft Corp's Encarta multimedia encyclopedia on CD-ROM has an answer to that simple question. Rather, two answers. Consult the U.S., U.K., or German editions of Encarta and you find the expected one: Alexander Graham Bell. But look at the Italian version and the story is strikingly different. Credit goes to Antonio Meucci, an impoverished Italian-American candlemaker who, as the Italian-language Encarta tells it, beat Bell to the punch by five years. Who's right? Depends on where you live. ... in the age of the Internet, the issue of adapting products to local markets is raising trickier problems. Technology and globalization are colliding head-on with another powerful force: history. Perhaps nowhere is this conflict more apparent than in information as with Microsoft's Encarta, which has nine different editions, including one in British English and one in American. It's Microsoft's peculiar accomplishment that it has so mastered the adaptation of its products to different markets that they reflect different, sometimes contradictory, understandings of the same historical events. 'You basically have to rewrite all of the content,' says Dominique Lempereur, who, from her Paris office, oversees the expansion of Microsoft's education-related products to foreign markets. 'The translation is almost an accessory.' ... Consistency is clearly not Encarta's goal, and that's something of a controversial strategy. Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, has a policy of investigating contradictions across its editions and deciding on a standard presentation. Where it can establish a fact that is internationally solid, 'we go with that, and present other interpretations as need be,' says Dale Holberg, Britannica's editor in Chicago. His staff has looked into the Meucci question. Their verdict: Bell still gets the credit, world-wide, for inventing and patenting the electric telephone. ... Microsoft, as a technology conglomerate, has an interest in not stirring up controversies that endanger the sale of its other products. But the universaility of the Web also frustrates efforts to localize content. And there remains the possibility that it will bring about pressure for one universally aplicable version of history. Perhaps one day Mr. Meucci will share space with Alexander Graham Bell in all of the Encartas [stress added]." (Kevin J. Delaney, 1999, Microsoft's Encarts Has Different Facts For Different Folks. The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 1999, page 1 & A11).

"Critiques of anthropology from within the discipline and from without have been a major feature of our intellectual life since the late 1960s. The theoretical and empirical bases of cultural and social anthropology have been under attack since the Marxist and New Left critiques of the 1960s to those coming more recently from poststructuralism, postmodernism and literate theory, and postcolonial and cultural studies. As a result, several academic generations have been educated by reading the attacks on the field but rarely dealing with the actual theoretical works and ethnographies of earlier anthropologists. This article deals with several of the most common charges leveled at anthropology, notably that it has regularly and necessarily exoticized 'Others,' has been ahistorical, and has treated each culture as if it were an isolate, unconnected to any other. It demonstrates how inaccurate and easily falsifiable such claims are and recommends a critical reevaluation of these unexamined and destructuve cliches [stress added]." (Herbert Lewis, 1998, The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and Its Consequences. American Anthropologist, Vol. 100, No. 3, pages 716-731, page 716.

PLEASE read any one of the following items from the selections on RESERVE:

Boorstin: pp. 626-635.
Darnell Selection #5 (pp. 61-77) or pp. 289-321.
Golde: Introduction, pp. 1-15 or pp. 267-289.
Kardiner and Preble: pp. 11-32.
Mead & Bunzel: pp. 1-12.
Montagu: pp. 91-97, 49-145, and 157-162.
Naroll & Naroll: Ch 2 (pp. 25-56).
Penniman: part of Ch. 4 (pp. 73-110).
Stocking (1991): pp. 8-45.

Interesting (And Somewhat Appropriate) Web Sites Are:

http://www.unipv.it/webbio/dfantrop.htm [A Massive Anthropology site!]
http://www.uncwil.edu/stuaff/career/anthropology.htm [Anthropology careers]
http://www.csuchico.edu/cont/ids/index.html [Office of Experiential Education} Internships+]
http://home.worldnet.fr/clist/Anthro/Texts/ [Anthropology Resources on the Internet]
http://www.csuchico.edu/lref/guides/rbs/anthro.htm [Anthropology Resources beginning with CSU, Chico]
http://www.hti.umich.edu/e/ehraf/ [Electronic HRAF! - begin from CSU, Chico]
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/anthropology/svcp/ [The Silicon Valley Cultures Project]

"Web Surfing Is Fast Way To Go Job Hopping" from The Wall Street Journal, May 27, 1999, page B12:

http://www.monster.com

http://www.nationjob.com

http://www.careerpath.com

http://www.careerbuilder.com

http://www.careermosaid.com

http://www.dice.com

http://www.ajb.dni.us

http://www.marketingjobs.com

http://www.headhunter.net

http://www.net-temps.com

http://www.hotjobs.com

http://www.manpower.com

"Experts call this new field 'cognitive computing,' a blend of behavioral sciences and computer science. Some Web developers now employ staffs of psychologists, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists, along with the requisite software engineers, to create Web interfaces that are tailor-made for a particular market, or, in some instances, for an individual customer's consciousness. 'You have to be a student of human behavior to be an effective e-commerce developer...you have to tailor content to those differences online [stress added].'" (Gene Koprowski, 1998, The (New) Hidden Persuaders. The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 1998, page R10.)

"This is a fantastic job. In my wildest dreams in graduate school, I couldn't have imagined a job this great." (John Sherry, anthropologist who studies computer use in extreme environments for Intel) AND "Over the year, [Bonnie] Nardi ["long-time design anthropologist who has worked at Hewlett-Packard and Apple and now does research at AT&T Labs West in Menlo Park, Calif."] has seen the idea of anthropology as a useful addition to industry becoming more commonplace. Today, both the University of California, Irvine, and Georgia Tech include ethnographic training as part of their computer science degree programs. 'They're attracting not just supergeeks, but people who want to work on the border of people and technology,' she says [stress added]." (Elizabeth Weise, 1999, Companies Learn Value of Grass Roots: Anthropologists Help Adapt Products to World's Cultures. USA Today, May 26, 1999, page 4D.)


WEEK 3. 9/6/99 [HOLIDAY] + 9/8/99 [Wed] Some 19th Century research in Europe and America. Pre-Boas, Spencer, Morgan, Tyler, Frazer, Powell, Pitt-Rivers, Prichard, et al.

Required Reading in: Langness: Repeat Ch. 1 (pp. 13-49) and glance at Chapter 2 (pp. 50-73).
Required Reading in: Bohannan & Glazer: Selections 1, 2, & 3 (pp. 3-78).
Glance at Slotkin, pp. 244-460.
Glance at D. Hakken (1999).

"When we employ the tools of our understanding to think about our own tools of understanding, our thought becomes reflexive and recursive. Human thought is thinking about itself, considering the conditions of its own possibility, and the forms and limits of its own adequacy. ... the reflexiveness or self-applicability of cultural software is one of its most significant features. Human understanding - hence human understanding about understanding - is essentially reflexive and self-referrential. It can use its own tools to think about its own tools, and equally important, it does use its own tools to think about its own tools. Our examination of our cultural software is a reflexive study of a phenomenon already reflexive by nature [stress added]." J.M. Balkin, 1998, Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology, pages 128-129.

"Paul Broca [1824-1880] was a surgeon, a neurologist and an anthropologist, a major figure in the cevelopment of both medicine and anthropology in the mid-nineteenth century. ... He loved, as one biographer said, mainly serenity and tolerance. In 1848 he founded a society of 'free-thinkers.' Almost alone among French savants of the time, he was sympathetic to Charles Darwin's idea of evolution by natural selection." (Carl Sagan, 1979, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, page 7.)

"There is, nevertheless, a certain respect, and a general duty of humanity, that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants." (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne [1533-1592] French philosopher/essayist) or in another translation: "...there is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants." (Essays, translated by J.M. Cohen, 1958, page 189)

"No theme in biology and perhaps in all the sciences so seized the Victorian imagination as did the evolutionary hypothesis. Evolution, the development of one form from an antecedent form or series of forms, acquired obvious relevance for an understanding of the past and present condition of animal and plant species [stress added]." (In Victorian Science: A Self-Portrait From The Presidential Addresses to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1970, edited by George Basalla, William Coleman, and Robert H. Kargon, page 300.)

"Formal anthropology in the first half of the nineteenth century was defined by the research project of Prichardian 'ethnology' (the tracing of prehistoric origins of peoples), and in its next major phase would be preoccupied with theories of the evolutionary development of civilization. Not until the twentieth centiry would it discover its vocation of closely scrutinizing particular societies from the point of view of the idea of culture in the 'wide ethnographic sense'; nor would it institute until then the professional fieldwork procedures supposed to warrant the scientific authority of the reconstitute discipline." (Christopher Herbert, 1991, Culture And Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination In The Nineteenth Century, page 150).

"The characteristics of any age are revealed not simply by political and social developments, but by the manner in which contemporaries tried to explain their situation in time and place and by the language and concepts in which such explanations were formulated and discussed. In the case of mid- and late Victorian Britain the most ambiguous and slippery notion of 'evolution' generated perhaps the most striking cluster of concepts around which the governing ideas of the time were put together and assessed. ... the key mid- and late nineteenth-century figures in this new comparative endeavour--the lawyer Sir Henry Maine, the anthropologists General Pitt-Rivers, J. F. McLennan, and E.B. Tylor, the philosopher and sage Herbert Spencer--placed as they were amidst the ruins of utilitarianism, performed the remarkable feat of reasserting the essential unity of mankind, not by means of human identity as such, but by explaining obvious differences as no more than different stages in the same universal and evolutionary process." (K. Theodore Hoppen, 1998, The Mid-Victorian Generation: 1846-1886, pages 472-473.)

"In fact, the earliest, so-called evolutionary anthropologists, Tylor, Morgan, and McLennan, did not emply the term 'evolution' at all; they continued to speak unhesitatingly of progress. It was not until near the end of the nineteenth century that the majority of social progressivists followed the lead of Spencer, and renamed their doctrine Social Evolutionism. They thus availed themselves of the scientific cachet now enjoyed by Darwinism, and could assert or suggest that social evolution is 'the continuation of biological evolution by other means.' [M.D. Sahlins, and E.R. Service, editors, 1960, Evolution and Culture, page 23.] That claim undoubtedly had a lot to do with the eventual acceptance of anthropology as a legitimate science, and it continues to be asserted down to the present day. Yet Social Progressivism did not really become evolutionary, in any sense that Darwin would have understood, until the middle of the twentieth century [and W.Y. Adams cites D. Greenwood, 1984, The Taming of Evolution and E.R. Service, 1985, A Century of Controversy]. The only role that can legitimately be claimed for Darwin in the birth of anthropology is that of an approving onlooker." (William Y. Adams, 1998, The Philosophical Roots of Anthropology, page 51.)

PLEASE read any one of the following items from the selections on RESERVE:

Any appropriate selection in U. Gacs et al.
Bidney: Ch 7 (pp. 183-214).
Boorstin: pp. 636-652.
Hays pp. vii-xv and Ch 1-5 (pp. 1-49).
Harris (1968): Ch 5 (pp. 108-141).
Herbert: pp. 1-28.
Hinsley: pp. 7-63 or pp. 129-189.
Kardiner & Preble: pp. 33-94.
Malefijt Ch 7 (116-137) or Ch. 8 (138-159) or Ch. 11 (215-255).
Mead & Bunzel: pp. 58-81.
Mead & Bunzel: pp. 129-138.
Mead & Bunzel: pp. 203-245.
Mead & Bunzel: pp. 305-318.
Moore: pp. 15-68.
Naroll & Naroll: Ch 3 (pp. 57-121).
Penniman: part of Ch. 4 (pp.110-146).
Silverman: Ch. 1 (pp. 1-33).
Stocking (1991): pp. 144-185.
Stocking: pp. 1-14 and Ch. 3 (pp. 84-123).
Stocking: Ch. 5 (pp. 179-232).

"False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened." (Charles R. Darwin [1809-1882], The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871 [1981 Princeton University Press edition, with Introduction by John T. Bonner and Robert M. May], Chapter 21, page 385).

"Whatever the controversies that surround him, Charles Darwin was certainly the most important natural scientist of the past century; he may become the most important social scientist of the next. His great insight--that humans are animals and that their behavior, like that of all animals, is shaped by evolution--is now making its way into social theory. In economics, linguistics, anthropology and psychology, scholars are attempting to see how our evolved nature, interacting with particular environments, generates the ways we trade and speak, live with others and with ourselves [stress added]." (The Wall Street Journal, May 27, 1999, page A24).

Interesting (And Somewhat Appropriate) Web Sites Are:

http://kroeber.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/bio/tylor.htm [Edward Burnett Tylor]
http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory.htm [Anthropology Theory from Indiana University]
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/darwin/dar.html [On Darwin]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Darwin116.html [1993 Urbanowicz on Darwin presentation]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinPhil108.htm [1999 Urbanowicz"Darwin" web paper]
http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-the-species/ [C. Darwin} Origin of Species]


WEEK 4. 9/13/99 + 9/15/99} Spencer, Morgan, Tylor et al. continued, into the 20th Century.
Preliminary discussion of your term paper topic interests. [TO BE ASSIGNED: 1/2 the class on 9/20/99 and 1/2 on 9/22/99. WRITING ASSIGNMENT #1 [10%] DUE 9/20/99 or 9/22/99.

Required Reading in: Langness: Chapter 2 (pp. 50-73).

"Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] is very often cited as the 'father' of American archaeology, and he certainly attempted one of the first archaeological explanations of the question ["Who Got here First?"] when he wrote in his famous 'Notes on Virginia' (1787) about an Indian mound that he had excavated many years before. However, his strongest evidence to support his belief in an Asian origin (via the Bering Strait) of the Native Americans was from his study of Indian languages. He cited the diversity of these languages as proof that they had been here a long time." (Stephen William, 1992, "Who Got To America First?" reprinted in Anthropology Explored: The Best Of Smithsonian Anthro Notes, 1998, edited by Ruth O. Selig and Marilyn R. London, pages 141-149, page 144)

"The eagerness and energy of the [19th century] amateurs gradually won a place for their subject as an independent science. A museum of ethnology was established in Hamburg in 1850; the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard was founded in 1866; the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1873; the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879. Tylor was made Reader in Anthropology at Oxford in 1884. The first American professor was appointed in 1886. But in the nineteenth century there were not a hundred anthropologists in the whole world. The total number of anthropological Ph.D.'s granted in the United States prior to 1920 was only 53. Before 1930 only four American universities gave the doctorate in anthropology [stress added]." (Clyde Kluckhohn, 1949, Mirror For Man: The Relation of Anthropology To Modern Life, page 6.)

"The ability of anthropologists to get us to take what they say seriously has less to do with either a factual look or an air of conceptual elegance than it has to do with their capacity to convince us what they say is a result of their having actually penetrated (or, if you prefer, been penetrated by) another form of life, one way or another, truly 'being there.' And that, persuading us that this offstage miracle has occurred, is where the writing comes in." Clifford Geertz (1988) Works And Lives: The Anthropologist As Author

"In North America, anthropology among the social sciences has a unique character, owing in large part to the natural -science (rather than social science) background of...." Franz Boas [1858-1942], Frederic Ward Putnam [1839-1915], and John Wesley Powell [1834-1902]. Franz Boas was "educated in physics, was not the first to teach anthropology in the United States, but it was her and his students, with their insistence on scientific rigor, who made such courses a common part of college and university curricula." Frederic Ward Putnam was "a zoologist specializing in the study of bords and fishes and permanent secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, [and he] made a decision in 1875 to devote himself to the promotion of anthropology. Through his efforts many of the great anthropology museums were established." John Wesley Powell "was a geologist and founder of the United States Geological Survey, but he also carried out ethnographic and linguistic research (his classification of Indian languages north of Mexico is still consulted by scholars today). In 1879, he founded the Bureau of American Ethnology (ultimately absorbed by the Smithsonioan Institution), thereby establishing anthropology within the United States Government." (William A. Haviland, 1999, Cultural Anthropology, 9th edition, page 25.)

"In 1894, Frank Hamilton Cushing [1857-1900], head of the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology, came to Philadelphia. He had come to visit the exhibits of the newly opened anthropological museum at the University of Pennsylvania. A reporter from the Philadelphia Press nipped at his heels as he toured the galleries. Cushing was a minor celebrity in the world of anthropology and ethnology. The Philadelphia Press reporter wrote of him: 'No one has done so much to read the every-day lives of the pre-historic people of America from the remains found and his skill in this direction is almost uncanny [stress added]." (Steven Conn, 1998, Museums And American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926, page 3.)

Interesting (And Somewhat Appropriate) Web Sites Are:

http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/catal.html [Ian Hodder's Çatalhöyük site]
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/~nktg/wintro/ [Archaeology: An Introduction by Kevin Greene]
http://www.culture.fr/gvpda.htm [20,000 year old cave paintings]
http://www.scanet.org/ [Society for California Archaeology]


WEEK 5. 9/20/99 or 9/22/99} DISCUSSION OF WRITING ASSIGNMENT #1 (5%) (1/2 class each day: Class assignments will have been made on 9/15/99 for this week).


WEEK 6. 9/2799 + 9/29/99} 19th/20th Century Reaction(s) & REVIEW on Wednesday 9/29/99 (including Franz Boas and François Péron and others!)

Required Reading in: Langness: Repeat Ch 2 (pp. 50-73).
Required Reading in: Bohannan & Glazer: #4,5,6, & 7 (pp. 79-139).

"In the United States anthropology began in the 19th century when a number of dedicated amateurs went into the field to gain a better understanding of what many European Americans still regarded a 'primitive people.' Exemplifying their emphasis on firsthand observation is Frank Hamilton Cushing [1857-1900], who lived amonf the Zuni Indians for 4 years.... Among these founders of North American anthropology were a number of women whose work was highly influential among those who spoke out in the 19th century in favor of women's rights. One of these pioneering anthropologists was Matilda Cox Stevenson [1849-1915], who also did fieldwork among the Zuni. in 1885, she founded the Women's Anthropological Society, the first professional association for women scientists. Three years later, the Bureau of American Ethnology hired her, making her one of the first women in the United States to receive a full-time position in science." (William A. Haviland, 1999, Cultural Anthropology, 9th edition, page 7.)

"Boas' name, work, philosophy, and personality dominated American anthropology during the first two decades of the 20th century, only to be replaced in the next three decades by the dozens of his students who became illustrious scholars in the field. To them he was a mentor and friend, paterfamilias and colleague." (D. Hunter & P. Whitten, Editors, 1976, Encyclopedia of Anthropology, page 62)

"The three dominant themes on behavior for a good part of the [20th] century were Freudianism, which said aberrant behavior was produced by the childhood environment; Boasism, which said behavior was produced by the cultural environment; and behaviorism, which said behavior resulted from environmental conditioning and learning. All were united in enthroning the environment as the determinant of human behavior and in relegating biological inheritance to insignificance. This three-pronged environmentalism was the accepted wisdom that was taught in all universities and that informed serious writing on human behavior--social problems, psychological problems, mental illness--or normal child development. Professor [Henry] Higgins may have run amok, but he had also taken over--and remained in control until only recently [stress added]." William Wright, 1998, Born That Way: Genes, Behavior, Personality, page 170.

PLEASE read any one of the following items from the selections on RESERVE:

Any appropriate selection in U. Gacs et al.
Bidney: Ch 8 (pp. 215-249).
Darnell: #20 (pp. 260-273).
Geertz (1988): Ch. 1 (pp. 1-24).
Golde: pp. 293-331.
Harris: Ch 9 + 10 (pp. 250-300) or Harris Ch. 18 (pp. 464-513).
Hays: Ch 23-29 (pp. 227-305).
Honigman: Ch 15 (pp. 637-716).
Kardiner & Preble: pp. 95-116 or pp. 117-139 and pp. 163-177.
Kuper: Ch 7 (pp. 204-226).
Mead & Bunzel: pp.477-484 & 617-628 or pp. 458-507.
Moore: pp. 113-139.
Montagu: #18 (pp. 315-319) or Montagu #20 (pp. 344-391).
Silverman: Ch. 2 (pp. 35-65) or Ch. 4 (pp. 101-139).
Voget: Ch 13 (pp. 480-538).

Interesting (And Somewhat Appropriate) Web Sites Are:

http://www.andrews.edu/MDLG/german/german-american/famous/B/boas_franz/ [Franz Boas]
http://phoenicia.nmsu.edu/minds/Summaries/boas_109006_URL_Original.html [Jay Ruby on Franz Boas]
http://encyclopedia.com/articles/01602.html [on Franz Boas]
http://www.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/cultural/biography/index.shtml [F. Boas & Others! From A->Z]


WEEK 7. 10/4/99 + 10/6/99} EXAM I [25%] on MONDAY October 4, 1999 and then into 20th Century Reactions and more of Comte-->Durkheim-->Malinowski+ - Exam I based on Langness (pp. xi-73) and Bohannan and Glazer pp. 3-139 and pp. 553-554 and the quotations referred to above in this syllabus. The readings from Reserve will not be on the Exam. If you have the time, for Wednesday's 10/6/99 meeting, please read: Bohannan & Glazer: # 14, 15, 16, & 17 (pages 229-293). These B&G selections, however, will not be on EXAM I.

"The history of anthropology places us in the presence of an infinitely varied and complex reality, and we are indeed forced to recognize that we shall acquire a knowledge of it only at the price of long, methodical and collective efforts, as in the case of the natural phenomena presented to our senses. As soon as we contemplate societies different from that in which everything seems clear to us because everything is familiar, we meet at every step problems which we are incapable of resolving by common sense, aided only by thought and by current knowledge of 'human nature'. The facts which disconcert us surely obey laws, but what are they? We cannot guess. In one sense, social reality presents more difficulties to scientific research than does the physical world, because, even supposing that static laws are known, the state of society at any given moment is never intelligible except through the prior evolution of which it is the present outcome; and how rare are the cases where the historical knowledge of this past is so complete and so certain that nothing indispensable is missing! [stress added]" Lucien Lévy-Bruhl [1857-1939], 1903, La Morale et la sciences des moeurs [Ethics and Moral Science], in Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1972) by Jean Cazeneuve, pages 24-25.

"The ability to understand very different kinds of people is often related to an innate lack of set values and standards. It is no accident that a great novelist like Balzac [1799-1850], who could penetrate and portray with impartial accuracy the character of bankers, prostitutes, and artists, was a relativist of psychopathic proportions. It is also no accident that the most successful field worker in the history of anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski [1884-1942], was the most eccentric and controversial figure ever to enter the field of anthropology [stress added]" Abraham Kardiner and Edward Preble, 1961, They Studied Man, page 140.

"The ethnographic method has long been associated with Malinowski, who repeatedly claimed credit for its invention. But while Malinowski--through his many students--was clearly responsible for establishing local, village-based research as the anthropological norm in Britain, claims that he single-handedly developed the ethnographic method during his fieldwork in the Trobriands are exaggerated. As Stocking (1983 [Observers And Observed: Essays on Anthropological Fieldwork, pages 70-120] has shown, Malinowski was at best only one of a number of fieldworkers who had been experimenting with systematic village-based research for several years; he was certainly not the first. But as a prolific and talented writer, who was equally adept at self-promotion, he transformed the discipline in Britain in a single generation [stress added]." (Robert L. Welsch, 1998, An American Anthropologist in Melanesia: A.B. Lewis and the Joseph N. Field South Pacific Expedition 1909-1913, pages 558-559.)


WEEK 8. 10/11/99 + 10/13/99} Comte-->Durkheim/Van Gennep-->Mauss-->Lévi-Strauss and British Social Anthropology, American Cultural Anthropology, as well as French anthropologie.

Required Reading in: Langness Ch 3 & 4 (pp. 74-138).
Required Reading in: Bohannan & Glazer: # 10,11, 12, 13 (pp. 172-228).
Required Reading in: Bohannan & Glazer: #18 & 19 (pp. 294-316).

"From Montesquieu through Comte to Durkheim and his school, the dominant philosophical themes in French social thought were thus Progressivism and natural law. After World War II, however, Lévi-Strauss initiated the first major change of direction of French anthropological thought, retaining the belief in natural law but at least partially ignoring the Progressivism of his predecessors. His structuralism is in theory a universailist doctrine, which seeks to identify what is common to the thinking of all people everywhere." (William Y. Adams, 1998, The Philosophical Roots of Anthropology, page 375.)

"Scientific explanation consists not in moving from the complex to the simple but in the replacement of a less intelligible complexity by one which is more so." (Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1962, The Savage Mind, 1968 edition, page 248)

PLEASE read any one of the following items from the selections on RESERVE:

Any appropriate selection in U. Gacs et al.
Darnell: #31 (pp. 426-439).
Hayes & Hayes: Any Chapter.
Hinsley: pp. 262-292.
Kardiner & Preble: pp. 140-162 and pp. 178-186.
Kuper: Ch. 1 (pp. 13-50) or Ch. 2 (pp. 51-88).
Malefijt: Ch 10 (pp. 181-214).
Montagu Selection #30: pp. 467-486.
Naroll & Naroll: Ch 6 (pp. 185-215).
Powdermaker: Ch 2 (pp. 33-45).
Silverman: Ch. 5 (pp. 141-168).
Stocking: Ch. 6 (pp. 232-297).

Interesting (And Somewhat Appropriate) Web Sites Are:

http://www.mead2001.org [Margaret Mead Web Site]
http://cpnss.lse.ac.uk/darwin/evo/freeman.htm [Derek Freeman]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/elab/welcome/ [E-Lab} Ethnographics Laboratory, University of Southern California]
http://www.aau.dk/~etnojens/etnogrp/anitaslist.html [A. Cohen-Williams' List Anthro/Arch WWW Sites]
http://varenne2.tc.columbia.edu/www/Class/bib/levstcld0_bib.html [Lévi-Strauss]
http://eddie.cso.uiuc.edu/Durkheim/ [Durkheim Home Page]

"MARGARET MEAD. The century's foremost woman anthropologist, Margaret Mead [1901-1978] was an American icon. On dozens of field trips to study the ways of primitive [sic] societies, she found evidence to support her strong belief that cultural conditioning, not genetics, molded human behavior. That theme was struck most forcefully in Mead's 1928 classic, Coming of Age in Samoa. It described an idyllic pre-industrial society, free of sexual restraint and devoid of violence, guilt and anger. Her portrait of free-loving primitives [sic!] shocked contemporaries and inspired generations of college students--especially during the 1960s sexual revolution. But it may have been too good to be true. While few question Mead's brilliance or integrity, subsequent research showed that Samoan society is no more or less uptight than any other. It seems Mead accepted as fact tribal gossip embellished by adolescent Samoan girls happy to tell the visiting scientist what she wanted to hear [stress added]." Leon Jaroff, Time, March 29, 1999, page 183.

"It's often said that academic politics are particularly nasty because the stakes are so low. But in the debate over Margaret Mead, stirred by Australian anthropologist Derek Freeeman, the stakes are high indeed. Mead, of course, is the iconic figure of American anthropology, best known for her influential book 'Coming of Age in Samoa.' That book, which portrayed primitive life in American Samoa as a wonderland of casual sex, has been standard reading in the social sciences since its appearance in 1928. Mr. Feeeman interrupted the near-universal acclamation of Mead with his 1983 bombshell, 'Margaret Mead In Samoa,' which laid waste to her portrayal of 1920s Samoan society. Mr. Freeman's book was denounced by a vote of the American Anthropological Association, and no fewer than eight books on either side of the controversy have followed since. Mr. Freeman is now back in the fray with 'The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research' (Westview, 279 pages, $24). This time, her turns to the question of what Mead actually did in Samoa. Using Mead's archived letters and field notes--as well as a taped interview with one of her Samoan informants, now an elderly woman--he seeks to unravel how, exactly, she arrived at her unfounded results. And unfounded they were. Mead's book was, in Mr. Freemans words, 'a fictitious sexual utopia.'" (David Andrew Price, 1999, Coming a Cropper in Samoa. The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 1999, page A17.)


WEEK 9. 10/18/99 + 10/20/99} Neo-Evolution, Cultural Ecology, & Modernism; and please remember: Preliminary Term Paper Topic DUE, WA#2, on MON 10/25/99.

"When you ferret out something for yourself, piecing the clues together unaided, it remains for the rest of your life in some way truer than facts you are merely taught, and freer from onslaughts of doubt." Colin Fletcher, 1968, The Man Who Walked Through Time, p. 109.

Required Reading in: Bohannan & Glazer: # 20, 21, 22, 23, & 24 (pp. 317-403)

PLEASE read any one of the following items from the selections on RESERVE:

Hinsley: pp. 81-123.
Harris: Ch 22 (pp. 634-653) or Ch. 23 (pp. 654-687).
Honigman: Ch 5 (pp. 179-239).
Marcus & Fischer : Ch 2 (pp. 17-44).
Montagu Selection #35: pp. 539-565.
Naroll & Naroll: Ch 8 (pp. 247-279).
Silverman: Ch. 6 (pp. 171-206) or Ch. 7 (pp. 209-252).
Stocking: pp. 437-441.
Voget: Ch. 17 (pp. 676-696).

Interesting (And Somewhat Appropriate) Web Sites Are:

http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmnh/start.htm#anthro[Anthropology "button"]
http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/culture-index.html [Culture]
http://ash.lab.r1.fws.gov [Forensic Science]
http://www.csuchico.edu/anth/ABFA/ [Located in the Department of Anthropology at CSU, Chico]


 

WEEK 10. 10/25/99 + 10/27/99} Symbolism, Modernism, Reflexivity, & Post-Modernism; Your Preliminary Term Paper Topic DUE, WA#2, on MON 10/25/99; FOR NEXT WEEK: 1/2 the class to be assigned for 11/1/99 and 1/2 for 11/3/99 and DISCUSSION OF YOUR INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH TOPICS.

Required Reading in: Langness: Ch 5, 6, & 7 (pp. 139-217).
Required Reading in: Bohanan & Glazer: #25 (pp. 405-421).
Required Reading in: Bohanan & Glazer: # 28 & 29 (pp. 501-552).

"And so for anthropology, you are studying not just as an observer but also as a participant; you are not just a member of the audience, you are also on the stage. To understand the Nuer, you've got to learn to think as the Nuer, to feel as a Nuer, in a kind of way to be a Nuer. And this can't be done in any kind of scientific technique; and this is why the anthropologist I think is in a very peculiar position because he's trying to interpret what he sees not just with the head but with his own personality, with his heart as well." (Sir Edward Evans- Pritchard, 1902-1973)

"Just as in dress, any attempt to make oneself conspicuous by adopting some peculiar and unusual fashion is the sign of a small mind, so in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words springs from a puerile and pedantic pretension." (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne [1533-1592] French philosopher/essayist), Essays, translated by J.M. Cohen, 1958, page 80).

"Postmodernism (Pomo) is an intellectual movement or orientation that promotes itself as the antithesis of modernism. The term itself was introduced by architects in the late 1940s. Š Of the many intellectual strands that run through postmodernism, the most prominent and important is the disparagement of Western science and technology." Marvin Harris, 1999, Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times, page 153.

"Perhaps the lesson about social theorizing won with the greatest recent effor is that intellectual practises cannot escape being affected by the concepts with and through which thought proceeds. Consequently, describers must be reflective, trying to be as clear about the work they intend their concepts to accomplish as they are about the picture they wish to paint." (David Hakken, 1999, Cyborgs@Cyberspace? An Ethnographer Looks to the Future, page 3).

PLEASE read any one of the following items from the selections on RESERVE:

Clifford & Marcus: pp. 1-26.
Daniel & Peck (1996): pp. 1-33.
Darnell: #25 (pp. 322-329).
di Leonardo: pp. 1-48.
Fox (1994): Ch. 17 (pp. 341-349) and Ch. 20 (pp. 363-380).
Fox (1997): pp. 13-15 and pp. 161-199.
Geertz (1995): Ch. 5 (pp. 96-135).
Hakken (1999): Ch. 7 (pp. 179-211)
Harris (1968): Ch. 20: pp. 568-604.
Harris (1999): Ch. 1 [pp. 19-29] and Ch. 153-160.
Honigman: Ch 6 (pp. 241-288) or Ch. 13 (pp. 579-612).
Hays: Ch 36, 37, & 38 (pp. 390-427).
Kuper: Ch 7 (pp. 204-226).
Malefijt: Ch 14 (pp. 325-347).
Marcus: Ch. 2 (pp. 57-78) or Ch. 10 (pp. 231-253).
Moore: pp. 228-247.
Naroll & Naroll: Ch 7 (pp. 217-245).
Voget: Ch 20 (pp. 786-805). 

"Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it!" (Molière, pseudonym for Jean Baptiste Poquelin [1622-1673]).

Interesting (And Somewhat Appropriate) Web Sites Are:

http://www.math.unl.edu/~jfisher/femanthro/overview.html [Feminist Anthropology Theory Matrix]
http://www.csus.edu/anth/html/seasian.html [Digital Ethnography Project from CSU, Sacramento]
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/gessler/ [Culture and Computational Anthropology]


WEEK 11. 11/1/99 or 11/3/99} DISCUSSION OF YOUR INDIVIDUAL TERM PAPER interests [approximately 1/2-the-class each day].

"Long after I became involved in fossil hunting, but while my father and I were still cleaning antlers, I came across a manuscript of a lecture he had given, in California, I think. One sentence arrested my attention: 'The past is the key to our future.' I felt as if I were reading something I had written; it expressed my own conviction completely [stress added]." Richard Leakey & Roger Lewin, 1992, Origins Reconsidered: In Search Of What Makes Us Human, page xv.


WEEK 12. 11/8/99 + 11/10/99} GENERAL DISCUSSIONS and REVIEW FOR EXAM II (25%) on WED 11/10/99. Term Paper Presentation Order (to BEGIN ON 11/15/99) Distributed on 11/8/99.


WEEK 13. 11/15/99 + 11/17/99} Term Paper Presentations/Discussions Begin (Work-in-Progress) [and the 98th Annual Meeting of the the American Anthropological Association meets in Chicago, Illinois, November 17->21, 1999].

"Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess." J. W. Von Goethe [1749-1832].


WEEK 14. 11/22/99 (Monday) through 11/26/99 (Friday): THANKSGIVING BREAK!


WEEK 15. 11/29/99 + 12/31/99 Term Paper Presentations/Discussions Continue

"Let every man [or woman!] judge by himself [or herself!!], by what he himself read, not by what others tell him [or her!!!]." Albert Einstein [1879-1955], 1934 statement.

WEEK 16. 12/6/99 + 12/8/99 Term Paper Presentations/Discussions Continue.

"Seven specific hurdles and four epistemological issues with particular salience to anthropological cyberspace ethnography have been listed. Yet the stories anthropologists are able to tell have always depended on

  • The Problems we choose,
  • The points at which we enter the field,
  • The ways we draw intellectual and social boundaries,
  • The levels of our units of study,
  • Our practises in the field, and
  • The terms we emply to describe those experiences.

Hurdles and issues like these were problematic in the Malinowskian era as well; we just weren't aware of it. Thus, cyberspace ethnography is no more (and no less) at risk of collapse under the critique of ethnography than is any other ethnographic practise." (David Hakken, 1999, Cyborgs@Cyberspace? An Ethnographer Looks to the Future, page 67.

WEEK 17. 12/13/99 [MON] Term Paper Discussions CONCLUDE and FINAL MEETING SCHEDULED FROM 6->7:50pm and TERM PAPER DUE (25%)

NOTE: "What C.S. Lewis [1898-1963] called the 'snobbery of chronology' encourages us to presume that just because we happen to have lived after our ancestors and can read books which give us some account of what happened to them, we must also know better than them. We certainly have more facts at our disposal. We have more wealth, both personal and national, better technology, and infinitely more skilful ways of preserving and extending our lives. But whether we today display more wisdom or common humanity is an open question, and as we look back to discover how people coped with the daily difficulties of existence a thousand [or less!] years ago, we might also consider whether, in all our sophistication, we could meet the challenges of their world with the same fortitude, good humour, and philosophy" [stress added]." (Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger, 1999, The Year 1000: What Life Was Like At The Turn of the First Millennium - And Englishman's World, page 201.)

"No matter how much I admire our schools, I know that no university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself." (Louis L'Amour, 1989, The Education Of A Wandering Man, page 3)

# # #


CRITERIA OF WRITING PROFICIENCY:

For the purpose of this class (ANTH 296/ANTH 296H), the minimal definition of "Writing Proficiency" encompasses all three of the levels described below. It is expected that anyone who receives a grade of "C-" or better in this class has achieved these levels of writing proficiency.

Level #1: Minimally, writing proficiency begins with the ability to construct meaningful sentences that follow the conventional rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling; exhibit appropriate choice of words; and utilize sentence structures that clearly, efficiently, and precisely convey the writer's ideas and relevant information to readers who observe the same conventions of writing.

Level #2: At the next level, writing proficiency entails the constructing and arranging of sentences into paragraphs that:

a. Develop arguments logically.
b. Present a body of information systematically.
c. Express an idea effectively.
d. Provide a coherent answer to a question.
e. Describe a given phenomenon effectively.
f. Summarize a larger body of information or abstract its essence accurately.
g. And/or otherwise achieve a specific objective efficiently and effectively.

Level #3: Finally, writing proficiency at the third level requires the construction and arrangement of paragraphs in a such a manner that the reader is led successively through the intent or the objective of the paper, the implementation of the objective, and the conclusion which summarizes and meaningfully relates the body of the paper to its objective.

NOTE: For additional suggestions about "Writing" please go to http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/syllabi/SYL_13-F99.html and "click" on WRITING ASSIGNMENT #1 and WRITING ASSIGNMENT #2 for that ANTH 13 (Human Cultural Diversity) class. Also see: http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/libguidt.htm [Writing Tools for Anthropology Students]

Please note the following:

"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his [or her!] sentences short, or that he [or she] avoid all detail and treat his [and her] subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."

"There you have a short, valuable essay on the nature and beauty of brevity--sixty three words [not counting those in the brackets] that could change the world." (E.B. White, commenting on the original words of William Strunk Jr. in The Elements of Style, 3rd edition, 1979: xiv).

To return to the beginning of this electronic syllabus please click here.


NOTE: Although this is not a web-based course, if you have access to the WWW (and you should), you might find some of the following sites of value (and many of these have been already referred to above):

http://www.uncwil.edu/stuaff/career/anthropology.htm [Anthropology jobs]
http://www.unipv.it/webbio/dfantrop.htm [A Massive Anthropology site!]
http://www.csuchico.edu/lbib/anthropology/anthropology.html [Check out CSU Chico]
http://www.csuchico.edu/anth/EthnoLab/ [Department of Anthropology, CSU, Chico, Ethnographic Lab]
http://www.csuchico.edu/lref/guides/rbs/anthro.htm [Anthropology Resources beginning with CSU, Chico]
http://www.tamu.edu/anthropology/news.html [Anthropology in The News]
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/anthropology/svcp/ [The Silicon Valley Cultures Project]
http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory.htm [Anthropology Theory from Indiana University]
http://varenne2.tc.columbia.edu/www/Class/bib/levstcld0_bib.html [Lévi-Strauss]
http://eddie.cso.uiuc.edu/Durkheim/ [Durkheim Home Page]
http://www.mead2001.org [Margaret Mead Web Site]
http://cpnss.lse.ac.uk/darwin/evo/freeman.htm [Derek Freeman]
http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/environmental_studies/bateson.html [Gregory Bateson]
http://professionals.com/~chepc//ct_1095/ctssb1_1095.html [Gregory Bateson as UC Regent]
http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/book/maketitlepage [Books on Line]
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/darwin/dar.html [On Darwin]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/TeachingT.html [1999 Urbanowicz item on "Teaching"]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/syllabi/SYL_13-F99.html [1999 Urbanowicz Fall ANTH 13 Guidebook]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinPhil108.htm [1999 Urbanowicz"Darwin" web paper]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Darwin116.html [1993 Urbanowicz on Darwin presentation]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Pub_Papers/4field.html [1992 Urbanowicz History of Anthropology paper]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Unpub_Papers/1977SETIPaper.html [1977 Urbanowicz paper on SETI]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/NatureCulture1970.html [1970 Urbanowicz on various "Ancestors"]
http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Malinowski1968.html [1968 Urbanowicz on Malinowski paper]
http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-the-species/ [C. Darwin} Origin of Species]
http://mobydicks.com/lecture/CharlesDarwinhall/wwwboard.html [Interesting Darwin "lecture hall"]
http://kroeber.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/bio/tylor.htm [Edward Burnett Tylor]
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/MSS/Haddon.html [Alfred Cort Haddon: 1855-1940]
http://www.human-nature.com/science-as-culture/whittle.html [W.H.Rivers Rivers]
http://www.andrews.edu/MDLG/german/german-american/famous/B/boas_franz/ [Franz Boas]
http://phoenicia.nmsu.edu/minds/Summaries/boas_109006_URL_Original.html [Jay Ruby on Franz Boas]
http://encyclopedia.com/articles/01602.html [on Franz Boas]
http://www.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/cultural/biography/index.shtml [F. Boas & Others! From A->Z]
http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmnh/start.htm#anthro[Anthropology "button"]
http://www.comma2000.com/max-gluckman/ [Max Gluckman]
http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/culture-index.html [Culture]
http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/maria/fletcher.html [Alice Fletcher: 1838-1923]
http://www.truman.edu/academics/ss/faculty/tamakoshil/index.html [Anthropology Field Study]
http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/catal.html [Ian Hodder's Çatalhöyük site]
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/~nktg/wintro/ [Archaeology: An Introduction by Kevin Greene]
http://www.culture.fr/gvpda.htm [20,000 year old cave paintings]
http://www.precolumbian.org/lindaschele.htm [Linda Schele]
http://kroeber.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/bio/schele.htm [Linda Schele]
http://www.scanet.org/ [Society for California Archaeology]
http://ash.lab.r1.fws.gov [Forensic Science]
http://www.csuchico.edu/anth/ABFA/ [Located in the Department of Anthropology at CSU, Chico]
http://www.hti.umich.edu/e/ehraf/ [Electronic HRAF! - begin from CSU, Chico]
http://www.oakland.edu/~dow/anthap.htm [The ANTHAP - Applied Anthropology Computer Network]
http://www.usc.edu/dept/elab/welcome/ [E-Lab} Ethnographics Laboratory, University of Southern California]
http://home.worldnet.fr/clist/Anthro/Texts/frame.html [Anthropology Resources on the Internet]
http://www.wcsu.ctstateu.edu/socialsci/antres.html [Anthro Internet Resources} Western Conn. State Uni.]
http://www.aau.dk/~etnojens/etnogrp/anitaslist.html [A. Cohen-Williams' List Anthro/Arch WWW Sites]
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu:80/index.html [UC Santa Barbara Anthropology: Nice "jumping off" location]
http://rsl.ox.ac.uk/isca/marcus.banks.01.html [Interactive Multimedia by Marcus Banks]
http://www.math.unl.edu/~jfisher/femanthro/overview.html [Feminist Anthropology Theory Matrix]
http://www.csus.edu/anth/html/seasian.html [Digital Ethnography Project from CSU, Sacramento]
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/gessler/ [Culture and Computational Anthropology]
http://www.uncwil.edu/stuaff/career/anthropology.htm [Anthropology Careers]
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/libguidt.htm [Writing Tools for Anthropology Students]
http://www.csuchico.edu/cont/ids/index.html [CSU, Chico Office of Experiential Education} Internships+]

AND PLEASE SEE http://www.csuchico.edu/lref/guides/rbn/hraf.html (in The Meriam Library and which states the following: "The eHRAF Collection of Ethnography, available on the web, is a small but growing collection of HRAF full text and graphical materials supplemented, in some cases, with additional research through approximately the 1980's. The eHRAF Collection of Ethnography includes approximately 48 cultures, and regular additions are planned." (And See http://www.hti.umich.edu/e/ehraf/ ).

ALSO SEE "Anthropology On The Internet: A Review And Evaluation Of Networked Resources" by Brian Schwimmer, 1996, Current Anthropology, Vol. 37, No. 3, pages 561-568; also see a hypertext version of this paper, with linkable URLs at: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/ca/papers/schwimmer/intro.html

NOTE: For additional URLs, not listed above, please go to http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/syllabi/SYL_13-F99.html and have a look.

Some Additional THOUGHTS (42) To Consider and Discuss in Fall 1999 (some of which have already been repeated above)

"I say my philosophy, not as claiming authorship of ideas which are widely diffused in modern thought, but because the ultimate selection and synthesis must be a personal responsibility." (Sir Arthur Eddington [1882-1944], The Philosophy of Physical Science, 1949: viii)

"That writer does the most, who gives his [or her!] reader the most knowledge, and takes from him [or her!!] the least time." (Charles Colton [1780-1832], 1825 statement.

"The palest ink is better than the best memory." (Chinese proverb)

"Learning can be seen as the acquisition of information, but before it can take place, there must be interest; interest permeates all endeavors and precedes learning. In order to acquire and remember new knowledge, it must stimulate your curiosity in some way." (Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety, 1989: 138)

"A quotation is a polished prefabricated unit of thought or discourse which has many connotations and associations built in to it. It is thus like the text for a sermon, serving as a point of departure for many lines of thought." (Alan L. Mackay, 1977 Statement)

"When you ferret out something for yourself, piecing the clues together unaided, it remains for the rest of your life in some way truer than facts you are merely taught, and freer from onslaughts of doubt." Colin Fletcher, 1968, The Man Who Walked Through Time, p. 109.

"In the field of observation, chance only favors those who are prepared." (Louis Pasteur [1822-1895])

"Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess." J. W. Von Goethe [1749-1832].

"....descriptions vary with the conceptual or theoretical framework within which they are couched. To evaluate a description properly one must know something about the theoretical framework that brought it into being." (D. Kaplan and R. Manners, Culture Theory, 1972: 22)

"The history of anthropology places us in the presence of an infinitely varied and complex reality, and we are indeed forced to recognize that we shall acquire a knowledge of it only at the price of long, methodical and collective efforts, as in the case of the natural phenomena presented to our senses. As soon as we contemplate societies different from that in which everything seems clear to us because everything is familiar, we meet at every step problems which we are incapable of resolving by common sense, aided only by thought and by current knowledge of 'human nature'. The facts which disconcert us surely obey laws, but what are they? We cannot guess. In one sense, social reality presents more difficulties to scientific research than does the physical world, because, even supposing that static laws are known, the state of society at any given moment is never intelligible except through the prior evolution of which it is the present outcome; and how rare are the cases where the historical knowledge of this past is so complete and so certain that nothing indispensable is missing! [stress added]" Lucien Lévy-Bruhl [1857-1939], 1903, La Morale et la sciences des moeurs [Ethics and Moral Science], in Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1972) by Jean Cazeneuve, pages 24-25.

"The ability of anthropologists to get us to take what they say seriously has less to do with either a factual look or an air of conceptual elegance than it has to do with their capacity to convince us what they say is a result of their having actually penetrated (or, if you prefer, been penetrated by) another form of life, one way or another, truly 'being there.' And that, persuading us that this offstage miracle has occurred, is where the writing comes in." Clifford Geertz (1988) Works And Lives: The Anthropologist As Author

"Let every man [or woman!] judge by himself [or herself!!], by what he himself read, not by what others tell him [or her!!!]." Albert Einstein [1879-1955], 1934 statement.

"Science is systematized positive knowledge, or what has been taken as such at different ages and in different places" and "The acquisition and systematization of positive knowledge are the only human activities which are truly cumulative and progressive." (George Sarton [1884-1956], Historian of science)

"From an institutional perspective, the significance of ethnography can be attributed to three roles it has played in the professional careers of anthropologists. First, the reading and teaching of exemplary ethnographic texts have been the major means of conveying to students what anthropologists do and what they know. Rather than becoming dated as in other fields, classic works in anthropology, remain vitally relevant, and their materials are a perennial source for the raising of new conceptual and theoretical problems. ... Second, ethnography is a very personal and imaginative vehicle by which anthropologists are expected to make contributions to theoretical and intellectual discussions, both within their discipline and beyond. ... Third, and most importantly ethnography has been the initiatory activity which has launched careers and established reputations" [stress added]. George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, 1986, Anthropology As Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment In The Human Sciences (University of Chicago Press), page 21.

"What we know is a drop. What we don't know is an ocean." (Sir Isaac Newton [1642-1727] The Wall Street Journal, November 1, 1991.)

"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see." (Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965], 1953 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature)

"Anthropology provides a scientific basis for dealing with the crucial dilemma of the world today: how can peoples of different appearance, mutually unintelligible languages, and dissimilar ways of life get along peaceably together? Of course, no branch of knowledge constitutes a cure-all for all the ills of mankind. ... Students who had not gone beyond the horizon of their own society could not be expected to perceive custom which was the stuff of their own thinking. The scientist of human affairs needs to know as much about the eye that sees as the object seen. Anthropology holds up a great mirror to man[kind] and lets him [and her!] look at himself in his infinite variety. This, and not the satisfaction of idle curiosity nor romantic quest, is the meaning of the anthropologist's work.... [stress in original]" Clyde Kluckhohn, 1949, Mirror For Man: The Relation of Anthropology To Modern Life, page 1 and page 10)

"This great world, which some still reckon to be but one example of a whole genus, is the mirror into which we must look if we are to behold ourselves from the proper standpoint." (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne [1533-1592] French philosopher/essayist), Essays, translated by J.M. Cohen, 1958, page 64).

"My view is that knowledge is a rearrangement of experience, in which we put together those experiences that seem to us to belong together, and put them apart from those that do not" (Jacob Bronowski [1908-1984], The Identity of Man, 1966: 26).

"Scientific explanation consists not in moving from the complex to the simple but in the replacement of a less intelligible complexity by one which is more so." (Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1962, The Savage Mind, 1968 edition, page 248)

"Facts are not pure unsullied bits of information; culture also influences what we see and how we see it. Theories, moreover, are not inexorable inductions from facts. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts; the source of imagination is also cultural. (Stephen Jay Gould, American Biologist/Author).

"Facts are the air of science. Without them a man [or a woman!] of science can never rise. Without them your theories are vain surmises. But while you are studying, observing, experimenting, do not remain content with the surface of things. Do not become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin. Seek obstinately for the laws that govern them." (Ivan Pavlov, Russian Physiologist, 1849-1936)

"The cutting edge of knowledge is not in the known but in the unknown, not in knowing but in questioning. Facts, concepts, generalizations, and theories are dull instruments unless they are honed to a sharp edge by persistent inquiry about the unknown." (Ralph H. Thompson [1911-1987] American Educator).

"I say, therefore, that we think with or through ideas and what we call thinking is generally the application of preexisting ideas to a given situation or set of facts. ...When a thing is intelligible you have a sense of participation; when a thing is unintelligible you have a sense of estrangement." (F. Schumacher, 1973, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, page 84).

"Interest is a sense of being involved in some process, actual or potential. ...Interest is not the same as attention. Attention is a simple response to a stimulus--either to a loud bang or (much more powerful) to a feeling of interest. Interest is selective, an expenditure of energy by the interested party. ... Memory is an internally edited record of interests (not of attention, much less of 'events')." (Henry Hay, 1972, The Amateur Magician's Handbook, pp. 2-3.

"We are heading into a century in which the old gods will certainly continue to crumble. As a nation we can no longer simply see ourselves as shades of pale. The new century will be in living color, and it may often speak in languages that are unfamiliar to our ears. Women will walk fully out of the shadows of men's dreams. If we wish to build a new world, we will have to understand the way that worlds are made and how ideas can freeze into dogma" (Caryl Rivers, 1996, Slick Spins And Fractured Facts: How Cultural Myths Distort The News, page xiv)..

"In many crucial ways, the Earth is becoming as small as it appears to orbiting astronauts and cosmonauts. Global communications, universal trends, and common aspirations are making us more alike than we are different. Despite our rich cultural diversity, we gradually are becoming nearly one world. ... We share history. World War II tore us apart. ... We share technology. Communication satellites make it possible for millions to share the information and entertainment that's on television. Satellites have also revolutionized telephone and telefax communication. We sent reporters all over the world, but rarely were they out of reach of a telephone. We share high-speed transportation. Today, it takes less than twenty-four hours to travel between virtually any two points in the world." A. Neurath with Kelley & Walte, 1989, Nearly One World, p.4-6.

"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything." (Charles Kuralt [1934-1997], News reporter and journalist)

"Still, a book [or a syllabus!] is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think." (Louis L'Amour, 1989, Education of A Wandering Man, page 101)

"One of the greatest lessons that can be learned from the history of science is one of humility. Science may indeed be steadily learning more about the structure of the world, but surely what is known is exceedingly small in relation to what is unknown. There is no scientific theory today, not even a law, that may not be modified or discarded tomorrow." (Martin Gardner, 1990, The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry From Mirror Reflections to Superstrings, 3rd edition, page 335).

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and its knowing how to use the information you get. (Attributed to William Feather.)

"The origin of science is the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance." (William Hazlitt [1778-1830], English essayist/critic)

"No matter how much I admire our schools, I know that no university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself." (Louis L'Amour, 1989, The Education Of A Wandering Man, page 3)

"We were getting close to the answer and I was beginning to fly. I could feel my brain cells doing a little tap dance of delight. I was half-skipping, excitement bubbling out of me as we crossed the street. 'I love information. I love information. Isn't this great? God, it's fun...'" (The character Kinsey Milhone, in Sue Grafton, 1990, "G" Is For Gumshoe, page 277)

"My intention is not, however, to [simply] impart information, but to throw the burden of study upon you. If I succeed in teaching you to observe, my aim will be attained." Louis Aggasiz [1807-1873], Swiss-American Scientist.

August Comte (1798-1857) and St. Simon (1760-1825) are the founders of sociology. In 1839, in Volume IV of Cours de Philosophie Positive (or System of Positive Polity), Comte coined the term sociologie to serve as an equivalent to "social physics" (which came from Comte and St. Simon). Comte's schema was: Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology. Anthropologie was the 7th science for Comte for in 1852 he wrote:

"Elle n'était point apprécable avant que ma fondation de la sociologie eut terminé la préparation encyclopédique qu'exigeait l'avénement systématique de la véritable anthropologie, à laquelle il faut conserver son nom sacré de morals. Cette condition finale étant désormais remplie, et m'ayant déjà conduit à construire subjectivement la saine théorie cérébrale, le septieme et dernier degré de la grand hiérarchie abstraite devient aussi caractérise que tous les autres."

An 1875 translation follows:

"The consequences could not be seen, until, by founding Sociology, I was able to add the last group to the Encyclopedic series of the sciences, When this was affected, it was possible to have a systematic basis for an Anthropology, or true science of Man, though this science ought ever to retain its sacred name of morals. Now that this last condition has been fulfilled, and now that it has already enabled me to construct on subjective methods a sound Cerebral Theory, the seventh and last gradation in the Grand Hierarchy of Abstract Science is a distinctively defined as any of the others [ALL STRESS ADDED]" (1874 translation of System of Positive Polity, Vol. II, pages 356-347).

Elsewhere Comte had written:

"Leaving Sociology, it only remains for me to describe the third term of the grand progressive series, which gives us the true encyclopedic inventory: I mean the study of Moral Laws, the necessary goal of all healthy speculation. The field of Morals [NOTE: ANTHROPOLOGY] is at once more special, more complex, and more noble than that of Sociology strictly so called, the exact rank of which has been determined....Morals is the most eminent of the sciences, both because of the superior dignity of its object, Man, from which we get our type of true nobleness, and because, as I am about to explain, of its theoretic plentitudes [ALL STRESS ADDED]."

From Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931): The individual "...who doesn't make up his [or her!] mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasures in life...My business is thinking."

"When we employ the tools of our understanding to think about our own tools of understanding, our thought becomes reflexive and recursive. Human thought is thinking about itself, considering the conditions of its own possibility, and the forms and limits of its own adequacy. ... the reflexiveness or self-applicability of cultural software is one of its most significant features. Human understanding - hence human understanding about understanding - is essentially reflexive and self-referrential. It can use its own tools to think about its own tools, and equally important, it does use its own tools to think about its own tools. Our examination of our cultural software is a reflexive study of a phenomenon already reflexive by nature [stress added]." J.M. Balkin, 1998, Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology, pages 128-129.

"The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive, is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts...." Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871 [1981 Princeton University Press edition, with Introduction by John T. Bonner and Robert M. May], Chapter 3, page 101).

FINALLY, Urbanowicz again adds: "I quote others only the better to express myself." (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne [1533-1592] French philosopher/essayist); or, in another translation: "I only quote others to make myself more explicit." (Essays, translated by J.M. Cohen, 1958, page 52).

To return to the beginning of Week 1 and this course, please click here.

# # #


© BRIEF DISCLAIMER ESSAY for those who make the time to read about these Fall 1999 ANTH 296 / 296H web pages by Dr. Charles F. Urbanowicz, Professor of Anthropology, California State University, Chico, July 12, 1999.

NOTE TO THE STUDENTS: This is actually a very brief "essay" about web-based instruction (which this course is not) and web pages (which you are reading either "electronically" or in the printed syllabus). The World Wide Web is an "electronic organism" which has been created by human beings and as human beings change, the WWW continues to "evolve" over time. Education will radically alter by the time I retire/die and (a) while I try to "keep up" with as much as possible for my students (and myself) I realize that (b) I am behind as soon as I begin! With that in mind, the reader is reminded that (c) ANTH 296 / ANTH 296H (Proseminar in the History of Theory and Method in Anthropology) in Fall 1999 is not a web-based course but is a (d) "traditional" course, taught on the campus of California State University, Chico, to "traditional" (or perhaps a "semi-traditional" group of) Juniors and Senior students (and the occasional Graduate Student) in Butte Hall 319 for a seminar/discussion class. These web pages contain no frames, no Java scripts, no interactive exams, no streaming video, no PowerPointPresentations, and no other "bells-and-whistles" which are current on the WWW but they do contain some "live" links which are appropriate for the course. The WWW is "alive" (as well as this course and, indeed, all education) and evolving over time and please consider the following from Time of July 19, 1999:

"800 Million: Estimated number of pages stored on the World Wide Web as of February [1999], up from about 320 million 15 months earlier [or ~November 1997]. 16%: Proportion of the Web reached by the most comprehensive search erngine, down from 34% for the previous study's best engine [stress added]." (Anon., 1999, Time, July 19, 1999, page 25.)

THE READER MAY WELL ASK: why place this syllabus on the WWW? Why did Urbanowicz go through all-of-the-trouble to place this on the WWW if it is not an interactive course? As The Wall Street Journal on July 20, 1998 pointed out: "It Isn't Entertainment That Makes The Web Shine: It's Dull Data" (Page 1 and page A8). I trust that you are not reading pages of "dull data" but pages of ideas (with some data) that will provide you with background information for your own ideas! I also add that for more than a decade I have been providing students (in various lower-and-upper-division courses) with Guidebooks that have "video notes" and "lecture outlines" for the appropriate courses that semester. Human beings are "visual creatures" and I use NUMEROUS films, slides, and transparencies in my classes and since I am comfortable with the Guidebook format, I continue to place the Fall 1999 Guidebook on "the web" (with numerous links) for students in my Anthropology 13 classes (Human Cultural Diversity). Incidentally, you might be interested in the following (unfortunate) item which I have incorporated in my current ANTH 13 course:

"For many Bay Area students, Independence Day means hot dogs, family picnics, fireworks--and not much else. Out of four dozen teens quizzed in an informal survey in San Francisco, Concord and Pacifica, most knew that the Fourth of July had something to do with America's independence, but less than half could name the country from which we won our freedom. 'Japan or something. China. Somewhere out there on the other side of the world,' said... [a 14 year old and a 17 year old added:] It's like freedom. Some war was fought and we won, so we got our freedom.' As to which country we had been fighting, 'I don't know.... I don't, even, like, have a clue [said a 17 year old 1999 high school graduate]. 'It wouldn't be Canada, would it?' guessed [a 13 year old high school freshman].... 'We're not in school right now, so you asked the wrong kids.' The unscientific survey was conducted at Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco, Sunvalley Mall in Concord and the Linda Mar shopping center in Pacifica. Many of those who correctly identified England as our adversary in the Revolutionary War did so only after some thought. 'Was it somewhere in Europe, like France? Germany? Russia? Let me think' [said a 17 year old 1999 high school graduate].... 'Wasn't it Great Britain? I just had to think.' 'I'm gonna have to go with Spain' [said a 14 year old high school freshman and someone else].... correctly answered that we fought the Revolutionary War before World War II. But was it before or after the Civil War? ... couldn't say. 'After. I think it was after' [said a 14 year old friend and a 19 year old high school graduate] ... who declined to give his last name, said he knew we celebrate the Fourth because it's Independence Day. But the country we were fighting with? 'That I don't (know),' he said. 'I want to say Korea. I'm tripping.' Asked how long ago it might have been...took a guess. 'Like 50 years,' he said. One student wondered aloud whether the Fourth of July was somehow related to Pearl Harbor. Another was not sure whether our independence came before or after the Vietnam War. ... A 1994 study of several thousand eighth- and 12th-graders across the country tested the students' knowledge of basic history. Thirty-nine percent of eighth graders scored at a level considered below their basic proficiency; an even higher number--57 percent--of high school seniors scored below the basic level. The study was conducted by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. Adults may do better. According to a Gallup Poll conducted last weekend, a majority of Americans can correctly identify what the Fourth of July is all about. When asked to name the country from which we gained our independence, 76 percent correctly named Great Britain or England. Nineteen percent were unsure. The results were based on telephone interviews of a randomly selected national sample of 1,016 adults [stress added]." (Emily Gurnon, 1999, Fourth of July: Kids Unclear on Concept. San Francisco Examiner, July 4, pages 1 and A9.)

ALTHOUGH THE ELECTRONIC WORLD is changing very rapidly, and one might question the value of the "printed word" (considering the number of "electronic books" currently on "the web" such as the Bible or Darwin and 1000s of other available from sources such as the INCREDIBLE Books On Line and Project Gutenberg), there will always (I honestly believe as of this writing), a place for the "printed page" that you can hold in your hands, that YOU can read in bed, read outside when the electricity goes off, or read when you can't make an Internet connection to read the Web pages located in cyberspace! In short, while the ephemeral culture of the WWW is extremely important, the tangible culture of a physical object is just as important and I follow some of the words from the United States Library of Congress: Litera scripta manet, or the written word endures! The Internet and the World Wide Web and Cyberspace are changing the very environment "we" all interact in and the "web" points to new resources for all of us (if we make the time to "dig" them out). This is how I have personally envisioned this web-related syllabus (of ~14,265 words): it is a guide to other resources to explore on your own.

To return to the beginning of this electronic syllabus please click here.

© Charles F. Urbanowicz/July 12, 1999} This copyrighted Web Syllabus, printed from http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/syllabi/SYL_296-F99.html, is intended for use by students enrolled at California State University, Chico, in the Fall Semester of 1999 and unauthorized use/publication is strictly prohibited. PLEASE NOTE: when this Web Syllabus was being placed on the CSU, Chico WWW in July 1999, some campus changes were being discussed: as a result, when classes begin on August 23, 1999, this Syllabus may be located at: http://www-new.csuchico.edu/~curban/syllabi/SYL_296-F99.html.


To go to the home page of Charles F. Urbanowicz.

To go to the home page of the Department of Anthropology.

To go to the home page of California State University, Chico.


For more information, please contact Charles F. Urbanowicz
Copyright © 1999 Charles F. Urbanowicz

Anthropology Department, CSU, Chico
12 July 1999 by CFU