Modernity: Institutions, Power, Agency
Fall 2003
Don Kalb
2 credits
An anthropology of modernity starts with blurring the conventional liberal ‘trias’ of state, market and civil society, foundational notions upon which the modern disciplines of economics, political science and sociology are built.
These notions have been seen as basic recipes for modern rule and Western power. But they regularly engender imaginative response from the “people without history” on whom they are imposed from above or by whom they are anxiously emulated “from below”. Anthropological and ethnographic practice is aimed at complicating these modern notions of order by calling in the layers of culture and history, popular praxis and imagination, searching the interstices between apparently distinct institutions, and situating actual economic, political and civic practices in real human communities in time and space.
This two credit course is an advanced introduction to political and economic anthropology with attention (1) for the classics and the classic issues; (2) for the advances in modern anthropological theory and method in respectively the post-War and the post-Wall period; and (3) for the ethnographic archive/experience itself. The course consists of two hours of lectures and two hours of seminars prepared by students each week.
Requirements:
Exam 40%
Research Paper 40%
Class 20%
Week 1
Globalization and Interdiscplinarity: place, space, time and the “variables paradigms”
? Immanuel Wallerstein, Open the Social Sciences, (Stanford, Stanford University Press), 1996
? David Harvey, Cosmpolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils, in Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff,
Millenial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism, (Durham, Duke University Press), 2001, pp. 271-310
? Eric Wolf, Envisioning Power, (Berkeley, University of California Press), 1999, pp. 1-68
? Sherry Ortner, Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties, in Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, Sherry Ortner (eds.),
Culture/Power/History; A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, (Princeton, Princeton University Press), 1994, pp.
372-411
Week 2
The Anthropology of Politics: Classics and Critiques
? Evans Pritchard, Nuer Politics: Structure and System, in Joan Vincent, The Anthropology of Politics, (Oxford,
Blackwell), pp. 34-39
? Sharon Hutchinson, Nuer Ethnicity Militarized, in Ibid., pp. 39-53
? Max Gluckman, The Bridge: Analysis of a Social Situation in Zululand, in Ibid, pp. 53-59
? Ronald Frankenberg, The Bridge Revisited, in Ibid., pp. 59-65
? Talal Asad, Market Model, Class Structure and Consent: A Reconsideration of Swat Political Organization, in
Ibid., pp. 65-82
? Stephen Reyna, Deadly Developments and Phantasmagoric Representations, in Ibid., pp. 301-13
Week 3
The West and the Rest: Visions of the Great Transformation
? Robert Brenner, The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism, in T.H. Ashton (ed.), The Brenner Debate,
Cambridge University Press, 1985
? Robert Brenner, The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism, New Left Review
104, pp. 25-92
? Jack Goody, Civil Society in a Comparative Perspective, in Jack Goody, Food and Love: A Cultural History of
East and West, (London, Verso), 1998, pp. 261-78
Week 4
State Formations and Hegemonies: Domination and Resistance
? John Gledhill, Power and Its Disguises; Anthropological Perspectives on Politics, (London, Pluto Press), 2000, pp.
67-92; 184-214
? John and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, in Joan Vincent (ed.) , Ibid., pp. 203-213

? William Roseberry, Hegemony and the Language of Contention, in Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent (eds.),
Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico. (Durham, Duke
University Press), 1994, pp.
? George Steinmetz, Introduction: Culture and the State, in Steinmetz (ed.), State/Culture: State Formation after the
Cultural Turn, (Ithaca, Cornell University Press), 1999, pp. 1-50
Week 5
“ Development” from Above and from Below
? James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine, in Joan Vincent (ed.), Ibid, pp. 399-409
? Michael Burawoy, “Manufacturing the Global”, Etnography, vol. 2, no. 2, 2001
? Maxine, Molyneux, “Ethnography and Global Processes”, Etnography, vol. 2, no. 2, 2001
? Marc Edelman, Peasants Against Globalization, Vincent (ed.), Ibid., pp. 409-24
? Ted Llewellen, The Anthropology of Globalization, (Westport, Bergin and Garvey), 2002, pp. 61-89
Week 6
Markets: Work Regimes, Family Regimes and Protest Repertoires
? Michael Burawoy, The Politics of Production, (London, Verso), 1985, pp.
? Don Kalb, Expanding Class: Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities, (Durham, Duke University
Press), 1997, pp. 1-34, 259-80
Week 7
Commodity Connections
? Priscilla Stone, A. Haugerud, Peter Little, Commodities and Globalization, Anthropological Perspectives, in
Haugerud, Stone, Little (eds.) Commodities and Globalization: Anthropological Perspectives (Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield publishers), 2000, pp. 1-32
? Jane Collins, Tracing Social Relations in Commodity Chains: The Case of Grapes in Brazil, in Ibid, pp. 97-113
? Nancy Scheper Hughes, The Global Trafic in Human Organs, in Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo (eds.),
The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, (Oxford, Blackwell), 2002, 270-309
? Jean and John Comaroff, Millenial Capitalism: First Thoughts on A Second Coming, in Jean and John Comaroff,
Ibid, pp. 1-57
Week 8
Fantasies of Civil Society
? John and Jean Comaroff (eds.), Introduction: Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa, University of
Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 1-43
? James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st. Century, (London, Zed
Books), 2001, pp. 128-39
? John Gledhill, Power and its Disguises, (London, Pluto), 2000, pp. 92-126
? Steven Sampson, Beyond Transition: rethinkin elite configurations in the Balkans, in Chris Hann, (ed.),
Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia, (London, Routledge), pp. 297-317
? Ruth Mandel, Seeding Civil Society, in Hann, Ibid, pp. 279-97
Week 9
On Suffering
? Michael Taussig, Culture of Terror – Space of Death, in Vincent (ed.), Ibid, pp. 172-87
? Paul Farmer, On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below, in Vincent (ed.), Ibid., pp. 424-38
Week 10
Place, Space, and Diagnostic Ethnography
? Michael Burawoy, Introduction: Reaching for the Global, in Burawoy et. al., Global Ethnography, (Berkeley,
University of California Press), 2000, pp. 1-40
? Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, Beyond Culture: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference, in Gupta and
Ferguson (eds.), Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (Durham, Duke University Press),
1997, pp. 33-51
? Don Kalb, Afterword: Globalism and Postsocialist Prospects, in Hann (ed.), Ibid., pp. 317-34
? Don Kalb, Critical Junctions: Recapturing Anthropology and History, in Don Kalb, Herman Tak (eds.), Critical
Junctions: Pathways beyond the Cultural Turn (Oxford, Berghahn), Forthcoming 2004
? Arjun Appadurai, The Production of Locality, in Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization, (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press), pp. 178-200
? Eric Wolf, Facing Power – Old Insights, New Questions, in Vincent (ed.), Ibid., pp. 222-34

Week 11-12
Exam and Paper Writing
Tutorials
Reading List: required and supplemental
Appadurai, Arjun
Modernity at Large
University of Minnesota Press, 1996
Burawoy, Michael
The Politics of Production
Verso, London, 1985
Burawoy, Michael (et. Al)
Global Ethnography
California U.P, Berkeley, 2000
Burawoy, Michael
“ Manufacturing the Global”
Etnography, vol. 2, no. 2, 2001
Carrier, James (ed.)
Meanings of the Market. The Free Market in Western Culture.
Berg, Oxford, 1997
Carrier, James (ed.)
Occidentalism. Images of the West
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996
Comaroff, Jean
Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People
University of Chicago Press, 1985
Comaroff, Jean; John Comaroff (eds.)
Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism
Duke U.P., Durham, 2001
Comaroff, John; Jean Comaroff (eds.)
Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa
University of Chicago Press, 2000
Escobar, Arturo
Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World
Princeton U.P, 1995
Ferguson, James
The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho.
Minnesota U.P., Minneapolis, 1994
Ferguson, James
Expectations of Modernity, Myths and Meanings of Urban Life in the Zambian Copperbelt
California U.P., Berkeley, 1999
Geertz, Clifford
Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics
Princeton U.P, 2001
Gellner, Ernest
Conditions of Liberty
Penguin, 1996
Geschiere, Peter; Birgit Meyer
“ Globalization and Identity? Dialectics of Flow and Closure”
Development and Change, vol. 29, 1998
Geschiere, Peter
“ Globalization and the power of indeterminate meaning: Witchcraft and Spirit Cultures in Africa and Southeast
Asia”
Development and Change, vol. 29, 1998
Gledhill, John
Power and its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics
London, Pluto Press, 2000

Gupta, Akhil; James Ferguson (eds.)
Culture, Power, Place : Explorations in Critical Anthropology
Duke U.P., Durham, 1998
Gudeman, Stephen
The Anthropology of Economy
Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 2001
Hann, Chris (ed.)
Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition
Cambridge U.P., 1998
Hann, Chris (ed.)
Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia
Routledge, London, 2002
Haugerud, Angelique et. Al.(eds.)
Commodities and Globalization : Anthropological Perspectives
Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2000
Humphrey, Caroline
The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism
Cornell U.P., Ithaca, 2002
Inda, Jonathan Xavier; Renato Rosaldo (eds.)
The Anthropology of Globalization: a Reader
Blackwell, Oxford, 2002
Kalb, Don
Expanding Class: Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities.
Duke U.P., Durham, 1997
Kapferer, Bruce
The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power
University of Chicago Press, 1997
Kearney, Michael
Reconceptualizing the peasantry and other Identities: Anthropology in a Global Perspective
Westview Press, 2000
Keesing, Roger
Custom and Confrontation: The Kwaio Struggle for Cultural Autonomy
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992
Molyneux, Maxine
“ Ethnography and Global Processes”
Etnography, vol. 2, no. 2, 2001
Steinmetz, George (ed.)
State/culture: New Approaches to the state after the Cultural Turn
Cornell u.p., Ithaca, 1999
Verdery, Katherine
What Was Socialism and What Comes Next?
Princeton U.P., 1996
Vincent, Joan
The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique
Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 2002
Wolf, Eric
Pathways of Power: Building an Anthropology of the Modern World
California U.P., 2001
Wolf, Eric
Europe and the People Without History
California U.P., 1982