Public Health PUBH 528-401: Class, Inequality, and Health: Ethnographic
Perspectives
Cross-listed with Anthropology
Philippe Bourgois
Fall 2009
Class Meetings:
Thursdays 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Books are available for purchase at the Penn Book Center, 130 S. 34th Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19104 (See list of “Required Texts” at bottom of syllabus)
Additional articles and excerpts from books are located on Blackboard at U Penn at the
following URL: https://courseweb.library.upenn.edu/
This seminar examines anthropological approaches to the concept of class and social
inequality through a close reading of a dozen ethnographies that deal with a broad
definition of health, illness, and social suffering. Readings span many of the theoretical,
political, sub-disciplinary and area studies debates in anthropology and the larger fields
of poverty, social inequality, international development, violence studies, science
studies, governmentality, and social policy interventions over the past century. My hope
is to explore a vitalized conceptualization of class to understanding contemporary and
historical forms of social inequality as well as a critique of narrow biomedical
understandings of illness and health. I hope to bring the problematic concept of power
and the management of social inequality to bear on a contemporary critique of punitive
neoliberalism into the center of our anthropological and public health concerns. The
seminar also aims to bring students from anthropology, and other social science and
humanities disciplines in dialogue with students in public health, science studies, and
clinical medicine.
Most of the readings address the links between the political structuring of larger
historical, political and cultural forces with the intimate, psycho-affective suffering and
trauma of vulnerable categories of individuals. We will examine anthropological texts
within the schools of political economy, critical medical anthropology, post-colonial
history, Foucauldian power relations, Bourdieusian cultural reproduction, science
studies, symbolic interactionism, and critical Basaglian psychiatry.
I am particularly interested in clarifying our understandings of Marx’s concepts of class,
class struggle, “primitive accumulation” and “lumpenization”, Bourdieu’s “cultural
capital”, “habitus” and “symbolic violence”, the U.S. structure-agency ideological
impasse, Taussig’s “culture of terror” and “space of death,” Primo Levi’s “gray zone”,
Agamben’s “impossibility of witnessing”, Rose’s neoliberal healthy citizen, Gramsci’s
hegemony, and Foucault’s “subjectivation” “biopower” and disciplinary forms of
governmentality among other useful theoretical formulations. We will be reading
primarily ethnographies based on participant-observation methods that engage various
schools of critical social science theory. We will also explore the contrasts between
anthropological vs. literary vs. testimonial vs. political journalistic vs. epidemiological
approaches to the topics.
Requirements:
I: Readings and Presentations
In addition to preparing for class discussions and to reading one ethnography per week,
students are responsible for making at least one 15 minute presentation (that will
require extra reading) to situate the theoretical debates/critiques and/or background
context of a particular week’s ethnography. [Depending on the number of students,
seminar participants will be divided alphabetically into reading groups. Each week one
of the four reading groups will be responsible for co-leading the discussion and
presenting relevant background context for the readings. The reading group will meet
independently at least once to decide on the themes they would like to discuss and
present.] Readings and potential “theoretical context presentation themes” are offered in
brackets below the reading for each week: (Please feel free to provide feedback for
potential changes in readings and to suggest alternative theoretical context
presentations.)
Short reaction papers: Students must submit a minimum of four (3 to 5 page) critical
reaction papers responding to the ethnography for that week. These should be more
than a summary. They should engage with one or more of the central arguments of the
text. Reaction papers must be posted on blackboard by noon on the Sunday prior to the
Monday afternoon seminar meeting so that all students can read them in advance of
class and so that they can inform our class discussion.
A final paper (10-12 pages + bib.) is due Monday, November 18. It can be based on
either:
a) Original research/literature review of one of the approaches to social inequality and
classfields of urban poverty and violence
b) Rough draft of a graduate student field statement – bibliographical essay on violence
c) A theoretically informed local ethnographic project
Week 1, September 14: Introduction: Student interests, outline of the course,
theoretical logic of the readings, other logistics.
Excerpt from Engels, Friedrich 1993 [1845] The Condition of the Working Class in
England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ONLY Chapter 5 “Results” pp. 106-143.
(Available on Blackboard.)
Excerpt from Capital or other Marx text, especially text on primitive accumulation or
general law of capitalist accumulation.
Week 2, September 21:
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Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
(especially chapters 1,3,4,6)
Week 3, September 28:
Fassin, Didier 2007 When bodies remember: experiences and politics of AIDS in South
Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Week 4, October 5:
Farmer, Paul 1992 AIDS and accusation: Haiti and the geography of blame. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Week 5, October 12:
Petryna, Adriana 2002 Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Week 6, October 26:
Fanon, Franz Wretched of the Earth especially Appendix
Week 7, November 2:
Bourgois, Philippe, and Jeff Schonberg 2009 Righteous dopefiend. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre 2000. Pascalian Meditations. Read ONLY Postscript I “Impersonal
Confessions” pp. 33-42, Chapters 4-6 “Bodily Knowledge” and “Symbolic Violence and
Political Struggles” and “Social Being, Time and Sense of Existence” pp. 128-245.
(Available on Blackboard.)
Wacquant, Loïc 2004. “Habitus” In International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology.
London: Routledge Milan Zafirovski Ed. (Available on Blackboard.)
Bourdieu and Wacquant “Symbolic Violence” Chapter 32 IN Violence in War and
Peace… pp. 272-274.
Week 8, November 9:
Taussig, Michael T. 1986 Shamanism, colonialism, and the wild man: a study in terror
and healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Foucault “Right to Death…” Ch 7 IN Violence in War and Peace pp 79-82.
Week 9, November 16:
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Goffman, Erving 1961 Asylums; essays on the social situation of mental patients and
other inmates. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books.
(First two essays)
Histories on confinement, excerpts from Foucault or Scull
Week 10, November 23:
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy M. 1977 Saints, scholars and schizophrenics: Mental illness
and Irish culture, U California, Berkeley.
Basaglia excerpt.
Week 11, November 30:
Rhodes, Lorna A. 2004 Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum
Security Prisons. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Excerpt from Discipline and Punish or Madness and Civilization.
Week 12, December 7:
Women's Health in Post-Soviet Russia: The Politics Of Intervention, Michele Rivkin-Fish
Excerpt from Nikolas Rose
Excerpt from Liberation Theology
Required Texts:
Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
(especially chapters 1,3,4,6)
Fassin, Didier 2007 When bodies remember: experiences and politics of AIDS in South
Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Farmer, Paul 1992 AIDS and accusation: Haiti and the geography of blame. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Petryna, Adriana 2002 Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Bourgois, Philippe, and Jeff Schonberg 2009 Righteous dopefiend. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
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Taussig, Michael T. 1986 Shamanism, colonialism, and the wild man: a study in terror
and healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goffman, Erving 1961 Asylums; essays on the social situation of mental patients and
other inmates. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy M. 1977 Saints, scholars and schizophrenics: Mental illness
and Irish culture, U California, Berkeley.
Rhodes, Lorna A. 2004 Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum
Security Prisons. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Biehl, Joao. 2005. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
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