Adam T. Smith
Anthropology 4453
Office Hours T/Th 2:45-4pm, McGraw 123
Spring 2012
Wednesdays 12:20-2:15
Political Anthropology
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course charts the development of an explicitly anthropological approach to the study
of the political. Since 1940, socio-cultural anthropology and anthropological archaeology
have been engaged in a joint project to explore the nature of power, ideology, authority,
and sovereignty in contexts that reach beyond the historical and geographical limits of the
Modern West. This course will explore the constitution of political authority in reference
to both ethnographic and archaeological investigations that will take us from the
problems of early state origins to the transformations of the post-colonial. Our
discussions will bring forward the problems of structure and process, history and practice,
that animate anthropological approaches to political life. Throughout the course, we will
attempt to define anthropology’s distinct contribution to the study of the political and set
forth an agenda for the field’s role in contemporary theory and practice.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Students will work in pairs to present readings in class throughout the course. These
pairs will be assigned readings by the instructor by week II. Students are expected to
participate in presentations four times during the semester, as enrollment allows.
Presentations should be 5 minutes in length and provide a critical reading of the text.
They should not summarize the reading. Presentations should conclude with questions
that allow the presenting team to guide our initial engagement with the texts.
Presentations will be graded on the basis of their command of the reading, thoughtfulness
of their response, and clarity of discussion.
Students will be required to complete a term paper that utilizes the required readings as a
springboard for independent research projects. Term papers can address a wide array of
anthropological materials including but not limited to, archaeological datasets,
ethnographic materials, historical archives, and contemporary political movements. Term
paper topics should be cleared with the instructor by March 2 at the latest. The term
paper will be conducted in two parts. ‘
I. By March 16 at 5pm, students must submit a descriptive account of the materials
that will provide the empirical focal point of the term paper (undergraduate
student papers should not exceed 5 pages double spaces; graduate student
papers should not exceed 8 pages double spaced). These descriptive papers
should ideally then make up the empirical heart of the term paper itself,
situated within a wider theoretical, historical, and geographic context.
II. Final papers are due on Thursday May 17 by 5pm. Undergraduate student term
papers should not exceed 20 pages; graduate student papers should not exceed
25 pages.
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Grades for the course will be calculated according to the following distribution:
Participation: 10%
Presentations: 5% each (20% total)
Midterm Description: 30%
Term Paper: 40%
All written work for the class should be submitted electronically by email to the
instructor.
COURSE TEXTS
Texts for the course are available on the Blackboard website.
OUTLINE OF TOPICS AND READINGS
Part I: Prehistories
I. Jan 25. Introduction: Origins, Genealogies, Archaeologies
II. Feb. 1. Prehistories and Foundations
Aristotle
1988 The Politics. Penguin Books, London. [I.i-ii, III.i-xiv, IV.i-ii.]
Hobbes, T.
1998 Leviathan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. [Intro, Chs. 1721].
Fortes, M. and E. E. Evans-Pritchard
1940 African Political Systems. Oxford University Press, London. Preface
and Introduction.
Childe, V. G.
1950 The Urban Revolution. Town Planning Review 21:3-17.
Part II: Traditions
III. Feb. 8. Structural Functionalism and the Problem of Conflict
Engels, F.
1990 Selections from “The Origin of Family, Private Property, and the
State. In The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by R. Tucker, pp. 734-759.
Norton, New York.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
1940 The Nuer of the Southern Sudan. In African Political Systems. Oxford
University Press, London.
Gluckman, M.
1963 Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa. Free Press, Glencoe, New York.
Ch. 3.
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IV. Feb. 15. Process and Order
Adams, R. M.
1966 The Evolution of Urban Society. Aldine Pub. Co., New York. Ch. 1-2.
Leach, E. R.
1954 Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social
Structure. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Chapter 1.
Southall, A. W.
1953 Alur Society: A Study in Processes and Types of Domination.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Ch. 6, 9.
V. Feb. 22. Politics and Economy
Diakonoff, I. M.
1969 The Rise of the Despotic State in Ancient Mesopotamia. In Ancient
Mesopotamia, Socio-Economic History, edited by I. M. Diakonoff, pp.
173-203. Nauka, Moscow.
Kohl, P. L.
1989 The Use and Abuse of World Systems Theory: The Case of the
"Pristine" West Asian State. In Archaeological Thought in America,
edited by C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, pp. 218-240. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Meillassoux, C.
1972 From Reproduction to Production. Economy and Society 1(1):93-105.
Fried, M. H.
1967 The Evolution of Political Society: an Essay in Political Anthropology.
Random House, New York. Ch. 1.
Part III. Political Temporalities
VI. Feb. 29. The Problem Chiefdom
Comaroff, J. L.
1978
Rules and Rulers: Political Process in a Tswana Chiefdom. Man 13:120.
Earle, T.
1997
How Chiefs Come to Power. Stanford University Press, Stanford. Ch.
2 (pp. 17-66).
Pauketat, T. R.
2007
Chiefdoms and Other Archaeological Delusions. AltaMira Press,
Lanham. Chs 2-3 (pp. 31-79).
VII. Mar. 7. State Origins
Carneiro, R.
1970 A Theory of the Origin of the State. Science 169:733-739.
Geertz, C.
1980 Negara: The Theater-State in Nineteenth Century Bali, Princeton
University Press, Princeton. Ch. 4 and Conclusion.
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Sahlins, M.
1981 The Stranger-King: Or Dumézil among the Fijians. The Journal of
Pacific History 16(3):107-132.
Yoffee, N.
2005 Myths of the Archaic State: The evolution of the earliest cities, states,
and civilizations. Ch. 2.
VIII. Mar 14. Against the State
Abrams, P.
1988 Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977). Journal of
Historical Sociology 1(1):58-89.
Bourdieu, P.
1999 Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field.
In State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn, edited by G.
Steinmetz, pp. 53-75. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Smith, A. T.
2003 The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early
Complex Polities. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Introduction, Ch. 2.
Part IV. Polities and Sovereignties
IX. Mar 28. The Everyday Political
Mitchell, T.
1988 Colonising Egypt. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. [Chapters
2 and 3].
Scott, J. C.
1998 Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, New Haven. Ch. 1 (pp.
11-52).
Voss, B.
2008 Domesticating Imperialism: Sexual Politics and the Archaeology of
Empire. American Anthropologist 110(2):191-203.
X. Apr 4. Postimperialism/Postsocialism/Postcolony?
Buchli, V.
1999 An Archaeology of Socialism. Materializing culture. Berg, Oxford. Ch.
5.
Grant, B.
1995 In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas. Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ. Chs. 5 and 7.
Mbembé, J. A.
1992 The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the
Postcolony. Public Culture 4(2):1-30.
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XI. Apr 11. The Body Politic
Dietler, M.
2001 Theorizing the Feast: Rituals of Consumption, Commensal Politics,
and Power in African Contexts. In Feasts: Archaeological and
Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power, edited by M.
Dietler and B. Hayden, pp. 65-114. Smithsonian Institution Press,
Washington, D.C.
Foucault, M.
1979 On Governmentality. Ideology and Consciousness 6:5-21.
Lomnitz, C.
2001 Elusive Property: The Personification of Mexican National
Sovereignty. In The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material
Culture, edited by F. R. Myers, pp. 119-138. School of American
Research Press, Santa Fe.
XII. April 18. No Class: SAA Meetings
XIII. Apr 25. From the State to the Sovereign, Inc.
Agamben, G.
1998 Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University
Press, Stanford. Pp. 15-38.
Comaroff, J. L. and J. Comaroff
2009 Ethnicity, Inc. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Ch. 1, 2, 6.
Fiskesjö, M.
2003 The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, The Death of Teddy's Bear, and the
Sovereign Exception of Guantánamo. Prickly Paradigm Press, Chicago.
Pp. 1-23, 58-67.
XIV. May 2. Theorizing the Present: Roundtable with Paul Nadasdy and Chris Garces
Garces, C.
2010 The Cross Politics of Ecuador's Penal State. Cultural Anthropology
25(3):459-496.
Nadasdy, P.
2005 The Anti-Politics of TEK: The Institutionalization of Co-Management
Discourse and Practice. Anthropologica 47(2):215-232.
Smith, A. T.
2011 Archaeologies of Sovereignty. Annual Review of Anthropology
40:415-432.
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