Anthropology of the Contemporary World
Anthropology 204H
University of Toronto
Fall 2013
W 2-4 Medical Sciences Building 2158
Instructor: Prof. Naisargi N. Dave
Office: Anthropology Building 206, 19 Russell Street
Office Hours: Tuesdays 11:00 – 1:00
E-mail: naisargi.dave@utoronto.ca
Head TA: Vivian Solana vivian.solana@mail.utoronto.ca
Course Description
This course will teach you how to think about the contemporary world as a cultural
anthropologist. Of course, anthropologists do not see and think the same (that is part of what it
means to think as an anthropologist!) but there are some basic approaches that are common to the
trade: you will learn to see world phenomena such as poverty, queer rights, debt, marriage and
heteronormativity, environmental degradation, financial markets, global inequality, and people’s
movements as utterly interconnected; you will think critically about what (if anything) it means to
be “human”; you will learn to think about taken-for-granted categories such as race, ethnicity,
sex, gender, and even life itself as specific historical and cultural inventions; you will be acutely
attune to how things change and how and why they stay the same. This course will cover a range
of contemporary topics from animal rights to the Occupy movement to debt forgiveness to the
Arab Spring to people’s movements in Tibet to love and marriage to food security. While this
course will be run as a lecture you will have the opportunity in tutorials and on Blackboard to
engage in meaningful discussion. Weekly, you will do readings in recent anthropological
scholarship that complement or provide alternative perspectives to what I cover in lecture.
Evaluation will be based on participation in tutorials, weekly Blackboard posts, short writing
assignments, and a final exam.
Required Texts and Paraphernalia
Available at The University of Toronto Bookstore:
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Bourgois, Philippe and Jeff Schonberg. 2009. Righteous Dopefiend. Berkeley: University
of California Press. (Also available as an e-book from the U of T library.)
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iClicker. (You must register your device at http://www1.iclicker.com/register-an-iclicker)
Important Dates
October 1
October 21
November 4
First short essay due
Second short essay due
Third short essay due
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November 21
November 28
Exam Period (TBA)
Fourth short essay due
Submit your three top Blackboard posts
Final exam
Course Promises
This course makes a set of promises to you, assuming that you fulfill the responsibilities and
expectations below. By the end of the term you should be able to:
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Take a sophisticated scholarly article, read it, understand it, contextualize it, and
summarize it.
Develop your skills in researching and writing.
Critically engage with global news media, both mass and independent.
Understand important concepts and modes of analysis in cultural anthropology.
Better understand the ethical connections between our own lives and those of others.
Course Responsibilities
I, your TAs, and this course can only fulfill the above promises if you do the following.
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Attend lecture.
Attend tutorial.
Participate in tutorial.
Do the readings in advance of class.
Submit your work on time and according to the given guidelines.
Communicate thoughtfully.
Be on time and when you’re here, be here.
Ogre Note
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Just to give you a fair warning, I dislike tardy arrivals and premature departures. If you
know you will have to leave before class is over, sit near an exit. If you arrive late, sit
down quickly and shamefacedly, and plan better next time. And, finally, unless you
become ill please do not start packing up before class is over.
Assignments and Evaluation
The grading in this course is on a 1,000-point scale.
Participation (50 points): Your participation mark will be assessed by your TA based on the
effort, diligence, commitment, and energy you demonstrate in tutorial. Some part of your grade
may be based on your iClicker participation in lecture but it will be a relatively small part. I will
update you on this at the midterm point.
Blackboard posts (200 points): Begin now by accepting the fact that you will have to post
something on Blackboard every week. That “something” can be one of two things. The first thing
is a 250-word reflection on the readings/ lecture/ film for that week. If you don’t feel like doing
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that, you may do the second thing, which is to post a minimum of two links to news articles
related to the course (see “Writing assignment” below) and to explain what those stories are and
why you found them interesting or relevant. It is in your interest, however, to write as many 250word reflections as you can because at the end of term you will select the three best reflections
you wrote and it is based on the quality of those that your grade will be determined. If you fail to
post regularly, your TA has the discretion to give you a zero for this portion.
Writing assignment: Letters to the editor (400 points): There is no single final paper in this class.
Instead, you will write 4 short essays over the course of the term and they will take the form of
Intellectually Enhanced Letters to the Editor. You have all seen letters to the editor. They are
usually written by people who have read an article they strongly dislike or like and then want to
share with the public (via the Editor) what they think about the paper’s coverage and why. Such
letters often serve to “correct” misinformation or to reveal hegemonic assumptions underlying the
article. (For examples, see The New York Times, The Economist, The New Yorker, Atlantic, or
Harper’s.) I call what you will be doing “Intellectually Enhanced” letters to the editor because
most such letters are quite short. Your letters, however, will be 600 words each. Here’s how it
will work. In the next couple of weeks you should select a topic, currently in the news, that is of
interest to you (examples are multiple: climate change, homophobia in Russia, rapes in India,
political instability in Egypt, anti-abortion activism in the United States, racism in Canada, animal
rights in China, civil activism in Brazil, and so on). After you select your topic, set up a Google
Alert and, also, peruse major newspapers and magazines for interesting stories. Every week,
starting from September 20th, you should collect at least 2 articles. You will choose one, or
several, of these to write about. In the letters you write, you should briefly summarize the
article(s); critically engage with it/ them; and say what, as an anthropologist, you would urge the
paper to do or think about differently. (I will give some examples in class, as will your TA.) This
will require some background research on your part so that you know what you are talking about.
The first two letters you write will be worth 50 points each and the last two will be worth 100
points each. There is a group work aspect to this assignment as well, which will be worth 80
points. Your groups will be there to run ideas by, share drafts, give feedback, and so on. 20 points
will come from simply collecting 2 articles per week.
Final exam (350 points): The final exam will take place during the exam period and will cover
everything we do in class: lectures, films, readings. The format will be some combination of
multiple choice, filling in blanks, and giving short answers. The point of the exam is not to trick
you but to give you a chance to earn points by showing that you did what you signed on to do.
Other Policies
Late penalties: Late papers will be penalized 3% /day including weekends and holidays. Penalties
come into effect immediately after the deadline has passed.
Submitting on Blackboard: You must submit a readable copy of your paper (no PDFs) by the
stated deadline. If you do not submit your paper correctly, late points will accrue until you do. Emailed papers will not be accepted.
Office hours: Please use them. Your TAs also hold office hours.
E-mail: I welcome substantive e-mails that are specifically for me or are about my lectures.
However, any e-mail that concerns course policy, medical excuses, absences, late papers,
technical difficulties and so on should be directed, first, to your own TA and then, if instructed, to
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the Head TA, Vivian Solana (vivian.solana@mail.utoronto.ca). Any email I receive about about
technical (i.e., non-substantive) issues I will forward, unanswered, to the Head TA.
Accessibility: You are entitled to disability-related accommodations. Please let the Head TA
know of your needs, and as early as possible.
Course Schedule
September 11: Introductions; what is human?
Introduction to the course
In-class film: Project Nim (begin, time permitting) (2011)
September 18: Making difference
Readings:
Allen, Lori A. 2009. “Martyr bodies in the Media: Human Rights, Aesthetics, and the Politics of
Immediation in the Palestinian Intifada.” American Ethnologist 36(1): 161-180.
Gordon, Robert. 2000. “The Life and Times of Sara Baartman: The Hottentot Venus.” American
Anthropologist 102(3): 606-607. *Please augment this with some web research on Baartman.•
Lutz, Catherine and Jane Collins. 1997. “The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of
Race and Gender in National Geographic Magazine.” In The Gender/Sexuality Reader, Roger
Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo, eds. Pp. 291-306. Bb
In-class film: Project Nim (part 2)
September 25: Race/ ethnography
Readings:
Righteous Dopefiend, Introduction, Chapter 1, and all front matter
October 2: Love, sex, family
Readings:
Righteous Dopefiend, Chapters 2, 3, and 4.
October 9: Environment, development, and the postcolonial
Readings:
Baviskar, Amita. 2005. “Red in Tooth and Claw? Looking for Class Struggles over Nature.” In
Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power, and Politics, Raka Ray and Mary Fainsod
Katzenstein, Eds. Pp. 161-178. Bb
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Ferguson, James and L. Lohmann. 1994. “The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’ and
Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho.” The Ecologist 24(5): 176-181.
Wiley, Andrea S. 2007. “Transforming Milk in a Global Economy.” American Anthropologist
109(4): 666-677.
October 16: Islam, media, democracy
Readings:
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2002. “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: A Political Perspective on Culture and
Terrorism.” American Anthropologist 104(3): 766-775.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections
on Cultural Relativism and its Others.” American Anthropologist 104(3): 783-790.
Selections (TBA) from Cultural Anthropology Hot Spots: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in
Egypt. http://www.culanth.org/conversations/4-hot-spots
October 23: Resistance movements
Readings:
Graeber, David. 2007. “On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets.”
Graeber, David. 2011. “Occupy Wall Street’s Anarchist Roots.” Aljazeera website.
Selections (TBA) from Cultural Anthropology Hot Spots: Self-Immolation as Protest in Tibet.”
http://www.culanth.org/conversations/4-hot-spots
October 30: Global finance
NO TUTORIALS THIS WEEK
Readings:
Ho, Karen. 2009. “Disciplining Investment Bankers, Disciplining the Economy: Wall Street’s
Institutional Culture of Crisis and the Downsizing of Corporate America.” American
Anthropologist 111( 2): 177-189.
Selections (TBA) from Cultural Anthropology Hot Spots: Beyond the “Greek Crisis”: Histories,
Rhetorics, Politics.
http://www.culanth.org/conversations/4-hot-spots
In-class film: Inside Job (2010)
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November 6: Economy, debt, inequality, austerity
Readings:
Righteous Dopefiend, Chapters 5 and 6
November 13: Queer, Trans, Inter
Readings:
Righteous Dopefiend, Chapter 7
Don Kulick. 1998. Selection from Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture Among Brazilian
Transgendered Prostitutes. Bb
November 20: Food Chains
NO TUTORIALS THIS WEEK
Readings:
Righteous Dopefiend, Chapters 8, 9, and Conclusion.
In class film: Food, Inc. (2008)
November 27: Consumption, ethics, conclusions
Readings:
Hirsch, Dafna. 2011. “’Hummus is Best When it is Fresh and Made by Arabs’: The
Gourmetization of Hummus in Israel and the Return of the Repressed Arab.” American
Ethnologist 38(4): 617-630.
Zhan, Mei. 2008. “Civet Cats, Fried Grasshoppers and David Beckham’s Pajamas: Unruly Bodies
After SARS.” American Anthropologist 107(1): 31-42.
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