More Links for Proseminar A readings

Here are a few more links to readings from the Proseminar A course taught last fall. As useful as it will be to read these, Tom Boellstorff did caution me that he would not be teaching the course this upcoming year (if I remember correctly, Kaushik is the only holdover from last year), so the syllabus will probably be different. At any rate, here they are:

Herbert Spencer: "Progress: Its law and cause"

Edward Burnett Tylor: Researches Into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization

Edward Burnett Tylor: Primitive Culture, vol. I: The Origins of Culture (as yet, link not found)

Sir James George Frazer: "Sympathetic Magic" and "Magic and Religion" in The Golden Bough

Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss: Primitive Classification

Emile Durkheim: “Sociology in France in the Nineteenth Century,” in Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society

Emile Durkheim: The Division of Labor in Society Book I: “Introduction” (pp.1-8); Chapter I (pp. 11–30); Chapter VI (pp. 126–148); Book III, Chapter I (pp. 291–309); Conclusion (pp. 329–341)

Marcel Mauss: The Gift

James Clifford, “On ethnographic surrealism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23(4), 1981, pp. 539–564 (you can find it on JSTOR if you have access)

That gets us through to Week 4. Since most of these links are to Google Books, there will probably be some pages missing from the free previews. Anyone want to take responsibility for summarizing any of these? I'll volunteer to do Durkheim's Division of Labor since it's sitting at the foot of my bed as I type this. Happy reading! It's a wild night here in Montgomery; tornadoes passing through and I just finished the Alan Moore/David Gibbons graphic novel Watchmen (which is awesome, by the way).

Next reading: Maine, Henry Sumner, "Primitive society and ancient law," Ancient Law, pp. 123-185

Here's an online version of the reading, under chapter 5:

http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/maine/anclaw/

If any of the contributors besides Stephen (who did a great job with the Stocking readings and probably wants a break) wants to take a crack at it, be my guest! If not, I'll post an abstract next week.

RSS Feeds Added! (Plus some work by Irvine's finest)

Dear All:

I've found a few anthropology RSS feeds to link up to this blog. If there are any other good ones out there, please let us know so that we can add them. I'd also like to add a link to a article by Profs. Tom Boellstorff and Bill Maurer in response to a pseudo-anthropologist's definitions of family and marriage. Enjoy!

George Stocking, Jr.: "On the Limits of 'Presentism' and 'Historicism' in the historiography of the Behavioral Sciences"

Hello all. I guess I have the distinct pleasure of offering up the first review/critique of the first pro-sem reading, that of George Stocking, Jr.'s. Obviously, the first question we have to ask is "why was this essay assigned reading?" The answer, I think, is to give us not only an introductory methodological analysis of the history of anthropology, a tool set if you will for viewing the early anthropological writings that we will be tackling, but also the historical biases that we, as anthropologists, bring to our research. In that regard, Stocking argues that there are two oppositional, and yet ultimately complementary, approaches to the history of the behavioral sciences (which I take to mean anthropology, sociology, cultural psychology, etc.): "presentism" and "historicism."

Stocking begins by telling us that history is an undisciplined discipline, without a clear consensus as to motive for research or methodology. Stocking's stated project in this essay, therefore, is to define these competing viewpoints, "presentism" and "historicism" and to argue their relative merits. Basically, Stocking divides historical inquiry into two perspectives: "to understand the past for the sake of the past" and "to understand the past for the sake of the future" (and primarily, the present). Stocking points out that what I would call the discourse of modernization or development seeks to view history through the lens of the present. In other words, history is simply a series of events that inevitably prefigured our present, and by analyzing this history we can make predictions about the future. Clearly, by using the present as a referent the past is interpreted only as to what contributions it made to the present. We have all heard the saying that history is written by the "winners," which is essentially what I think Stocking is saying here. Contemporary regimes of power use the past as validation for present public policies, and also as an explanation for why those policies are necessary. This is the discourse of development, summed up well in Modernization Theory, which is in my opinion a poor argument for the adoption of capitalism. The interpretive mode of this "presentism" as Stocking puts it, is based in "justice," not in "understanding." At Chicago, we called this perspective "Historical Narrative" and highlighted the emphasis in this approach in looking for historical agents of change rather than the historical processes that led to that change. Following from Butterfield, Stocking calls this "Whiggish history" or "presentism."

The alternative approach in Stocking's dualistic model is "historicism," which seems to be the study of historical events, people, and processes within their contemporary historical context. As Stocking elaborates, the historicist tries to understand history not from a position of present-day "reasonableness" but rather from a position that takes into account the contemporary "rationality" of historical context. In other words, rather than judging the past in terms of the present, one is analyzing the past in terms of the past. (Incidentally, this is the very reason that I love Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" simply because it presents an alternative "rationality" to my own, and in a way that reveals the logic and rigor (to shamelessly rob from Althusser) of that "reasonableness.") "Understanding," Stocking argues, is an attempt to get at the "reasonableness" of what might be considered "irrational" in the present.

How does this all fit into the history of the behavioral sciences? Well, Stocking says that a historian of the behavioral sciences will be "historicist" in her or his methodology, and "affective" in motivation. This is not to ignore the inherent bias that contemporary historians have when writing about history, but it is an ideal-type of methodology and motive to adopt. Behavioral scientists, on the other hand, are "presentist" in their approach, and their motives are "utilitarian." History, in other words, is useful for inspiring and guiding work in the present. Finally, there is a discussion of Thomas Kuhn (who, along with Hilary Putnam, is arguably one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century), and eventually the assertion that "presentism" has its usefulness as a measuring stick against which to judge the "historicist" approach, but on the other hand many "historicist" questions have yet to be answered by "presentists" (case in point: Ann Stoler's argument that we can't talk about "post-colonialism" until we understand truly what "colonialism" was). Well, that's my reading of it at least. Any objections, amplifications, or outright propositions to battle are all welcome!

Welcome!

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You have come to an online journal edited by the UC-Irvine's 2008 incoming graduate cohort for the Department of Anthropology. Here we talk briefly about our interests in anthropology and share our thoughts on theories and research of the past and present. You'll have to forgive our humble layout; this journal is primarily intended to help anyone become more acquainted with the field of anthropology and assist us with our studies as we fight through the rigorous proseminar course known to make or break first-year grad students.

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