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CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND CONTEMPORARY ISSUES Anthropology 2400

Time: Monday & Wednesday 3:35-4:25 Room: 251 Malott Hall Professor Marina Welker Contact: mwelker@cornell.edu Office hours: Thursday, 10-12, or by appointment Teaching Assistants: Alexander Gordon Mariangela Jordan Scott Sorrell Course Description This course will introduce students to the meaning and significance of forms of cultural diversity for the understanding of contemporary issues. Drawing from audiovisual material and selected readings, students will be confronted with different representational forms that portray cultures, and will be asked to examine critically how their own assumptions influence their perception and evaluation of cultural differences. Course Goals Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: 1. Explain basic anthropological concepts, theories, and methods. 2. Apply anthropological tools in analyzing how cultural difference and social inequality shape human experience. 3. Identify tacit, taken-for-granted assumptions underpinning social orders and institutions. 4. Critically evaluate structural inequalities in everyday life. Course Texts The following required books are available for purchase at the Cornell Store and on 2-hour reserve at Uris Library: Hill, Jane H. 2008. The Everyday Language of White Racism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Strassler, Karen. 2010. Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java. Durham NC: Duke University Press.

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Cattelino, Jessica R. 2008. High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press. Additional readings will be made available on the course blackboard site. Course Expectations You are expected to attend lecture and discussion sections and arrive on time, prepared to participate and having completed any assignments for the day, including reading, writing, and peer review. All laptops, cell phones, and other digital devices should be turned off and put away for the duration of each 50 minute lecture unless you have explicit permission to use these. Grading 114 points for oral and written participation in lecture & section * 16 points for first essay 30 points for second essay 30 points for third essay 30 points for final essay 10 points for course portfolio ** 230 points total Grade breakdown 223-230 A + 214--222 A 207--213 A – 200--206 B + 191--205 B 184--190 B – 177--183 C+ 168--176 C 161--167 C -- 154--160 D + 145--159 D 138--144 D -- Below 138 F * Participation is calculated based on 3 points for each lecture and section where you attend and complete any written and oral assignments in a manner reflecting thought, care, and preparedness (i.e. reading assignments completed before class). A student attending 38 classes and earning full credit for each would have 114 points for participation. If you miss no sections you may be eligible for extra credit for three classes. Points will be deducted if you are habitually late or inattentive. ** For the portfolio you will turn in at the end of the course, it is essential that you maintain copies of all written work for the course. Establish a folder for this purpose early on. Accommodations for students with disabilities In compliance with the Cornell University policy and equal access laws, I am available to discuss appropriate academic accommodations that may be required for student with disabilities. Requests for academic accommodations are to be made during the first three weeks of the semester, except for unusual circumstances, so arrangements can be made. Students are encouraged to register with Student Disability Services to verify their eligibility for appropriate accommodations. The Knight Institute Writing Walk-In Service

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The Writing Walk-In Service (WWIS) provides support for individuals at any stage of the writing process. It is a free resource available to everyone on campus - faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students - for nearly any kind of writing project: applications, presentations, lab reports, essays, papers, and more. Tutors (trained undergraduate and graduate students) serve as responsive listeners and readers who can address questions about the writing process or about particular pieces of writing. They can also consider questions of confidence, critical reading, analytic thought, and imagination. Many writing tutors also have experience working with non-native speakers of English. The WWIS operates out of five campus locations. During the academic year, the WWIS is open Sunday through Thursday from 3:30 – 5:30pm and from 7:00 – 10:00pm. Writers can schedule appointments or drop in at a convenient time. For more information or to schedule an appointment: http://www.arts.cornell.edu/writing. Academic Integrity All the work you submit in this course must have been written for this course and not another and must originate with you in form and content with all contributory sources fully and specifically acknowledged. Cornell’s Academic Integrity Code is available online at: http://www.cuinfo.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html. In this course, the normal penalty for a violation of the code is an “F” for the term. Course Schedule (subject to change) I. Course Orientation & Foundations WEEK 1 Wednesday, January 22: course introduction WEEK 2. Monday, January 27: anthropological methods Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Introduction: The Subject, Method and Scope of this Inquiry, pp. 1-25 in Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. Goffman, Erving. 1989. On Fieldwork. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 18(2):123-132. Wednesday, January 29: personhood Mauss, Marcel. 1985. A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of the Person, The Notion of Self. In The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes, eds. Pp. 1-25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WEEK 3. Monday, February 3: identity and context

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Goffman, Erving. 1959. Performances, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Wednesday, February 5: the social organization of agency & responsibility Laidlaw, James. 2010. Agency and Responsibility: Perhaps You Can Have Too Much of a Good Thing. In Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action. M. Lambek, ed. Pp. 143-164. New York: Fordham University Press. Young, Iris Marion. 2003. From Guilt to Solidarity: Sweatshops and Political Responsibility. Dissent 50(2):39-44. ---. 2006 Katrina: Too Much Blame, Not Enough Responsibility. Dissent 53(1):41-46. WEEK 4. Monday, February 10: climate change Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry 35(Winter):197-222. Morton, Timothy 2011 Zero Landscapes in the Time of Hyperobjects. GAM 07:79-87. Guest lecture by Alexander Gordon II. Language & Race Wednesday, February 12 Hill, preface & chapters 1 & 2 WEEK 5. No class on Monday (February Break) Wednesday, February 19 Hill, chapters 3 & 4 WEEK 6. Monday, February 24 Hill, chapters 5--7 III. Bodies Wednesday, February 26: bodies as repositories of social and cultural history Mauss, Marcel. 1973. Techniques of the Body. Economy and Society 2:70-88.

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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (pp. 190-200) WEEK 7. Monday, March 3: body size Greenhalgh, Susan. 2012. Weighty Subjects: The Biopolitics of the U.S. War on Fat. American Ethnologist 39(3):471-487. Darmon, Muriel. 2012. A People Thinning Institution: Changing Bodies and Souls in a Commercial Weight-Loss Group. Ethnography 13(3):375-398. Guthman, Julie. 2008. "If They Only Knew": Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions. Professional Geographer 60(3):387-397. Wednesday, March 5: disability studies Kudlick, Catherine. 2005. The Blind Man’s Harley: White Canes and Gender Identity in Modern America. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30(2) 1589-1606. WEEK 8. Monday, March 10: queer studies Warner, Michael. 1999. “Beyond Gay Marriage,” pp. 81-147 in The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. New York: Free Press. Guest lecture by Scott Sorrell Wednesday, March 12: cancer experience Jain, S. Lochlann. 2007. Living in Prognosis: Toward an Elegiac Politics. Representations 98(Spring):77-92. ---. 2007 Cancer Butch. Cultural Anthropology 22(4):501-538. IV. Labor WEEK 9. Monday, March 17 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1978. Manifesto of the Communist Party. In The Marx-Engels Reader. R. C. Tucker, ed. Pp. 473-500. New York: Norton. Mills, C. Wright. 1951. Introduction (pp. ix-xx). White Collar: The American Middle Classes. New York: Oxford University Press. Wednesday, March 19: the factory floor Dudley, Kathryn Marie. 1994. The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapters 5 & 7)

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Dunn, Elizabeth C. 2004. Ideas of Kin and Home on the Shop Floor. Chapter 5 (pp. 130-161) in Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. WEEK 10. Monday, March 24: agricultural labor Benson, Peter. 2008. Good clean tobacco: Philip Morris, biocapitalism, and the social course of stigma in North Carolina. American Ethnologist 35(3):357-379. Jain, Sarah S. Lochlann. 2006. Sentience and Slavery: The Struggle over the Short-Handled Hoe, pp. 60-85 in Injury: The Politics of Product Design and Safety Law in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wednesday, March 26: social division of service work Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2008. Serving in Florida. Chapter 1 (pp. 11-49) in Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America. New York: Holt Paperbacks.  Freeman, Carla. 1993. Designing Women: Corporate Discipline and Barbardos's Off-Shore Pink-Collar Sector. Cultural Anthropology 8(2):169-186. - SPRING BREAK - V. Prisons WEEK 11. Monday, April 7 Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. (pp. 3-24, 200-209) Wednesday, April 9 Rhodes, Lorna A. 2004. Controlling Troubles. Chapter 1 (pp. 21-60) in Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison. Berkeley: University of California Press. VI. Nationalism WEEK 12. Monday, April 14 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Chapters 1-3, pp. 1-46; Ch. 10, pp. 163-185. Wednesday, April 16 Strassler, chapter 1 (pp. 29-71)

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WEEK 13. Monday, April 21 Strassler, chapter 2 (pp. 73-122) and part of chapter 3 (pp. 124-143) Guest lecture: Mariangela Jordan Wednesday, April 23 Strassler, finish chapter 3 (pp. 143-163), & chapter 5 (pp. 207-249) VII. Sovereignty WEEK 14. Monday, April 28 Cattelino, chapters 1 & 2 (pp. 29-94) Wednesday, April 30 Cattelino, chapter 3 (pp. 95-123) WEEK 15. Monday, May 5 Cattelino, chapter 5 (161-191) Wednesday, May 7: course conclusion