New Courses for FALL 2015
ANTH 232(F) Town and Gown: Investigating the Relationship of College and Community
Team-taught by an anthropologist and a journalist, this course investigates the relationship between Williams College and the surrounding communities of Northern Berkshire County via ethnographic/journalistic research conducted by students. The course will look at several case studies centered on “town-gown” relations in different eras and locations in order to contextualize and provide comparative material for understanding the relationship of Williams to its neighboring communities. Among the topics to be considered and possibly investigated will be the social and economic effects of colleges on local communities, the role of alcohol and athletics in town/gown relations, and how the increasing corporatization of academic institutions has changed the nature of town-gown interactions and the place and role of institutions of higher education in their communities. The focus of the course will be on student research, and a large percentage of class time will be devoted to learning the basic techniques of ethnographic and journalistic research, including interviewing, oral historical research, survey research, and participant-observation. Each student will conduct a major research project of his or her own devising, which will culminate in an investigative report and a public presentation. DAVID EDWARDS
ANTH 271(F) Medicine, Pathology, and Power: An Ethnographic View
How do medical anthropologists examine and interpret disease and illness between and within societies across the globe today, in order to elucidate the biosocial determinants of health and health-seeking behaviors? We are particularly interested in how medical anthropologists employ ethnographic techniques such as participant observation and reflexive interviewing that James Clifford once described as “deep hanging out”. Through experiential and phenomenological inquiries, we will investigate how structural violence produces systemic health inequalities in response to the workings of power and other social factors, while paying particular attention to the most marginalized and vulnerable populations or individuals in society. After reading a selection of medical ethnographies, students will pursue their own individual, fieldwork-based projects in the Berkshires. Our goal is a better understanding of the limits and strengths of ethnographic inquiry as we explore and experience the challenges of medical anthropology research including informed consent, access, and sensitivity to our informants’ explanatory models. KIM GUTSCHOW
ANTH 340(S) Artisan and Connoisseur (W)
In recent decades Americans have increasingly taken up the small-scale hand-work production of specialized goods as a livelihood, depending on connoisseurs who appreciate and are willing to pay high prices for their goods. Products ranging from cheeses to wooden boats have secured markets enabling lifestyles that appear to challenge classic capitalist modes of labor and consumption. We’ll explore this movement. Students will conduct original research resulting in a major paper and presentation. To elaborate: We will explore the differences among traditional craftsmen, hobbyists, and contemporary artisans, considering the nature of creativity and hand-work. We will use Marx’s concepts of the alienation of labor and commodity fetishism as a frame for considering the ways in which both artisans and connoisseurs appear to be resisting modern capitalist modes of production and consumption. But we will also look at the ways in which artisans’ articulation with capitalism and industrial production has shifted over time, beginning with the Arts and Crafts movement around the turn of the last century, through the “hippies” of the 1960s and ’70s, to more recent entrepreneurial artisans and those engaged in the “Maker Movement.” The course entails a commitment to undertaking an original, possibly ethnographic research project in which a student undertakes a detailed investigation of the production and consumption of an “artisanal” product, involving a preparatory paper, a preliminary proposal, and culminating in a research paper of at least 20 pages and a class presentation. PETER JUST
SOC 230(F) Memory and Forgetting (D)
On the surface, remembering generally confronts us as a deeply personal act. What is more private than nostalgic reverie or the secrets of a dark and painful past? Yet even “individual” memories take shape through social frameworks, and we also remember “collectively” through shared myths, narratives, traditions, and the like. This course will explore the social dimensions of memory and remembering as well as their inevitable counterpart—forgetting. How do social frameworks inform our individual understandings of the past and shape our sense of selfhood? How and why are figures from the past cast as heroes or villains? How do collectivities celebrate past glories, and how do they deal with shameful or embarrassing episodes? How do economic and political power relations shape struggles over the past? In an increasingly global society, can we speak of “cosmopolitan” or “transcultural” forms of memory? Topics will include self-identity, memoirs, and oral history; memorials, museums, and monuments; reputations, commemorations, and collective trauma; silence, denial, and forgetting; and transitional justice, official apologies, and reparations. This course meets the EDI requirement by taking a comparative perspective, attending to cross-national struggles over memory and examining cases such as the Holocaust, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in Israel, apartheid in South Africa, and slavery in the United States. CHRISTINA SIMKO
SOC 328(F) Media Events (W) Crosslistings: SOC 328/AMST 328
Today, live broadcasts of historic events draw together wide audiences, creating modern rituals that invite participation and foster a sense of membership in society. Media events, as Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz argue, include “contests” such as political campaigns and sporting events, “charismatic missions” such as the moon landing, and “rites of passage” such as state funerals and national memorial services. This course will examine media events as a modern form of ritual. Preliminary readings will include theoretical treatments of ritual by thinkers such as Émile Durkheim, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, and Victor Turner as well as more recent adaptations of these theories for the age of mass media. We will then examine several case studies, reading scholarly interpretations of media events while also delving into media representations firsthand by viewing news coverage, analyzing magazine and newspaper articles, examining photographs, and—for more recent events—exploring the role of social media. How do modern media events compare with the forms of ritual described in classic theoretical texts? Are they merely “spectacles” or “pseudo-events” that serve political and/or corporate interests, or are they sources of genuine solidarity and wellsprings for civic participation? What role do political comedy and satire play in shaping and framing media events? Has the rise of social media transformed our experience of these events? Have catastrophic events such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks—which we can increasingly “witness” in real time through various media sources—become a new kind of media event? We will focus primarily on the U.S., but will also work to draw comparisons. Throughout the semester, each student will develop a significant project on an event of his or her choosing. CHRISTINA SIMKO
SPRING 2016
ANTH 216T(S) Urbanism in the Ancient World (D) (W) Crosslistings: ANTH 216/GBST 216
This is a course on cities in the ancient world, which will examine four major ancient urban centers (Nineveh and Nimrud, Iraq; Teotihuacan, Mexico; and Angkor, Cambodia) and end with a sustained, in-depth exploration of urbanism in prehispanic Maya civilization. As more and more people move into cities across the world, human societies are becoming forever transformed. This transformation into an urban globalized world has ancient roots at the beginning of the first civilizations in Euroasia and the Americas. We will delve into the nature of the urban transformation by first exploring sociological and anthropological definitions of urbanism, and recent studies of modern urbanism. We will look at Nineveh, Nimrud, Teotihuacan, and Angkor to consider how ancient urbanism was distinct from modern cities, while at the same time, ancient urbanites had to deal with similar issues as residents of modern cities. We will then examine in more depth the cities of prehispanic Maya civilization, answering such questions as: how different were Maya cities from other premodern ones? Is there one type of Maya city or many? How different was life in Maya cities from life in Maya villages? What were the power structures of Maya cities? How common were immigrants and slaves in these ancient cities? This course fulfills the Exploring Diversity Initiative through a comparative study of urban cultures and societies across the world in premodern times, and by theorizing how power and privilege inequalities were manifested and dealt with in these ancient cities. ANTONIA FOIAS
ANTH 332(S) Environmental Justice (D) (W) Crosslistings: ANTH 332/ENVI 332/JLST 332
This course explores the concept of justice and the ways in which interested parties have defined that term in relation to man-made environmental hazards. We will analyze episodes of environmental injustice recounted in ethnography, literature, and historical works. To familiarize ourselves with the remedies available to people disproportionately affected by environmental perils, we will read domestic and international legal doctrine as well as documents produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the United Nations Environment Programme. Our initial readings will include philosophical treatises on justice as well as texts outlining the spatial dimensions of social inequality. In the United States, our case studies will range from air quality in the South Bronx to water pollution in New Jersey and West Virginia. Internationally, we will study the effects of oil extraction in the Niger Delta as well as climate change adaptation in nations that emit relatively little carbon dioxide. Throughout the course, we will discuss how lawyers and the communities they represent mobilize scientific evidence to achieve desired ends. Simultaneously, we will consider the extent to which otherwise marginalized people participate in environmental law- and policymaking. This course satisfies the EDI requirement, by critically examining the unequal exposure of different social groups to environmental harms. NATALIE VENA
ANTH 346 Islam and Anthropology Crosslistings: ANTH 346/REL 346/ARAB 280
If anthropology has helped to define Islam in global thought, Islam has returned the favor, holding a critical mirror to the anthropological endeavor perhaps more than any other traditional “object” of study. This course examines anthropological studies of Islamic societies for what they teach us both about Islam and about anthropology. We begin with foundational social theorists whose studies of religious phenomena helped give rise to the field of anthropology of religion. We then survey influential efforts to construct “ideal-type” models of Muslim society based on anthropological and historical knowledge, alongside efforts to critique, historicize, and redirect the model-building project (notably by Talal Asad and Edward Said). The second half of the course is devoted to ethnographies that explore, from a variety of perspectives and in several regions (Morocco, India, Egypt, Syria), questions of human agency, hierarchy and resistance, and Islam as discursive resource, ethical project, and embodied community. JOEL LEE
SOC 221 Money and Intimacy
Can money buy love and care? The course will consider this taboo question from a sociological perspective. We will look into how relevant this question has been over the course of history, what forces have contributed to the shift in thinking about it, and, most importantly, how sociological research helps us understand its current ramifications. We will discuss a wide range of aspects of family life: the relationship between arranged marriage and romantic relationship, the role of inheritance in family and social life, the distribution of resources in the context of modern family forms (most notably remarriages), and the outsourcing of care for dependents. Intimacy bears different value and content in these changing contexts. The course will further look into the changing character of new economy where “people’s skills” are ever more required from employees (emotional labor) and where intimacy, care, and/or sex constitute purchasable commodities. A reflection on the growth of new technologies will complicate some of the discussed concepts and notions, but throughout a common denominator of our discussion will be the role of social inequality. MARKETA RULIKOVA
SOC 232(S) Symbols and Society
Human beings, as Kenneth Burke put it, are “symbol-using, symbol-making, and symbol-misusing” animals. Indeed, among humans, symbols provide a substitute for “instincts”. Symbols guide our actions, shape our emotions, and enable us to coordinate with others. Symbols may generate solidarity across wide spaces and among people who have never encountered one another face-to-face. They may also inflame conflicts and exaggerate distinctions, even promote violence. This course will examine the role of symbols and symbolism in modern society, exploring how words, gestures, images, and icons give shape and form to social life. The first half of the course will provide a broad introduction to the sociological study of symbols. In the second half of the course, we will pay particular attention to the role that symbols play in politics and nationhood. How do symbols such as flags, anthems, values, ideals, monuments, and memorials promote solidarity and common identity across space and time? When and why do nations struggle over symbols, and what influence do these symbolic struggles have on collective life? What role do symbols play in war, conflict, and violence? Is it possible—in an increasingly interconnected world—to create symbols that transcend the nation and tie together still wider collectivities, even humanity writ large? In addressing these questions, we will adopt a comparative perspective, examining cases from the U.S. and around the globe. CHRISTINA SIMKO
SOC 248T(S) Altering States: Postsoviet Paradoxes of Identity and Difference (D) (W) Crosslistings: SOC 248/GBST 247/RUSS 248
Critics and apologists of Soviet-style socialism alike agree that the Soviet ideology was deeply egalitarian. Putting aside for a moment the very reasonable doubts about how justified this perception actually was, it is still worth asking, how did people who lived in the world in which differences in rank, class, gender or ethnicity were not supposed to matter, make sense of their postsocialist condition, one in which new forms of difference emerged, and old ones assumed greater prominence? And how do these encounters with difference impact current events, such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict or the persistent tensions between East and West Germans? This tutorial will examine new dilemmas through ethnographic studies and documentary films that aim to capture in real time the process of articulating and grappling with newly discovered divides. We will focus especially closely on Russia, but will also read studies on East Germany, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Hungary. This course fulfills the EDI requirement by exploring comparatively the ways in which people in different countries made sense of the social, cultural and political heterogeneity of the postsocialist condition. OLGA SHEVCHENKO
SOC 330(S) Technology, Culture and Society Crosslistings: SOC 330/SCST 330
An introduction to major trajectories of theory and empirical research in the sociology and history of technology: the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT), Large Scale Technological Systems (LTS), Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and cultural studies of technoscience broadly. Students will also become acquainted with a number of philosophical positions on technology: instrumentalist, Marxist, cultural/ substantivist, humanist and posthumanist. Topics to be explored include technology, (post)industrial capitalism, and the nature of modern power; the role of technology in giving shape and weight to social institutions and forms of agency; technology, individualism, and everyday life in the modern world; technological determinism; resistance and accommodation to technological change; technology as a point of view and total way of life (culture); language, quantification, computerization, and (tele)visual media; and technology and environment. The course is furthermore designed to allow students to explore and research topics not appearing on the syllabus in the main. GRANT SHOFFSTALL