Table of Contents
Study Materials
Readings
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| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction and Assignments | Pretest Video: Island of Flowers. Las Meninas/Robotic Surgical Systems. Drama and Alternative Narratives: Oxygen. |
| 2-3 | The Social, the Ethnographic Method and the Durkheimean Challenge | Before Class Marcus, George E., and Michael M.J. Fischer. Anthropology as cultural critique : An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999, introduction and chapter 1. ISBN: 9780226504506. Instructions: As you read, imagine what it would mean to apply the same methodological considerations to different subfields and disciplines of science and technology. Imagine yourself as an ethnographer of molecular biology, in the Parsons Lab for Water Resources, the Tokomak reactor, the Media Lab, the AI Lab, or a lab at MGH. Fischer, Michael M. J. Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003, introduction and chapter 2. ISBN: 9780822332251.Instructions: Write a one page abstract of the difference between the vision for ethnography and social theory in the 1986 text of ACC, and Emergent Forms twenty years later: what sort of technological, scientific, and social (STS) changes do they register? For Discussion in Class Durkheim's Challenge: Mauss, Marcel. The gift; forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1954, pp. 1-45 and Conclusions. Commentaries Commentaries by Benveniste, Levi-Strauss, Sahlins, Gasché, Derrida, Cixous, Irigaray, Bourdieu, Stoekl, Bernasconi, Strathern. In The Logic of the Gift : Toward an Ethic of Generosity . Edited by A. Schrift. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997. ISBN: 9780415910989. Hollier, D. The College of Sociology. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780816615926. Pearce, Frank. "A Sociology of the Sacred & Creative Collective Effervescence." Chapter 10 in The Radical Durkheim . Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars' Press, 2001. ISBN: 9781551301693. Fleck, Ludwik. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979. ISBN: 9780226253251.Commentaries Douglas, Mary. How institutions think. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986, introduction and chapters 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9. ISBN: 0815623690. Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985, Introduction and chapter 1. ISBN: 9780691083933.Commentaries Latour, Bruno. Chapter 2 in We Have Never Been Modern . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780674948389. ———. Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988, part I. ISBN: 9780674657601. Perrow, Charles. Normal Accidents : Living with High-Risk Technologies. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999, last chapter. ISBN: 9780691004129. Galison, Peter. "An Accident of History." In Atmospheric Flight in the Twentieth Century. Edited by P. Galison and A. Roland. New York, NY: Springer, 2000, pp. 3-43. ISBN: 9780792360377. Sedgwick, Eve. "Epidemics of the Will." In Incorporations. Edited by J. Crary and S. Kwinter. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1992, pp. 582-95. ISBN: 9780942299298.Ethnographic Case Studies Organ Transplantation: Social and Classificatory Sanal, Aslihan. "'Robin Hood' of Techno-Turkey, or, Organ Trafficking in the State of Ethical Beings." In Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 28, no 3 (2004): 281-309. Catts, Oron, and Ionat Zurr. Tissue Culture & Art Project. Cohen, Lawrence. "Where it Hurts: Indian Material for an Ethics of Organ Transplantation." Daedalus 128, no 4 (1999): 135-66. [Gender, Debt, & Markets] Das, Veena. "The Practice of Organ Transplants: Networks, Documents, Translations." In Living with New Medical Technologies. Edited by M. Lock, A. Cambrosio, and A. Young. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780521652100. [Cultural presuppositions of the law.] Fox, Renee, and Judith Swazey. Spare Parts: Organ Replacement in American Society. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992, chapters 2, 3, and 8. ISBN: 9780195076509 ['Tyranny of the gift'.]Immortal Cell Lines Landecker, Hannah. "Immortality in Vitro: A History of the HeLa Cell Line." In Biotechnology and Culture. Edited by P. Brodwin. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780253214287.Risk, Expert Cultures, and the Public Sphere (Part I). Douglas, Mary. Purity and danger : an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London, UK: Routledge & K. Paul, 1966. Douglas, Mary, and Aaron Wildavsky. Risk and Culture : An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982. ISBN: 9780520044913. Perin, Constance. Shouldering Risks : The Culture of Control in the Nuclear Power Industry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780691070032. Vaughan, Diane. The Challenger Launch Decision : Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780226851754.Supplementary Evans-Pritchard, E.E. and M. Fortes. African political systems. London, UK: Oxford university press, 1940. Evans-Pritchard, E. E.. Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande. Oxford, UK: The Clarendon Press, 1937. Biagioli, Mario. Galileo, Courtier : The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993, introduction. ISBN: 9780226045597. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1970. ISBN: 9780394439525. Galison, Peter. Image and Logic : A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780226279169.Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Latour, Bruno. Science in Action : How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780674792906.Durkheim (1858-1917) and L'Annales Sociologique. Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labor in Society. New York, NY: Free Press, 1933. Durkheim, Emile. Suicide, a Study in Sociology. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1951. Durkheim, Emile. The Rules of Sociological Method. 8th ed. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago press, 1938. Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life : A Study in Religious Sociology. London, UK: G. Allen & Unwin, 1915. Durkheim, Emile, and Marcel Mauss. Primitive Classification. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Halbwachs, Maurice. The Collective Memory. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1980. ISBN: 9780060908003.Hertz, Robert. Death & The Right Hand. Glencoe, Il: Free Press, 1960, Introduction. Modern Extensions: Huntington, Richard, and Peter Metcalfe. Celebrations of Death : The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979. ISBN: 9780521225311. Bloch, Maurice, and Jonathan Parry, eds. Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ISBN: 9780521270373.Hubert, Henri, and Marcel Mauss. Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function. Foreward by E.E. Evans-Pritchard. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1964. Mauss, Marcel. The Gift; Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1954, Forward: Evans-Pritchard. ———. Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo : A Study in Social Morphology. Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. ISBN: 9780710002051. ———. Sociology and Psychology : Essays. Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. ISBN: 9780710088772.Steiner, Franz Baermann. Taboo. Preface by E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1967. Gennep, Arnold van. The Rites of Passage. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Critique Crapanzano, V. "Rite of Return: Circumcision in Morocco." In Psychoanalytic Study of Society. Vol. 9. Edited by W. Meunsterberger and L. Bryce Boyer. Library of Psychological Anthropology, 1980. Emirbayer, Mustafa, ed. Emile Durkheim : Sociologist of Modernity. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. ISBN: 9780631219903. |
| 4-5 | Disciplines, Communities of Expertise and Epistemological Cultural Critique | Before Class Write a one page abstract on the stakes of "structuralism": consider the question - why does Levi-Strauss consider geology, Marxism, and psycho-analysis to be forms of structuralism? Alternatively: what is structural about structural linguistics? For Class Discussion Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. London, UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966, chapters 1, 7, and 9. Leach, Edmund. "Claude Levi-Strauss - Anthropologist and Philosopher." New Left Review, no. 34 (Nov-Dec 1965): 12-27. ———. "Two Essays Concerning the Symbolic Representation of Time." In Rethinking Anthropology. London, UK: Athlone Press, 1972, chapter 6. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. "On Joking Relationships." Africa 13, no. 3 (1940): 195-210. ———. "A Further Note on Joking Relationships." Africa 19, no. 2 (1949): 133-140. Mitchell, Timothy. "Can the Mosquito Speak?" In Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2002. ISBN: 9780520232617. Whiteside, Kerry. "Politicizing Nature." In Divided Natures: French Contributions to Political Ecology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, chapter 4. ISBN: 9780262232210. Forsythe, Diana. Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001, section by Sha Xin Wei. ISBN: 9780804741415. Haraway, Donna. Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York, NY: Routledge, 1989. ISBN: 9780415901147. ———. "Cyborg Manifesto." In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New York, NY: Routledge, 1990. ISBN: 9780415903868. ———. Modest.Witness@Second.Millenium.: FemaleMan© Meets OncoMouse™. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, chapter 2. ISBN: 9780415912440. ———. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780971757585.Supplementary Ferry, Luc. The New Ecological Order. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780226244822. Fischer, M. "Structuralism." In Dictionary of Anthropology. Edited by T. Barfield. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1997. ISBN: 9781557862822. Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780521211789. Detienne, Marcel. The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780391006119. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1970. ISBN: 9780394439525. Levi-Strauss, C. "The Effectiveness of Symbols." In Structural Anthropology. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1976. ISBN: 9780465082308. Ophir, Adi. Plato’s Invisible Cities : Discourse and Power in the Republic. London, UK: Routledge, 1991, chapter 1. ISBN: 9780415035965. Serres, Michel. The Natural Contract. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780472065493. Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. The Black Hunter : Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780801832512. |
| 6 | Ecology and Systems: You Can't Change Only One Thing | Before Class Write a one page abstract on the stakes of "cybernetics" and "systems theories": what is feedback? Positive feedback? Negative feedback? What is the place of "culture" in a cybernetic theory of society? For Class Discussion Malthus, Thomas. An Essay on Population. 2nd ed. London, UK: J.M. Dent, 1826. Cultural and Technology Supplement: Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. The Peasants of Languedoc. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1974. ISBN: 9780252004117. Geertz, Clifford. Agricultural Involution : The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Berkeley, CA: Published for the Association of Asian Studies by University of California Press, 1969. ISBN: 9780520004597. White, Richard. The Organic Machine. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1995. ISBN: 9780809035595.Cultural Supplement Levi-Strauss, C. "The Myth of Asdiwal." In The Structural Study of Myth, ASA 5. Edited by E. Leach. London, UK: Tavistock Publications, 1967. Wohlforth, Charles. The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change. New York, NY: North Point Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780865476592.Supplements Lahsen, Myanna. "International Science and Brazilian Sovereignty: the Large-Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment." 2004. Lord, Nancy. Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whale’s Truths. New York, NY: Counterpoint, 2003. ISBN: 9781582431512. Worster, Donald. "Alaska: The Underworld Erupts." In Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780195086713.Supplementary Allan, William. The African Husbandman. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 1965. Chayanov, Alexander. A.V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy. Edited by Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay, R.E.F. Smith. Homewood, IL: R.D. Irwin, 1966. Dumont, René. Types of Rural Economy; Studies in World Agriculture. London, UK: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1957. Fitzgerald, Deborah. Every Farm a Factory : The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780300088137. Herring, Ronald J. "Contesting the 'Great Transformation': Local Struggles with the Market in South India." In Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting Edge . Edited by Scott and Bhatt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780300085006. Richards, Audrey. Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia: An Economic Study of the Bemba Tribe. Münster, Germany: LIT with the IAI, 1995. ISBN: 9783894738761. Scott, James, and Nina Bhatt, eds. Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting Edge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001, chapters 5-8. ISBN: 9780300085006. Shanin, Teodor. The Awkward Class; Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Society: Russia 1910-1925. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1972. ISBN: 9780198214939.Annales School of History Burke, Peter. The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929-89. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991. ISBN:9780804718363. Stoianovich, Traian. French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976. ISBN: 9780801408618. |
| 7 | System Transformation, Social Formations, Multiple Historical Horizons: The Marxian Challenge | Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992, preface and chapter 1. ISBN: 9780803983458. ———. What is Globalization? Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2000, introduction and chapter 2. ISBN: 9780745621258. ———. "The Cosmopolitan Turn." In The Future of Social Theory. Edited by Nicholas Gane. New York, NY: Continuum, 2004. ISBN: 9780826470652. Beck, Ulrich, and Johannes Willms. Conversations with Ulrich Beck. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 9780745628233. Ewald, Francois. "Insurance and Risk." In The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality. Edited by G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 197-210. ISBN: 9780226080444. Marx, Karl. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York, NY: International Publishers, 1964. ———. "Commodity Fetishism," "Machines," and "Primitive Accumulation." Capital: a Critique of Political Economy. Vol. I, Book One, the Process of Production of Capital. London, UK: Electric Book Company, 2001. ISBN: 1843270978. ———. "Introduction," "Social Relations and Exchange Value," "Circulation and Value," "Accumulation and Social Relations," "Simple Exchange," "Exchange of Labor," "Labor as Objectified Value," and "Precapitalist Economic Formations."In The Grundrisse. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1971. ISBN: 9780060128289.Ethnographies Biehl, Joao. CMP. 2001. Cohen, Lawrence. "Operability: Surgery at the Margins of the State." In Anthropology at the Margins of the State. Edited by V. Das and D. Poole. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2004. ISBN: 9781930618404.Dumit, Joe. "Reading Capital as Biocapital." Fortun, Kim. Advocating Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780226257198. Petryna, Adriana. Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780691090184. Rabinow, Paul. Making PCR: a Story of Biotechnology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780226701462. Sunderrajan, Kaushik. "Born Again Biocapitalism." In Science in Culture. Edited by Peter Galison, Stephen R. Graubard, and Everett Mendelsohn. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001. ISBN: 9780765806734.Supplementary re. Marx and Revolutionary Processes. Bendix, R., and S. Lipset. "Social Status and Social Structure." British Journal of Sociology 2, nos. 2-3 (1951): 150-168. Derrida, J. "Wars and Tears: Tableau of an Ageless World." In Spectres of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York, NY: Routledge, 1994, chapter 3. ISBN: 9780415910446.Fischer, Michael M. J. Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980. ISBN: 0674663152. Fischer, Michael M. J. "Islam & the Revolt of the Petit Bourgeosie." Daedalus 111 (1982): 101-125. Nimtz, August. Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780791444894. ———. "Marx and Engels: the Prototypical Transnational Actors." In Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms. Edited by Sangeev Kagram, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink. Minneapolis, MN: Univeristy of Minnesota Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780816639069.re. Environmental Issues and Democratic Organization. Brown, Phil, and Edwin Mikkelsen. No safe place : toxic waste, leukemia, and community action. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780520212480. Crawford, Colin. Uproar at Dancing Rabbit Creek : battling over race, class, and the environment. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996. ISBN: 9780201627237. George, Timothy. Minamata: pollution and the struggle for democracy in postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780674003644. Harr, Jonathan. A civil action. New York, NY: Random House, 1995. ISBN: 9780394563497. Reich, Michael. Toxic politics: responding to chemical disasters. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780801424342. Wright, Bevery. "Race, Politics, and Pollution: Environmental Justice in the Mississippi Chemical Corridor." In Just sustainabilities : development in an unequal world. Edited by J. Agyeman, R. D. Bullard, and B. Evans. London, UK: Earthscan, 2002. ISBN: 9781853837289.re. Biotechnology: Biocapital, Biopower, Biosociality. Martin, Emily. The woman in the body : a cultural analysis of reproduction. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780807046043. ———. Flexible bodies: tracking immunity in American culture from the days of polio to the age of AIDS. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780807046265. Rabinow, Paul. French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780226701509. Rapp, Rayna. Testing women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America. New York, NY: Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 9780415916448. Werth, Barry. The Billion-Dollar Molecule: One Company’s Quest for the Perfect Drug. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994. ISBN: 9780671723279. |
| 8 | Meaningful Social Action in Post-Bureaucratic Worlds: The Weberian Challenge |
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| 9 | Media, the Culture Industry, and the Transformation of Social Relations: The Challenge of the Frankfurt School | Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Glasgow, UK: Fontana, 1973. |
| 10 | Bodies, Multitudes, Codes and Flows: The Challenge of 1970s-90s French "Theory" | Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October 59 (1990/1992): 3-7. [Original: L'Autre Journal 1 (May 1990).]
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