DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY & SOCIOLOGY

School of Oriental & African Studies

BA Course Cover Sheet

Academic Year: 2010-11

Term: 1
Course Title: Voice and Place
Course Code: 15 180 2040
Course Unit Value: 1
Contact Hours: 1 hour lecture; 1 hour tutorial
Course Teachers: Convenor: Dr Stephen Hughes
Lecturers: Members of the Department of Anthropology and
Sociology
Tutorials: Giulia Battaglia

Timetable:
See www.soas.ac.uk/timetable for the lecture room. Tutorials will
be assigned and lists posted on the Anthropology notice board in
the Faculty offices.

Teaching methods and modes of learning:

There will be a lecture and a compulsory one hour tutorial. You
are expected to participate in tutorials by reading essential texts
(available as course packs) and preparing any other agreed
assignments.

Assessment:

Assessmen Weighting Due Date (by Length

t (%) 4pm) (words)
Written 70
Exam
Assignmen 15 Monday 10th Jan 2500
t1 2011
Assignmen 15 Monday 26th 2500
t2 April 2011
Assignmen
t3
Assignmen
t4

Coursework submission procedures:

Essays should be submitted online via the "Assignments" menu in
each course on BLE. Each essay should be submitted by midnight
on the date of the deadline. Any essay can be resubmitted at any
point up until the deadline. An automated receipt will be emailed
to the student on successful submission - if not received you must
re-attempt the submission. If you have problems, you should
follow the email submission instructions at the following link from
the Faculty online submission page on the SOAS website:

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Academic -> Arts & Humanities Faculty -> Information for
Students -> Online Coursework Submission

http://www.soas.ac.uk/artshumanities/information-for-
students/ocs/

Late submission of essays will be penalised by the loss of TWO

percentage marks per working day. Please be aware that
University of London regulations on plagiarism apply to all work
submitted as part of the requirement for any examination.

Coursework should be marked and returned no later than one

calendar month after submission. If you have not received
coursework back in a reasonable time, contact the course tutor or
the UG tutor.

Attendance Regulations:
You should attend all lectures and tutorials for the course, and
attendance is required for at least 50% of tutorials and lectures.
Attendance registers will be maintained for these. You should
notify your tutor or the Faculty Office in advance if you are unable
to attend a tutorial for good reason. Should two absences occur
without explanation within any four week period, your tutor will
inform the Faculty Office and a letter will be sent to you with
copies to the department’s undergraduate tutor and to the
Registry. All absences are noted on your records, and if absences
persist you may be prevented from taking the written
examination for the course.

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WEEK 1: Environmental movements in contemporary China

Jakob Klein

Environmental movements can affect popular perceptions of ‘the

environment’, and can pose significant collective challenges to the powers
perceived to be responsible for environmental destruction. At the same time,
various and sometimes conflicting agendas and visions of ‘nature’ may
animate activists both within organizations and between collaborating groups.
Further, these different agendas and visions may be underpinned by unequal
relations of power within and between movements, or between activists and
‘local communities’. Using mainland China as our main example, we consider
anthropological approaches to the study of environmentalism and
environmental movements.

Environmental degradation is by no means a recent phenomenon in Chinese

history (Marks 1998; Elvin 2004). Yet it is difficult to resist the arguments that
modernization projects – be they centrally planned or market driven – have
led to unprecedented destruction, including ‘widespread deforestation,
recurrently intolerable air pollution, ubiquitous water contamination, excessive
losses of arable land, and a drastic decline of biodiversity’ (Smil 2004: 141;
see also Edmonds 1994; Shapiro 2001). This destruction has become a
growing concern among policy makers and citizens in the PRC. Recent
decades have witnessed not only the emergence of environmental laws and
state regulatory bodies, but also widespread popular protests and the birth of
non-governmental environmental organizations (Ho 2001; Jing 2003; Yang
2005). Nevertheless, responses to environmental destruction have not been
uniform, but are embedded in social experiences and may reveal significant
differences between countryside and city and between ethnic, occupational
and other social groups (Weller 2006; Tilt 2009; 2006; Litzinger 2004; Klein
2009; Lora Wainwright 2009). How are protests and environmental groups
mobilized, and what kinds of cultural idioms and visions of ‘nature’ do they
deploy? Are these movements able to cut across social and cultural divides,
or do they in fact reveal or even exacerbate such divides? What role might
international organizations play in China’s environmental movements? How
has the Chinese state reacted to the growing number of environmental
protests and NGOs?

Our focus in this unit is on the social, cultural and political dimensions of
everyday and organized responses to environmental degradation in the PRC,
including the relationship between such responses and transnational debates
and organizations (Litzinger 2004). Illuminating comparisons with Taiwan and
other Asian settings are provided by Weller and Hsiao (1998), Weller (2006),
Kalland and Persoon (1998) and Greenhough and Tsing (2003), while some
of the global dimensions of contemporary environmental movements are
discussed by Tsing (2005), Lien (2004) and Carrier (2004).

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Essay question:

‘Studies of environmental movements reveal more about social and political

divisions than they do about solidarities.’ Discuss.

Key readings:

Jing, Jun (2003) ‘Environmental protests in rural China’ in E.J. Perry and M.
Selden (eds), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict, Resistance. New York and
London: RoutledgeCurzon. (available as electronic book via SOAS library)

Litzinger, Ralph (2004) ‘The mobilization of “nature”: perspectives from north-

west Yunnan’, The China Quarterly, 178: 488-504. (available online)

Recommended readings:

Yang, Guobin (2005) ‘Environmental NGOs and Institutional Dynamics in

China’, The China Quarterly, 181: 46-66.

Ho, Peter (2001) ‘Greening without conflict? Environmentalism, NGOs and

civil society in China’, Development and Change, 32 (5): 893-921.

Weller, Robert P. (2006) Discovering Nature: Globalization and

Environmental Culture in China and Taiwan. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Klein, Jakob A. (2009) ‘Creating ethical food consumers? Promoting organic

foods in urban Southwest China’, Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale,
17 (1): 74-89.

Tilt, Bryan (2006) ‘Perceptions of risk from industrial pollution in China: A

comparison of occupational groups’, Human Organization 65 (2): 115-27.

Lora Wainwright, Anna (2009) ‘Of farming chemicals and cancer deaths: the
politics of health in contemporary rural China’, Social
Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 17 (1): 56-73.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt (2005) Friction: An Ethnography of Global

Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Especially Introduction
and Part III: Freedom)

Lien, Marianne Elisabeth (2004) ‘Dogs, whales and kangaroos: transnational

activism and food taboos’, in Marianne E. Lien and Brigitte Nerlich (eds), The
Politics of Food. Oxford: Berg, pp.179-97.

Weller, Robert P. and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao (1998) ‘Culture, gender and
community in Taiwan’s environmental movement’, in Arne Kalland and Gerard
Persoon (eds), Environmental Movements in Asia. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon
Press, pp. 83-109.

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Further readings:

Carrier, James G. (ed.) (2004) Confronting Environments: Local

Understandings in a Globalizing World. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
(Introduction and chapters according to interest)

Greenhough, Paul and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (eds) (2003) Nature in the
Global South: Environmental Projects in South and Southeast Asia. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press. (Especially chapters by Dove and Baviskar)

Kalland, Arne and Gerard Persoon (eds) (1998) Environmental Movements in

Asia. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. (Introduction and chapters according
to interest)

Tilt, Bryan (2009) The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China:

Environmental Values and Civil Society. Columbia: Columbia University
Press.

Smil, Vaclav (2004) China’s Past, China’s Future: Energy, Food,

Environment. New York and London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Shapiro, Judith (2001) Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the
Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Bruun, Ole (2003) Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divisions between State

Orthodoxy and Popular Religion. Copenhagen: NIAS. Chapter 7: ‘The
construction of a discourse: fengshui as environmental ethics’, pp. 231-54.

Coggins, Chris (2003) The Tiger and the Pangolin: Nature, Culture, and
Conservation in China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Chapter 8:
‘White tigers and azure dragons: fengshui forests, sacred space, and the
preservation of biodiversity in village landscapes’, pp. 195-215.

Edmonds, Richard Louis (1994) Patterns of China’s Lost Harmony: A Survey

of the Country’s Environmental Degradation and Protection. New York and
London: Routledge.

Marks, Robert B. (1998) Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and
Economy in Late Imperial China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tucker, Mary Evelyn and John Berthrong (eds). 1998. Confucianism and
Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University, Center for the Study of World Religions.

Elvin, Mark (2004) Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of

China. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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WEEK 2: Using film to theorise about the other and the
politics of fear

Lola Martinez

Essay question: How might an anthropologist analyse a mainstream film?

Beechler, Michael 1987 Border Patrols in Aliens, the Anthropology of

Science Fiction edited by George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin.
Carbonale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. DL

Freud, Sigmund 1956 The uncanny in his Collected Papers, vol.IV London:
Hogarth Press. In main library, xerox in DL.

Johnson, Sheila K. 1988 The Japanese through American eyes. Stanford,

California: Stanford University Press. (this is an ethnographic example,
chapters 1 and 2 are especially useful).

Otis, Laura Arthur Conan Doyle: an imperial immune system and Conclusion:
Identity in the Age of Aids in her Membranes, metaphors of invasion in
nineteenth-century literature, science and politics. Baltimore and
London: The John Hopkins University Press. DL

Said, Edward 1991 Orientatlism. London: Penguin.

Simmel, Georg 1950 The Stranger in The sociology of Georg Simmel edited
by Kurt H. Wolff. New York.

WEEK 3: The Anthropology of Media: Cinema Exhibition and

Audience Practices

Stephen Hughes

This week starts with a basic introduction and overview of the relatively new
and still emergent specialist sub-field, anthropology of media. Considering
that the contemporary worlds we live in are inescapably and continuously
transformed through a proliferation of mass media, it may seem somewhat
surprising that anthropology as an academic discipline has only recently
begun to seriously address how and why media matters to the people with
whom they study. This week we will consider why anthropologists have been
slow to take on the topic of the media. Why might we want to propose an
anthropology of media? What would such an anthropology consist of? And
what would it might contribute to the understanding of media?

While it will be impossible to comprehensively cover this now fast growing

encounter between anthropology and media studies, this week selectively

6
focuses on recent studies on film exhibition. Exhibition has emerged as one
of the key sites where anthropologists have sought to study cinema as a kind
of social practice (for example: Armbrust, Hahn, Himple, Hughes, Larkin,
Hoek). The example of exhibition has been part of the critical questioning of
the centrality of the film texts for the study of cinema. In particular,
anthropologists have turned to exhibition as providing an alternative approach
to studying the relationship between films and their social and historical
contexts. A study of cinema that takes exhibition into account must consider
film texts as also a kind of performance- a unique interaction of people and
projected media at a specific place and occasion. The reconception of
cinema as performance has important consequences for how one constructs
the object of film studies and how we can relate film texts to historically and
culturally situated practice.

Essay question: How has the study of film exhibition helped anthropologists
to think about the relationship between media and their audiences?

Reading: Introductions to the anthropology of media

D. Spitulnik, “Anthropology and Mass Media,” Annual Review of Anthropology,
no. 22, 1993, pp. 293-315.

F. Ginsburg, L. Abu-Lughod and B. Larkin, editors, Media Worlds:

Anthropology on New Terrain. University of California Press, 2002, pp. 1-36.

Kelly Askew, “Introduction” in Kelly Askew and Richard Wilk, editors, The
Anthropology of Media: A Reader. Blackwell Publishers, 2002, pp. 1-13.

Sara Dickey, “Anthropology and Its Contributions to Studies in Mass Media”,

International Social Science Journal, 153 (September 1997), pp. 413-427.

V. Caldarola, “Embracing the Media Simulacrum,” Visual Anthropology

Review, vol. 10, no. 1, spring 1994, pp. 66-69.

Faye Ginsburg, “Some Thoughts on Culture/Media,” Visual Anthropology

Review, vol. 10, no. 1, spring 1994, pp. 136-141.

Reading: ethnography of exhibition and audiences

Walter Armbrust, “When the Lights Go Down in Cairo: Cinema as Secular
Ritual” in Visual Anthropology, 1998, vol. 10, no. 2-4, pp. 413-442

Brian Larkin, “Theaters of the Profane: Cinema and Colonial Urbanism” in

Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 14, no. 2, fall/winter 1998-1999, pp. 46-62.

Brian Larkin, “Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of
Parallel Modernities,” Africa, vol. 67, no. 3, 1997. Also reprinted in Inda and
Rosaldo, eds, The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Blackwell
Publishing, 2005, pp. 350-378.

Brian Larkin, Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure and Urban Culture in
Nigeria. Duke University Press, 2008.

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Charles Ambler, “Popular Films and Colonial Audiences in Central Africa” in
Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby eds, Hollywood Abroad: Audiences and
Cultural Exchange. British Film Institute, 2004, pp. 133-157.

Jeff Himple, “Film Distribution as Media: Difference and Discourse in the

Cinemascape” in Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 12, no. 1, spring 1996, pp.
47-66.

Jeff Himple, “Arrival Scenes: Complicity and Media Ethnography in the

Bolivian Public Sphere” in F. Ginsburg, L. Abu-Lughod and B. Larkin, editors,
Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, University of California Press,
2002, pp. 301-316.

Stephen Hughes, “House Full: Silent Film Genre, Exhibition and Audiences in
South India” in Indian Economic and Social History Review, forthcoming,
2006, vol. 43, no. 1.
Stephen Hughes, “Pride of Place: rethinking exhibition the study of cinema in
India” in Seminar, May 2003, no. 525, pp. 28-32

Lotte Hoek, “Urdu for Image: Understanding Bangladeshi Cinema through its
Theatres”. In Shakuntala Banaji, editor, South Asian Media Cultures:
Representations, Audiences and Contexts. London & New York: Anthem
Press, 2010, pp. 91-105.

Lotte Hoek, “Unstable Celluloid: Film Projection and the Cinema Audience in
Bangladesh. BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 1:1, 2010, pp. 49-66.
S. Dickey, Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.

S. Dickey, “Consuming Utopia: Film watching in Tamil Nadu.” In Carol

Breckenridge, ed., Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in Contemporary
India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 131-156.

Lakshmi Srinivas, “The active audience: spectatorship, social relations and

the experience of cinema in India,” Media, Culture and Society, vol. 24, pp.
155-173.
Lakshmi Srinivas, “Imaging the Audience”, South Asian Popular Culture, vol.
3, no. 2, Oct. 2005, pp. 101-116.

Elizabeth Hahn, “The Tongon Tradition of Going to the Movies” in Visual

Anthropology Review, Spring, 10, 1:103-111. Also reprinted in Kelly Askew
and Richard Wilk, editors, The Anthropology of Media: A Reader, Blackwell
Publishers, 2002, pp. 258-269.

D. Kulick and M. Wilson, “Rambo’s Wife Saves the Day: Subjugating the
Gaze and Subverting the Narrative in a Papua New Guinean Swamp” in K.
Askew and R. Wilk eds., The Anthropology of Media: a reader. Blackwell
Publishers, 270-286.

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Please note that as part of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology’s
Winter term 2010-2011 “Ethnographic Film Series: On Matters of Media”,
there will two public film screenings relevant for this week’s topic. The series
runs every Wednesday at 1pm in the Khalili Lecture Theatre and is open and
free for everyone in the SOAS community.

9 March
Battu's Bioscope, Andrej Fidyk, 1998, 58 min.
This film follows a touring cinema exhibitor, Mr. Battu and his assistant,
from urban Calcutta to isolated rural areas in India.

16 March
Kumar Talkies, Pankaj Rishi Kumar, 1999, 76 min.
The film explores the relationship between Kalpi--a small town in
northern India--and its only surviving cinema hall. The film chronicles
Kalpi’s economic decline and its citizens’s hopes and frustrations while
taking a nostalgic look at the lost, lavish world of cinema. The film also
considers the influence of television, which is gradually reducing the
audience at the hall.

WEEK 4: Diaspora, Culture and Identity

Parvathi Raman

The concept of ‘diaspora’ is wide ranging, and in some quarters, contested.

Diaspora Studies became established in the early 1990s and offered
perspectives on identity which sought to transcend the boundaries of the
nation state, bringing centre stage those who were either marginalised by
national narratives, or identified themselves in relation to older histories of
migration and movement. This week, we will critically examine different
approaches to the idea of diaspora, as well as comparing different histories of
African and Asian diasporic identity. The idea of ‘Diaspora’ will be placed
within a political and social framework which also raises issues of
reconceptualising ideas of space, borders, and mapping, as part of an
ongoing process of identification. We will look at an ethnographic example of
the Muharram festival in South Africa to see how Diaspora is created and
enacted, not given, and how culture is above all an act of translation which
takes place within history and context.

Essay question: Discuss, with examples, the ways that migrant communities
'produce locality'.

Key Readings:
J. Clifford, ‘On Diasporas’, in Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late
twentieth Century, (Harvard, 1997).

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B. Hayes Edwards,The Practice of Diaspora: literature, translation and the
rise of black internationalism, (Cambridge, Harvard, 2003)

S. Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds.)

Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, (Hemel Hempstead, 1993), pp.
392-403

P. Gilroy, ‘Diaspora, Utopia and the Critique of Capitalism’, in There Ain’t No

Black in the Union Jack: the cultural politics of race and nation, (London
1992), pp. 200-301.

Other Readings on Diaspora and Space:

W. Safran, Diasporas in Modern Societies: myths of homeland and return,
(TC, Offprint 5725).

E. Akyeampong, ‘Africans in the Diaspora; the Diaspora and Africa’, African

Affairs, (2000), vol. 99, pp. 183-215. (Available online).
S. Lemelle and R. D. G. Kelley (eds.), Imagining Home: Class, Culture and
Nationalism in the African Diaspora, (London, 1994). Introduction.

T. R. Patterson and R.D.G. Kelley,‘Unfinished migrations: Reflections on the

African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World’, African Studies
Review, Vol. 43, no.1 April 2000, pp.11-45. (Available online).

A. Appadurai, ‘The Production of Locality’, in R. Fardon, (ed.),

Counterworks: managing the diversity of knowledge, (London, 1995).

A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, ‘Beyond Culture: Space, Identity and the Politics
of Difference’, in A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, Culture, Power, Place:
explorations in critical anthropology, (Baskerville, 2001).

On the Muharram Festival:

G. Vahed, ‘Uprooting and Rerooting: culture, religion and community among
indentured Muslim migrants in colonial Natal, 1860-1911’, South African
Historical Journal, no. 45, Nov 2001, pp. 191-222.

G. Vahed, ‘Mosques, Mawlanas and Muharram: Indian Islam in Colonial

Natal, 1860-1910’, Journal of Religion in Africa, XXX1, 3. (Available online).

Week 5: Making the law transparent: “voiceless” refugees in

the British asylum system

John Campbell

Anthropology has a long tradition of research into law and legal process that
began with work on customary law and tradition in Africa. However in the past
twenty years anthropological approaches to law have changed dramatically

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following a re-conceptualization of law, culture and the role of the state and
transnational organizations. This lecture will focus on contemporary work on
asylum in the UK as a field of law that is deeply affected by national legislation
and international legal conventions such as the European Convention on
Human Rights and the Geneva Convention.

Essay question: Analyze possible anthropological approaches to the law by

focusing on contemporary issues such as asylum or the role of expert
evidence.

General reading (all the journals are available on-line at SOAS)

Collier, J., B. Maurer & L. Suarez-Navez. 1995. “Sanctioned identities: legal
constructions of modern personhood”, Identities 2 (1-2), 1-27

Heyman, J. 1995. “Putting power in the anthropology of bureaucracy”, Current

Anthropology 36, 2, 261-87

____& H. Cunningham. 2004. “Introduction: mobilities and enclosures at

borders”, Identities 11, 289-302 (and see Heymans paper in this volume)

Moore, S-F. 2001. “Certainties undone: fifty turbulent years of legal

anthropology, 1949-99”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (NS) 7,
95-116

Morris, L. 2002. “Britain’s asylum and immigration regime: the shifting

contours of rights”, Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies 28, 3, 409-25

Schuster, L. 2000. “A comparative analysis of the asylum policy of seven

European Governments”, Journal of Refugee Studies 13, 1, 118-32

The anthropological analysis of law/asylum:

Conley, J. & W. O’Barr. 1978. “The power of language: presentation style in
the courtroom”, Duke Law Journal pp. 1375- 1399 [download from Hein-on-
line]

_____. 1987/88. “Fundamentals of jurisprudence: an ethnography of judicial

decision-making in informal courts”, North Carolina Law Review Pp. 467- 507
[download from Hein-on-line]

_____. 2005. (2nd Ed). Just Words. Law, language and Power. University of
Chicago (not in SOAS library).

De Genova, N. 2002. “Migrant ‘illegality’ and deportability in everyday life”,

Annual Review of Anthropology 31, 419-47

Good, A. 2004a. “Expert evidence in asylum & human rights appeals: an

expert’s view”, Int. Jo. of Refugee Law 16, 3, 358-80

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_____. 2004b. “Undoubtedly an expert? Anthropologists in British Asylum
Courts”, Jo. of the Royal Anthropological Institute (NS) 10, 113-33

WEEK 6: Reading Week

No lecture or classes.

WEEK 7: Sorcery and Subjectivity

Christopher Davis

In this week, we will address several interrelated topics. First, we will consider
the relationship between sorcery or witchcraft and lived experience. That is, we
will think about them not only as social institutions or practices, but also as
devices by which knowledge of the world is constituted or created. Thus, we
will consider their epistemological aspects - i.e. we will see them as sustaining
reflection on how knowledge of particular situations is generated. We will also
see how, within the terms set, people can reflect on and be critical of
judgments. Finally, we will go on to consider the use to which anthropologists
have put this type of knowledge.

Essay question: Why does witchcraft continue to intrigue successive

generations of anthropologists?

Recommended readings
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1937. The notion of witchcraft explains unfortunate
events. In Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande. Oxford, Oxford
University Press, pp. 63-84

Levi-Strauss, C. 1968. ‘The Sorcerer and his magic’, in Structural Anthropology

I. Harmondsworth: Penguin. pp.167-185

Turner, V. 1967. ‘Ndembu doctor in his practice’, in Forest of symbols. Ithaca,

New York: Cornell University Press. pp.359-395

Further reading
Douglas, M, 1975. ‘Social and religious symbolism of the Lele and animals in
Lele religious symbolism’, in Implicit meanings. London, RKP. pp.9-27, pp.27-
47

Jackson, M. 1989. ‘The Witch as category and as a person’, & ‘The Man who
could turn into an elephant’, in Paths toward a clearing. Bloomington, Indiana:
Indiana University Press. pp. 88-108, pp. 102-119

Bonetta, J.R. ‘The veil of objectivity’ in American Anthropologist.

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Luhrmann T. 1989. Persuasions of the Witches’ Craft. Oxford: Blackwell.
Chapter 21 on interpretive drift.

Orwell, G. 1989. The Road to Wigan Pier. London: Penguin. chaps 2, 3 & 4.

Middleton, J. 1967. ‘The concept of “bewitching” in Lugbara’, in Middleton (ed)

Magic, witchcraft and curing. Garden City, NY: NHP. pp.55-68

Ngubane, H. 1977. Body and mind in Zulu medicine. New York, Academic
Press

Sperber, D. 1982. ‘Apparently irrational beliefs’, in On anthropological

knowledge. Cambridge: CUP pp.35-64

WEEK 8: The Anthropology of Tourism

Tom Selwyn

Essay Question: "Why should social anthropologists study tourism?"

Andrews, H., L. Roberts and T. Selwyn, 2007, ‘Hospitality and Eroticism’

International Journal of Hospitality, Tourism, and Culture, 1:3.
www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/17506180710817774

Crick, M. 1989 ‘Representations of International Tourism in the Social

Sciences: Sun, sex, sights, savings and servility’, Annual Review of
Anthropology, 18: 307-344.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155895

MacCannell, D. 1976 The Tourist, New York, Schocken.

Meethan, K. 2001, Tourism in Global Society: Place, culture, consumption.

New York, Palgrave.

Selwyn, T. 2007 ‘The Political Economy of Enchantment: Formations in the

anthropology of tourism’, Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish
Anthropological Society, 32:2, 48-70.
http://www.antropologinenseura.fi/journal/journal/volume-32-22007

Selwyn, T. 2009, ‘The Tourist in a Hall of Mirrors: Tourist brochures, social

relations, and philosophical positions’, Watson, S., E. Waterton, (eds) Visual
Representations of Cultural Heritage, Routledge.
(In print: url to follow)

13
WEEK 9: The politics of memorializing in the dead in the
aftermath of natural disasters in South Asia

Edward Simpson

In this lecture I explore some of the memorial practices that emerged after the
2001 earthquake in Gujarat and along the eastern and southern coasts of Sri
Lanka following the tsunami of 2004. In both locations, acts of memorialization
have been inseparable from reconstruction initiatives, and politics of all kinds
and at all levels have influenced the design, location and inauguration
ceremonies of memorials. In Gujarat, memorials are tied to the politics of
religious communalism, regionalism and mainstream Hindu nationalism. In Sri
Lanka, memorials are local manifestations of ethno-nationalisms and state
hegemony. The comparison of the two locations shows different patterns of
memorialisation, but why? Looking for an answer to this question forces us to
think about 'culture', the relation between 'culture' and public action, and the
nature of comparison in anthropology.

Essay question: Is it natural to memorialize a tragic event?

Readings
Casey, Edward, S. 2000. Remembering: A phenomenological study (second
edition). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Connerton, Paul. 1989. How societies remember. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Grider, S. 2007. 'Public grief and the politics of memorial: Contesting the
memory of 'the shooters' at Columbine High School', Anthropology Today, 34
(3): 3-7.

* Inglis, K.S. 1992. 'The Homecoming: The War Memorial Movement in

Cambridge, England' Journal of Contemporary History, 27 (4): 583-605.

Jan Margry, P. and C. Sanchez-Carretero, 2007. 'Memorializing traumatic

death', Anthropology Today, 34 (3): 1-3.

* Simpson, Edward and Stuart Corbridge. 2006. 'The geography of things that
may become memories: The 2001 earthquake in Kachchh-Gujarat and the
politics of rehabilitation in the pre-memorial era,' Annals of the Association of
American Geographers. 96 (2): 566-585.

Winter, Jay (1995), Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in
European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Week 10: Consumption

Caroline Osella

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This week we will think about some issues in and approaches to the study of
consumption, using (mostly) South Asian ethnography. We will evaluate
different analytical perspectives on consumption, and explore the role of
consumption in producing identities and social categories.

For class, questions to address in discussion might include: Is consumption

an act of empowerment or a capitulation to negative forces? To what extent
are the poor excluded from consumption? Are people’s consumer choices
ultimately rational or swayed by irrational motivations? To what degree might
people’s consumer choices be predictable, given knowledge of their social
background? How does participation in consumption free people from
traditional social hierarchies? How does it produce new hierarchies? Will
anthropologists benefit or lose by shifting their attention away from the study
of production and towards consumption? Is anything to be gained by
analysing social practices such as religious rituals as aspects of
consumption?

Essay question
What - if any - fresh insights can be gained through making consumption a
central focus of research?

Essential reading (for class)

Osella F & Osella C. 1999 ‘From Transience To Immanence: Consumption,
Life-Cycle And Social Mobility In Kerala, South India’. Modern Asian Studies,
vol. 33, no. 4: 989-1020.

Miller, D. 1987. ‘Towards a theory of consumption’. In Miller D Material

culture and mass consumption. Berg (chp 10).

Further Readings
Appadurai, A. 1986. ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’. In
Appadurai A (ed) The Social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective.
CUP.

Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction (Chp 5) (or see also Bourdieu’s The logic of
Practice, part 1, section 3,5,7 & 8).

Carrier, J & J. Heyman 1997 ‘Consumption and political economy’, The

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 3, 2, pp. 355-372.

Fernandes, L 2000 ‘Nationalizing 'the global': media images, cultural politics

and the middle class in India’. In Media culture and society, Sep 2000,
Vol.22, No.5, pp.611-628

Liechty, M 2002 Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New

Consumer Society. Princeton University Press

Marx, K. 1909 (1887) ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof’.
In Marx K Capital, Vol 1, Part 1. (Chapter 1, Section 4)

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Tarlo, E 1991 “The problem of what to wear - the politics of Khadi in late
colonial India”. In South Asia Research Vol.11, No.2, pp.134-157

Veblen, T 1992 The theory of the leisure class (chp 3).

Extra Reading (for essay or exam answer; select from the list below)
Adorno, T & M. Horkheimer. 1972 ‘The Culture Industry: enlightenment as
mass deception’. In Adorno T & M Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment
(extract in S. During (ed) The Cultural Studies Reader, Routledge, 1993)

Brenner, S 1998 The domestication of desire: women, wealth, and modernity

in Java . Princeton University Press.

Burke, T 1996 Lifebuoy men, Lux women: commodification, consumption, and

cleanliness in modern Zimbabwe. Duke Uni. Press

Burke, T. 1998. ‘Cannibal margarine and reactionary snapple: a comparative

examination of rumours about commodities’. International Journal of Cultural
Studies 1, 2: 253-270

Comaroff, J. 1996. ‘The empire’s old clothes: fashioning the colonial subject’. I
D. Howes (ed.) Cross-cultural consumption: global markets, local realities.
Routledge.

Featherstone, M. 1991. Consumer culture and postmodernism (chps 1 & 2).

Hannerz, U. 1987. ‘The world in creolisation’. Africa 57, 4: 546-559.

Kemper, S 2001 Buying and Believing: Sri Lankan Advertising and

Consumers in a Transnational World . Chicago Uni Press

Klein, N. 1999 No Logo. Picador.

Mazzarella, W 2003 Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in

contemporary India. Duke University Press.

Miller,D. (ed) 2001 Consumption. Routledge. Four volumes:

Volume One: Theory and Issues in Consumption
Volume Two: History and Diversity of Consumption
Volume Three: Disciplinary Approaches to Consumption
Volume Four: Objects, Subjects and Mediations in Consumption

Osella F & Osella C. 2000 ‘Migration, Money and Masculinity in Kerala’. The
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 6, no. 1: 115-131.

Osella, F & Osella, C. 2003 ‘Phoney traditionalists, upstart newcomers and

flexible performers: migration and ritual in South India’. In Contribution to
Indian Sociology (double special issue on ‘Migration in South Asia’ edited by F
Osella & K Gardner).

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Ritzer, G. 1998 The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions.
London: SAGE Publications (chps 1-10).

Slater D 1997 Consumer Culture and Modernity, Cambridge, UK: Polity

Press (eps. Chps 3 & 4).

Tarlo, E 1991 “The problem of what to wear - the politics of Khadi in late
colonial India”. In South Asia Research Vol.11, No.2, pp.134-157

Tarlo, E 1996 Clothing matters: dress and identity in India. Hurst Pub.

Veblen, T 1992 The theory of the leisure class (chp 3).

Watson, J. (ed.) 1997 Golden Arches East. Stanford.

White, L.1997. ‘Cars out of place: vampires, technology and labor in East and
Central Africa’. In Cooper, F & AL Stoler (eds) Tensions of Empire: Colonial
Cultures in a Bourgeois World. University of California Press. (pp 436-460)

Essays

The word length of term essays for Voice and Place is 1,500 – 2,500 words.
Essays for term 2 are to be submitted, in duplicate, no later than 4pm on
Monday 26th April.

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