Intro Cultural Ethnographies?

[Alexander King]

Aberdeen has had a 'book review' assignment for a lower division class (not intro, though), where students are required to read and 'review' an ethnography. They have about half a dozen to choose from, but they have to choose one to do the assignment. I don't teach the course, but my colleagues say it works pretty well. We use TurnItIn to catch those who try to rip off book reviews from published sources (mostly cutting and pasting Amazon reviews!), but those turn out to be about 1-2% of enrollment.

I would like to point out that I do force students to read old stuff. I love Boas's Study of Geography and On Alternating Sounds, not to mention Turner's Symbols in Ndembu Ritual, etc. The Waveland ethnographies I listed in an earlier missive are great for grabbing freshpeople, and since they are short (about 150 small pages including photos, charts, etc.), they only take up 2, or at most 3 weeks of the course. They are good for introducing anthropological concepts and methods to an audience unprepared for that insanity in a language that my students (a mix of Scots, English and 20% assorted Europeans) find 'transparent'. I would agree that the other monographs suggested are also by authors who are masters at crafting narrative non-fiction in delightful prose.

Now I'm off to the library to get Landes's City of Women, because I loved her two books on the Ojibway when I was a sophomore. 

Alex

On 9 Mar 2011, at 4:08 pm, Bruce Mannheim wrote:

> Leila,
> That's something that I would only do in an upper-division class (if then).
> In the class you are describing, you'll need to talk about how the
> ethnographer uses ethnographic particulars to weave a larger analytic whole,
> so you'll end up choosing one or another of the books to discuss in
> class--may as well be upfront about it.  (Also when there's a choice that
> isn't motivated by the goals of the course you run the risk that people
> who--like me--find it hard to choose will wind up not choosing.)
> 
> But yes, some great suggestions--time for me to go to the library.....
> Bruce
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Linguistic Anthropology Discussion Group
> [mailto:LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Leila Monaghan
> Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 11:48 PM
> To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: Re: [LINGANTH] Intro Cultural Ethnographies?
> 
> Wow! Amazed to see so many answers so fast.
> 
> Incredible and very useful list. I think what I might do is offer students  
> a chance to pick from a list of books.
> 
> Many thanks!
> 
> Leila
> 
> On Mar 8, 2011 8:21pm, Liz Coville <ecoville at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi, everyone,
> 
> 
> 
>> I've used Julie Cruikshank's _Do Glaciers Listen?_ I picked it because it
> 
>> won the Victor Turner award, so it's well-written, and because it relates
> 
>> somewhat to climate change, so it's got a bit of a contemporary angle. It
> 
>> divides into three sections: ethnographic, via stories told by elderly  
>> Yukon
> 
>> residents; historica, via explorer accounts: and contemporary, via the
> 
>> discourse of "preserving the wilderness" and making the area into a UNESCO
> 
>> World Heritage site.
> 
> 
> 
>> Also try to give students a sense of re-studies of the same place over  
>> time,
> 
>> so students see how anthropology itself has changed. Lee's _The Ju/hoansi_
> 
>> and Lansing's _The Balinese_ work from this perspective, although  
>> mentioning
> 
>> them in this thread makes me feel like I need to get up to date on recent
> 
>> ethnographies!
> 
> 
> 
>> Liz Coville
> 
>> Dept Sociology & Anthropology
> 
>> Carleton College
> 
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Matthew Bernius mbernius at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Bruce Mannheim mannheim at umich.edu>  
>> wrote:
> 
>>> 
> 
>>>> The problem I ran into (and one
> 
>>>> I'll be better prepared for in the future) is that some (?)/many (?)  
>> of
> 
>>> the
> 
>>>> students were reading their first sustained non-fiction work. (They've
> 
>>> all
> 
>>>> read novels and they've all read textbooks, which break the world into
> 
>>>> bite-sized chunks.) So your students might need to be prepared for the
> 
>>>> reading they do before they actually delve into the first book.
> 
>>>> 
> 
>>> 
> 
>>> This has been my experience too. The first couple sections/classes often
> 
>>> end
> 
>>> up dedicated to teaching them "how to read" and "extract."
> 
>>> 
> 
>>> Also, their exposure (or lack there of) to texts that take critical
> 
>>> positions on western stances should be taken into consideration as well.
> 
>>> During the first few weeks, especially if a student has never  
>> encountered a
> 
>>> critical social science/humanities course, the seemingly tamest of
> 
>>> statements can lead to the majority of the class shutting down  
>> (especially
> 
>>> Freshmen).
> 
>>> 
> 
>>> -----------------------------
> 
>>> Matthew Bernius
> 
>>> PhD Student | Cultural Anthropology | Cornell University |
> 
>>> http://anthropology.cornell.edu
> 
>>> Researcher At Large | Open Publishing Lab @ the Rochester Institute of
> 
>>> Technology | http://opl.cias.rit.edu
> 
>>> mBernius at gMail.com | http://www.mattbernius.com | @mattBernius
> 
>>> My calendar: http://bit.ly/hNWEII
> 
>>> 

- tel:+44(1224)27 2732, fax:+44(1224)27 2552 - http://www.koryaks.net - http://www.abdn.ac.uk/anthropology