2005 Handbooks

This course will cover areas that have been central to anthropology's unique contributions to social theory, many of which challenge categories central to western modernity, categories such as the commodity, scientific rationalism, and individualism. The course will therefore consider theories that attribute a primacy to 'the social' over the individual, such as Marx, Durkheim, and Dumont; theories of the social as class based practice, such as Bourdieu. The course will also consider anthropology's exploration of ritual, performance, magic by theorists such as van Gennep, Victor Turner, Mary Douglas and Geertz. The critique of the commodity form, which we take for granted, will be explored partly through the treatment of magic by theorists such as Taussig, and partly through the exploration of the gift in Mauss and Malinowksi as well as in Marx's treatment of capitalism as just one more form of social relations among others.