| The Anthropology of the Future Sarah Lawrence College (ANTH-4056-R) Fall 2003 Instructor: David Valentine Class location: Sheffield 01 Office: Sheffield 05 Class dates: Monday and Wednesday, 9/8/03-12/17/03 Phone: 914.395.2363 email: [email protected] Course Description: What is the future? Or, perhaps we should rather ask when is the future? The twenty first century has been imagined throughout the twentieth century in popular culture and in academic discourses as the time of both dystopic and utopic futures, of both possibility and apocalypse. Now we are here, and the question remains: when is the future? Many of the things that twentieth century commentators have been concerned over or hoped for� artificial life, radical gender and sexual difference, the spread of liberal democracies, radical individualism, technological incursions into the body, the formation of superstates in the form of the European Union, space travel, environment disasters � have come to pass. Some of them -- socialism in Eastern Europe and Asia, holocausts, the "satanic mills" of Europe and America's industrial revolutions -- have come and gone, or have been transformed. Yet at the same time, we live in a present that seems to be characterized by what we are told belongs to the past � religious fundamentalism, racism, massive world-wide poverty, sectarian and separatist wars, and the reassertion of "tradition." The anthropology of the future is a course that deals with a range of different futures (both past and present), the ways that anthropologists and others have thought about the future, and the intellectual currents which have enabled us to think about futures in different ways. Anthropology, with its roots in a socially-conscious anti-racism, directed at a better world, is a rich location from which to consider how Western intellectuals have thought about the future. While we will be spending much time considering anthropological texts, we will also be focusing on popular media and texts generated in other disciplines, bringing an anthropological perspective to bear on such diverse objects as cyborgs, the World Trade Center, fundamentalism, Star Trek, primate studies, prosthetic limbs, democracy, the colonization of Egypt, abortion, urbanization in Samoa, the World Wide Web, and torture. Our concern is to look at both how people have imagined the future, what those futures look like, and how we are still imagining futures. Course Requirements: Three 5-6 page papers are due in class on dates to be determined. Note that conference papers are due on December 12 Class work is due in class on the days noted in the syllabus below. I do not grant extensions other than for exceptional circumstances. If you believe you are embroiled in such a circumstance, I expect you to request an extension at least a day before the paper is due; DO NOT come to class without completed work unless I have granted you an extension. I am always willing to look at drafts of your work up until two days before the due date, which you may email me. I will not, however, accept emailed versions of your papers. Conferences I am very serious about conference work, and assume that you will be too. I expect that you will complete the tasks we have agreed on for your conference work prior to your conference. Please: always bring hard copy of your bibliographies or other assignments to your conferences. Policy on Lateness and Attendance Please pay particular attention to the following: you are, naturally, expected to attend all classes and conferences associated with this class. It is expected that if you have to miss a class for a valid reason (such as illness or family emergency), you will inform me prior to the class, or as soon thereafter as is possible. Since this is a seminar, your attendance and participation in class discussions is a central part of the course. I will take attendance in the first ten minutes of class. If you arrive late for class, you will not have the opportunity to sign the attendance sheet, and this will be noted as an absence. Please note the attendance policy: more than two unexcused absences will result in reduced credit for this course. Assigned Texts: The following books are required for the course and are available at the university bookstore. Ferguson, James 1999 Expectations of modernity: myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Haraway, Donna 1997 Modest_Witnsess@Second_millennium. FemaleMan�_meets_OncoMouse�: feminism and technoscience. New York: Routledge. Holston, James 1989 The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Tuzin, Donald 1997 The Cassowary's revenge: the life and death of masculinity in a New Guinea Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. In addition, assigned books and course readings are available in the reserve library, or as a packet from me. Course Outline 1. Introduction to the Course (9/8/03) 2. Modernity I (9/10/03) Readings: Giddens, Anthony 1990 Introduction. In The consequences of modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 3. Modernity II (9/15/03) **Project 1 Due in Class** Readings: Giddens, Anthony 1990 Introduction. In The consequences of modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Part I: Futures Past, Present, and Future 4. Futures Past and Present (9/17/03) Readings: Kidd, Benjamin 1895 Preface and introduction to Social Evolution. New York: MacMillan and Co. Stewart, Kathleen and Susan Harding 1999 Bad endings: American apocalypses. Annual Review of Anthropology 28:285-310. 5. Anthropology of/for the Future (9/22/03) Readings: Wescott, Roger W. 1978 "The anthropology of the future" as an academic discipline. In Cultures of the future. Magoroh Maruyama and Arthur M. Harkins (eds.) pp. 509-528. Goodenough, Ward H. 1999 Communicating 10,000 years into the future. Human Organization 58(3):221-225. 6. Modeling the Future (9/24/03) Readings: Jones, Eric M. and Ben R. Finney 1985 Fastships and nomads: two roads to the stars. In Interstellar migration and the human experience. Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones (eds.) pp.88-103. Berkeley: University of California Press Lee, Richard B. 1985 Models of human colonization: !Kung San, Greeks, and Vikings. In Interstellar migration and the human experience. Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones (eds.) pp.180-194. Berkeley: University of California Press 7. Seeing the Future in the Past (9/29/03) Readings: Prince, Ruth and David Riches 1999 Back to the future: the new age movement and hunter-gatherers. Anthropos 94:107-120. Gossen, Gary H. 1996 Maya Zapatistas move to the ancient future. American Anthropologist. 98(3):528-538. 8. Archeofutures (10/1/03) Readings: Berman, Judith 1999 Bad hair days in the paleolithic: modern (re)constructions of the cave man. American Anthropologist 101(2):288-304. Ingersoll, Daniel et al 1992 Divining the future: the toys of Star Wars. In: Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Anne Elizabeth Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry (eds.) pp. 427-443. Boca Raton: CRC Press. Part II: Future (Im)Perfect... Urban Utopias and Dystopias 9. Introduction: Before and After the World Trade Center (10/6/03) Readings: **PAPER 1 DUE IN CLASS** Mitchell, Timothy 1991 An appearance of order. In Colonising Egypt. Second Edition. Pp. 63-94. Berkeley: University of California Press. Peterson, Elmer Theodore 1946 Cities are abnormal. In Cities are abnormal, Elmer T. Peterson (ed.) pp. 3-26. Norman: University of Oklahoma press Marcus, Peter 2002 What kind of planning after September 11? The market, the stakeholders, consensus -- or...? In After the World Trade Center: rethinking New York City. Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin (eds). Pp. 153-161. New York : Routledge. 10. When Good Cities Turn Bad I (10/8/03) Readings: Holston, James 1989 The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 11. When Good Cities Turn Bad II (10/13/03) Film: Brazil Readings: Holston, James 1989 The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 12.When Good Cities Turn Bad III (10/15/03) Readings: Holston, James 1989 The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. October Study Days: 10/20/03 & 10/21/03 Part III: Modernity and Primitivity 13. Anthropology and Colonialism (10/22/03) Readings: Hopgood, C. R. 1944 The future of Bantu languages in Northern Rhodesia. Journal of the Rhodes-Livingstone 2: 8-15. Asad, Talal 1973 Introduction. In Anthropology & the colonial encounter. Talal Asad (ed.) pp. 9-19. New York: Humanities Press. Harries, Patrick 1988 The roots of ethnicity: discourse and the politics of language construction in southern Africa. African Affairs 87,346:25-52. 14. Attack of the Mutant Modernists! I (10/27/03) ** Paper 2 Due in Class ** Readings: Ferguson, James 1999 Expectations of modernity: myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press. 15. Attack of the Mutant Modernists! II (10/29/03) Readings: Film: The Debt Crisis: an African Dilemma Ferguson, James 1999 Expectations of modernity: myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press. 16. Attack of the Mutant Modernists! III (11/3/03) Readings: Ferguson, James 1999 Expectations of modernity: myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press. 17. The Cassowary's Revenge I (11/5/03) Readings: Tuzin, Donald 1997 The Cassowary's revenge: the life and death of masculinity in a New Guinea Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 18. The Cassowary's Revenge II (11/10/03) Film: Cannibal Tours Readings: Tuzin, Donald 1997 The Cassowary's revenge: the life and death of masculinity in a New Guinea Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 19. The Cassowary's Revenge III (11/12/03) Readings: Tuzin, Donald 1997 The Cassowary's revenge: the life and death of masculinity in a New Guinea Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Part IV: Bodies/Science, Order/Disorder 20. Order and Disorder I (11/17/03) **PAPER 3 DUE IN CLASS** Readings: Ritvo, Harriet 1997 The point of order. In The platypus and the mermaid and other figments of the classifying imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Papagaroufali, Eleni 1996 Xenotransplantation and transgenesis: im-moral stories about human-animal relations in the West. In Nature and society: anthropological perspectives. Philippe Descola and G�sli P�lsson (eds.) Pp. 240-255. New York: Routledge. 21. Disorder and Disorder II (11/19/03) Readings: Raymond, Janice 1994[1979] Sappho by surgery. In The transsexual empire: the making of the she-male. Boston: Beacon Press. Stone, Sandy 1991 The empire strikes back: a posttranssexual manifesto. in Body guards: the cultural politics of gender ambiguity. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (eds). pp280-304. New York: Routledge. 22. Conference Reports (11/24/03) Thanksgiving Break: 11/27/03 23. Modest Witness I (12/1/03) Readings: Haraway, Donna 1997 Modest_Witnsess@Second_millennium. FemaleMan�_meets_OncoMouse�: feminism and technoscience. New York: Routledge. 24. Modest Witness II (12/3/03) Readings: Haraway, Donna 1997 Modest_Witnsess@Second_millennium. FemaleMan�_meets_OncoMouse�: feminism and technoscience. New York: Routledge. 25. Modest Witness II (12/8/03) **PROJECT 2 DUE IN CLASS** Readings: Haraway, Donna 1997 Modest_Witnsess@Second_millennium. FemaleMan�_meets_OncoMouse�: feminism and technoscience. New York: Routledge. 26. Modest Witness IV (12/10/03) Readings: Haraway, Donna 1997 Modest_Witnsess@Second_millennium. FemaleMan�_meets_OncoMouse�: feminism and technoscience. New York: Routledge. |