Outline

Overview

This unit consolidates students' understanding of anthropology as a discipline through: 1) exploring key concepts of anthropological analysis and critique; 2) enhancing knowledge of the ethnographic method and its contemporary challenges; 3) strengthening research skills and experience in formulating a research project.

Unit details and rules

Academic unit	Anthropology
Credit points	6
Prerequisites ?	12 Senior credit points in Anthropology
Corequisites ?	None
Prohibitions ?	ANTH3921 or ANTH3922
Assumed knowledge ?	None
Available to study abroad and exchange students	Yes

Teaching staff

Coordinator	Ryan Schram, ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au

Type	Description	Weight	Due	Length
Online task	Weekly reading journal Each week, students will be assigned specific roles for discussion	10%	-	500 words equiv.
Outcomes assessed:
Online task	Various contributions to shared online knowledge base	15%	- Due date: 27 Mar 2020 at 17:00	500 words
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Debate brief An essay arguing for one's own position on the in-class debate topic	20%	Week 07 Due date: 10 Apr 2020 at 17:00	1500 words
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Proposal of possible topics Brief description of several possible topics for the final review essay	10%	Week 08 Due date: 20 Apr 2020 at 09:00	500 words
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Annotated bibliography A list of sources and notes on their relevance for the final essay	15%	Week 11 Due date: 11 May 2020 at 09:00	500 words equiv.
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Literature review essay An analysis of research on a topic as a debate among scholars	30%	Week 14 (STUVAC) Due date: 12 Jun 2020 at 17:00	2500 words
Outcomes assessed:

Assessment summary

Detailed information for each assessment can be found on Canvas.

Assessment criteria

The University awards common result grades, set out in the Coursework Policy 2014 (Schedule 1).

As a general guide, a High distinction indicates work of an exceptional standard, a Distinction a very high standard, a credit a good standard, and a pass an acceptable standard.

Result name	Mark range	Description
High distinction	85 - 100
Distinction	75 - 84
Credit	65 - 74
Pass	50 - 64
Fail	0 - 49	When you don’t meet the learning outcomes of the unit to a satisfactory standard.

For more information see guide to grades.

Late submission

In accordance with University policy, these penalties apply when written work is submitted after 11:59pm on the due date:

Deduction of 5% of the maximum mark for each calendar day after the due date.
After ten calendar days late, a mark of zero will be awarded.

Academic integrity

The Current Student website provides information on academic integrity and the resources available to all students. The University expects students and staff to act ethically and honestly and will treat all allegations of academic integrity breaches seriously.

We use similarity detection software to detect potential instances of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breach. If such matches indicate evidence of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breaches, your teacher is required to report your work for further investigation.

Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and automated writing tools

You may only use generative AI and automated writing tools in assessment tasks if you are permitted to by your unit coordinator. If you do use these tools, you must acknowledge this in your work, either in a footnote or an acknowledgement section. The assessment instructions or unit outline will give guidance of the types of tools that are permitted and how the tools should be used.

Your final submitted work must be your own, original work. You must acknowledge any use of generative AI tools that have been used in the assessment, and any material that forms part of your submission must be appropriately referenced. For guidance on how to acknowledge the use of AI, please refer to the AI in Education Canvas site.

The unapproved use of these tools or unacknowledged use will be considered a breach of the Academic Integrity Policy and penalties may apply.

Studiosity is permitted unless otherwise indicated by the unit coordinator. The use of this service must be acknowledged in your submission as detailed on the Learning Hub’s Canvas page.

Outside assessment tasks, generative AI tools may be used to support your learning. The AI in Education Canvas site contains a number of productive ways that students are using AI to improve their learning.

Learning support

Simple extensions

If you encounter a problem submitting your work on time, you may be able to apply for an extension of five calendar days through a simple extension.  The application process will be different depending on the type of assessment and extensions cannot be granted for some assessment types like exams.

Special consideration

If exceptional circumstances mean you can’t complete an assessment, you need consideration for a longer period of time, or if you have essential commitments which impact your performance in an assessment, you may be eligible for special consideration or special arrangements.

Special consideration applications will not be affected by a simple extension application.

Using AI responsibly

Co-created with students, AI in Education includes lots of helpful examples of how students use generative AI tools to support their learning. It explains how generative AI works, the different tools available and how to use them responsibly and productively.

Weekly schedule

WK	Topic	Learning activity
Week 01	Anthropology as a great conversation	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 02	Symbolic anthropology. Read Geertz (1973a), Geertz (1973b)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 03	Anthropology in the world system and world history. Read Wolf (1982), introduction and chapter 6, and *Ortner (1984)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 04	The structure of the conjuncture. Begin reading Sahlins (1981) and Sahlins (1988), Sahlins (1992), *Sahlins (1996)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 05	Structure and history. Continue reading Sahlins (1981)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 06	Historical anthropology. Read Comaroff (1987), Comaroff and Comaroff (1989), and *Comaroff and Comaroff (1990)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 07	Globalization as turning point. Read Appadurai (1990), *Trouillot ([2003] 2016), chapters 1 and 5	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 08	Can anthropology see over the horizon of “the field”? Read Malkki (1992), Gupta and Ferguson (1992), and Ferguson and Gupta (2002)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 09	Conjunctures revisited. Read Bashkow (2004), Friedman (1994), and Englund and Leach (2000)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 10	Library day for work on your reading for your final essay	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 11	Culture and the changing conditions of subjectivity. Read Gershon (2011), *Gershon (2018)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 12	Difference and being in question. Read Kohn (2007), Kohn (2015), and Bessire and Bond (2014)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 13	What is anthropology for? Read Robbins (2013) and *Ortner (2016)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 14 (STUVAC)	Extra make-up seminar: Where is anthropology headed in the future?	Seminar (2 hr)

Attendance and class requirements

Attendance: This is a seminar class in which the continuity of reading and discussion from week to week is vital. For this reason the minimum acceptable attendance in order to pass the unit is 80%. Absences beyond that level must be accounted for with appropriate documentation.
Lecture recording: Most lectures (in recording-equipped venues) will be recorded and may be made available to students on the LMS. However, you should not rely on lecture recording to substitute your classroom learning experience.
Preparation: Students should commit to spend approximately three hours’ preparation time (reading, studying, homework, essays, etc.) for every hour of scheduled instruction.

Study commitment

Typically, there is a minimum expectation of 1.5-2 hours of student effort per week per credit point for units of study offered over a full semester. For a 6 credit point unit, this equates to roughly 120-150 hours of student effort in total.

Required readings

Recommended readings are noted with an asterisk.

Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theory, Culture & Society 7 (2-3): 295–310. doi:10.1177/026327690007002017.

Bashkow, Ira. 2004. “A Neo-Boasian Conception of Cultural Boundaries.” American Anthropologist 106 (3): 443–58. doi:10.1525/aa.2004.106.3.443.

*Bessire, Lucas, and David Bond. 2014. “Ontological Anthropology and the Deferral of Critique.” American Ethnologist 41 (3): 440–56. doi:10.1111/amet.12083.

Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. 1989. “The Colonization of Consciousness in South Africa.” Economy and Society 18 (3): 267–96. doi:10.1080/03085148900000013.

Comaroff, John L. 1987. “Of Totemism and Ethnicity: Consciousness, Practice and the Signs of Inequality.” Ethnos 52 (3-4): 301–23. doi:10.1080/00141844.1987.9981348.

*Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 1990. “Goodly Beasts, Beastly Goods: Cattle and Commodities in a South African Context.” American Ethnologist 17 (2): 195–216. https://www.jstor.org/stable/645076.

*Englund, Harri, and James Leach. 2000. “Ethnography and the Meta‐Narratives of Modernity.” Current Anthropology 41 (2): 225–48. doi:10.1086/ca.2000.41.issue-2.

*Ferguson, James, and Akhil Gupta. 2002. “Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality.” American Ethnologist 29 (4): 981–1002. doi:10.1525/ae.2002.29.4.981.

*Friedman, Jonathan. 1994. “The Political Economy of Elegance: An African Cult of Beauty.” In Consumption and Identity, edited by Jonathan Friedman, 167–87. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973a. “The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man.” In The Interpretation of Cultures, 33–54. New York: Basic Books. http://books.google.com?id=BZ1BmKEHti0C.

———. 1973b. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Cultures, 3–30. New York: Basic Books. http://books.google.com?id=BZ1BmKEHti0C.

Gershon, Ilana. 2011. ““Neoliberal Agency”.” Current Anthropology 52 (4): 537–55. doi:10.1086/660866.

*———. 2018. “Employing the CEO of Me, Inc.: US Corporate Hiring in a Neoliberal Age.” American Ethnologist 45 (2): 173–85. doi:10.1111/amet.12630.

*Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1992. “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.” Cultural Anthropology 7 (1): 6–23. doi:10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00030.

Kohn, Eduardo. 2007. “How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies Engagement.” American Ethnologist 34 (1): 3–24. doi:10.1525/ae.2007.34.1.3.

*———. 2015. “Anthropology of Ontologies.” Annual Review of Anthropology 44 (1): 311–27. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014127.

Malkki, Liisa. 1992. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees.” Cultural Anthropology 7 (1): 24–44. doi:10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00030.

*Ortner, Sherry B. 1984. “Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (1): 126–66.

*———. 2016. “Dark Anthropology and Its Others: Theory Since the Eighties.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 (1): 47–73. http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/hau6.1.004.

Robbins, Joel. 2013. “Beyond the Suffering Subject: Toward an Anthropology of the Good.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (3): 447–62. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12044.

Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press.

*———. 1988. “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of “the World System”.” Proceeedings of the British Academy 74: 1–51. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/74p001.pdf.

*———. 1992. “The Economics of Develop-Man in the Paciﬁc.” Res 21: 13–25.

*———. 1996. “The Sadness of Sweetness: The Native Anthropology of Western Cosmology.” Current Anthropology 37 (3): 395–428. doi:10.1086/204503.

*Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. (2003) 2016. Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-137-04144-9.

Wolf, Eric R. 1982. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

The recommended and required readings for this class are also listed on Canvas and at Ryan’s external teaching site at http://anthro.rschram.org/3601.

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are what students know, understand and are able to do on completion of a unit of study. They are aligned with the University's graduate qualities and are assessed as part of the curriculum.

Outcomes
Graduate qualities

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

LO1. see their own study of specific topics in anthropology in relation to several major debates within the discipline and as part of one of several competing paradigms that inform contemporary research
LO2. understand the history and development of major debates within anthropology about the nature of qualitative social inquiry
LO3. articulate their own personal relationship to competing schools of thought within contemporary anthropology and to explain why a particular disciplinary perspective aligns with their own thinking and perspective
LO4. describe different positions within anthropology as a field in terms of their paradigmatic assumptions and to comment on their relative strengths and weaknesses as ways of discovering answers to open questions
LO5. direct their own exploration and evaluation of a scholar's arguments through independent reading and reflection and also through dialogue with other students

Graduate qualities

The graduate qualities are the qualities and skills that all University of Sydney graduates must demonstrate on successful completion of an award course. As a future Sydney graduate, the set of qualities have been designed to equip you for the contemporary world.

GQ1	Depth of disciplinary expertise Deep disciplinary expertise is the ability to integrate and rigorously apply knowledge, understanding and skills of a recognised discipline defined by scholarly activity, as well as familiarity with evolving practice of the discipline.
GQ2	Critical thinking and problem solving Critical thinking and problem solving are the questioning of ideas, evidence and assumptions in order to propose and evaluate hypotheses or alternative arguments before formulating a conclusion or a solution to an identified problem.
GQ3	Oral and written communication Effective communication, in both oral and written form, is the clear exchange of meaning in a manner that is appropriate to audience and context.
GQ4	Information and digital literacy Information and digital literacy is the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, manage, adapt, integrate, create and convey information using appropriate resources, tools and strategies.
GQ5	Inventiveness Generating novel ideas and solutions.
GQ6	Cultural competence Cultural Competence is the ability to actively, ethically, respectfully, and successfully engage across and between cultures. In the Australian context, this includes and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, knowledge systems, and a mature understanding of contemporary issues.
GQ7	Interdisciplinary effectiveness Interdisciplinary effectiveness is the integration and synthesis of multiple viewpoints and practices, working effectively across disciplinary boundaries.
GQ8	Integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity An integrated professional, ethical and personal identity is understanding the interaction between one’s personal and professional selves in an ethical context.
GQ9	Influence Engaging others in a process, idea or vision.

Outcome map

Learning outcomes	Graduate qualities
Learning outcomes

Responding to student feedback

This section outlines changes made to this unit following staff and student reviews.

Several changes to the assignments and the topics for the class have been made on the basis of students' work in the class in 2019, and student feedback.

Additional information

Full information about the class and the topics we cover is found on Canvas. Additionally, Ryan’s external teaching site has information about this class at http://anthro.rschram.org/3601.

The anthropology department web site, including information on our teachers and public seminars this semester.

Disclaimer

The University reserves the right to amend units of study or no longer offer certain units, including where there are low enrolment numbers.

To help you understand common terms that we use at the University, we offer an online glossary.

Current students

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Attendance and class requirements

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Additional information

Additional information

Disclaimer

On this page

Useful links

ANTH3601: Contemporary Theory and Anthropology

Semester 1, 2020 [Normal day] - Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Attendance and class requirements

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Additional information

Additional information

Disclaimer

On this page

Useful links