Structuralism and Structural Functionalism

Catalog description

Outlines a segment of the history of anthropological theory through the 20th century ethnological traditions of structuralism and structural functionalism. Foregrounds select anthropologists who have contributed to these traditions, including Emile Durkheim, E.E. Evans-Pritchard and Eduardo Viveros de Castro; their critics: Judith Butler, Saba Mahmood, and Marilyn Strathern. The goal of the course is to organize the discursive structure around which these thinkers cohere and to question the place of these traditions in contemporary anthropology. Topics of interest include institutions/agency; nature/culture; subsistence, desire, and need; language and semiotics; magic/religion; gender/sexuality; and ontology/metaphysics.