Assignments

This class will be taught as a seminar. The success of the seminar depends on your active participation. You should come to class having completed all the readings assigned for that date. As the reading load is at times quite heavy, you should organize your time carefully and pace yourself - don't do all the reading the night before or in the afternoon before class; this will affect the quality of your participation.

Presentations - our discussions will begin with a 10 minute presentation of the material by one student. Each of you will undertake to present at least one of the assigned readings. The purpose of the presentations is (a) to enable me to assess how concisely and well you can present the argument of the book or a set of readings and (b) to provide a springboard for our discussion of the topic. The presentation should be a concise summary of the argument of the reading assigned, the issues raised by the author and your own evaluation of it.

You should be able to draw out the main argument of the book and show how the subsidiary arguments relate to the main argument. Your presentation should also include your assessment of the extent to which the author has demonstrated the validity of his or her conclusions. Finally, you should be able to pose a question or problem that can act as a springboard for our discussion. A mere listing of the points made in the book chapter-by-chapter does not constitute a good presentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grade

The grade will be based on your contribution in class, a quiz, a take-home final essay on pre-assigned topics and a book report on an ethnography of your choosing, from a selected list (see appendix to this syllabus). The breakdown of the grade is as follows:

• Class participation 10%
• In-class Quiz 25%
• Book Report 25%
• Take-home exam (Final) 40%
  

For an example of an excellent book report, click here.

 

 

Class Meetings

A link indicates the item is available on electronic reserve

Jan 29/Monday

Introduction to the course.
No readings assigned

 

Part I. South Asia as an Area

 

Jan 29/Wednesday
The Geography of South Asia

• The geography of South Asia
  
  For maps of the region, click here

Jan 31/Friday

• Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents, "Introduction" and Chapter 6.

Feb 3/Monday
Locating India in the Western Imagination

• Singer, "A Passage to more than India: A Sketch of Changing European and American Images"
• Rau, "The Image of India in European Antiquity and the Middle Ages."
  

Feb 5/Wednesday
Defining an Historical Space: The Indus Valley Civilization

• Basham, "Prehistory: The Harappa Culture and the Aryans."
• India Today, "The Indus Riddle"
• Anderson, "Census, Map, Museum" (Imagined Communities, Chapter 10).

Additional sources

• A walk through Mohenjo Daro
• Kenoyer, Around the Indus in 90 slides

 

Feb 7/Friday
Defining a social space: kinship and society

• Karve. "The Kinship Map of India"
• Trautmann, "The Study of Dravidian Kinship" in Family, Kinship and Marriage in India. Patricia Uberoi (ed).
  

Feb 10/Monday
India as a Civilization - I

• Singer, "The Social Organization of Indian Civilization." In When a Great Tradition Modernizes, Ch. 7, pp. 250-271.
• Cohn, "Networks and Centres in the Integration of Indian Civilization."

 

Feb 12/Wednesday
India as a Civilization - II

• Marriott, "Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization."

 

Part II. Colonialism and its forms of knowledge

 

Feb 14/Friday
Orientalism, Utilitarians and India

• Metcalf, Chs. 1 and 2
  
  Discussion questions for Chapter 1
  Discussion questions for Chapters 2 and 3

 

Feb 17/Monday
The Aryan Theory of Race

• Leopold, "The Aryan Theory of Race."
• Bayly, "Caste and Race in the Colonial Ethnography of India."
  
  Discussion questions
  

Feb 19/Wednesday
The Colonial construction of Indian Society - I

• Cohn, Bernhard S. "The Census, social structure and objectification in South Asia." In An Anthropologist among the historians and other essays, chapter 10.
  
• Appadurai, Arjun, "Number in the colonial imagination." In Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds., Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament.
  

Feb 21/Friday
The Colonial construction of Indian Society - II

• Metcalf, Chs. 3 and 4

Feb 24/Monday
The Colonial construction of Indian Society - III

• Metcalf, Chs. 5 and 6

 

Part III. Family, Kinship and Gender

 

Feb 26/Wednesday

• Wadley, "One straw from a broom cannot sweep" in ELSA
• Jeffery and Jeffery, "Allah gives both boys and girls" in ELSA
  

Feb 28/Friday

Part III. Caste and
the Anthropological Imagination

 

Is Homo hierarchicus?

• Bougle, "The essence and Reality of the Caste System."
• Dumont, "Hierarchy, Status and Power: The Caste System and its implications."

Reviews of Homo Hierarchicus by Louis Dumont

R.S.Khare (Journal of Asian Studies)
Michael Ames (Pacific Affairs)
Nur Yalman (Man)

Caste and Kingship

 

• Quigley, The Interpretation of Caste, Chs. 6 and 7.
  
  Discussion questions

Reviews of Interpretation of caste

Anthony Good (Current Anthropology)

 

Mar 2/Friday
Caste mobility

• Srinivas, "Sanskritization."

 

Mar 5/Monday
The political economy of caste

• Sharma, "Caste, Social Mobility and Sanskritization: A Study of Nepal's Old Legal Code."
• Guneratne, "Caste into Ethnicity: Politics, Hegemony and the State in South Asia."

 

Mar 7/Wednesday

• Des Chene, "Gurkhas as diplomatic currency."
• Ministry of Defence, UK, "The Royal Gurkha Rifles"http://www.army.mod.uk/army/organise/infan/gurkha/
• The GAESO (Gurkha Army Ex-Servicemen's Organization) React Against British Invectives
  

 

Mar 9/Friday
Caste in Sri Lanka

• Stirrat, "Caste conundrums: Views of caste in a Sinhalese Catholic fishing village."
• Kendrick, "Landholding and Service in a Temple Village in the Kandyan Highlands."
  
  On reserve in the Anthropology department

 

Mar 12/Monday
Review Session

Mar 14/Wednesday
Mid-term exam

 

Mar 16/Friday

• Video: Caste at birth
  
  Discussion questions

 

March 17-March 25
Spring Break

 

Part IV: Gender, Caste and Society

 

Mar 26/Monday

• Cameron, On the edge of the auspicious, pp. 1-66

Mar 28/Wednesday

• Video: Dadi's Family
  

Study Guide
Discussion questions

 

Mar 30/Friday

• Cameron, On the edge of the auspicious, pp. 67-118

April 2/Monday

• Cameron, On the edge of the auspicious, pp. 135-174
  
  Book presentation: Liz Seefeldt, Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters

April 4/Wednesday

• Cameron, On the edge of the auspicious, pp. 175-244
  
  Book presentation: Anishka Jayaswal, Gift of a Virgin

April 6/Friday

• Cameron, On the edge of the auspicious, pp. 245-284

 

Part V. Social Change in South Asia

 

April 9/Monday
Religion, social class and the impact of modernity

• Gombrich & Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed, Ch. 1
  
  Book presentation: Owen Anderson, Demons and Development

April 11/Wednesday
The Sinhalese spirit religion

• Gombrich & Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed, Ch. 2

April 13/Friday Good Friday (No class)

April 16/Monday

• Gombrich & Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed, Ch. 3
  
  Book presentation: Jeff Ramsey, Kin, Clan, Raja and Rule

April 18/Wednesday
Protestant Buddhism

• Gombrich & Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed, Ch. 6

April 20/Friday

• Gombrich & Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed, Ch. 7

April 23/Monday

• Video: Kataragama

April 25/Wednesday

• Gombrich & Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed, Chs. 5, 12 & 13
  
  Book presentation: Andrea Dobroski, Buddhism Betrayed

 

Part VI. Globalization and South Asia

April 27/Friday

• Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon's Handle, Introduction, Ch. 1

April 30/Monday

• Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon's Handle, Chs. 2-3

May 2/Wednesday

• Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon's Handle, Chs. 4
  
  Book presentation: Dianne Fouts, Medusa's Hair

May 4/Friday

• Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon's Handle, Chs. 5-6

May 7/Monday

• Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon's Handle, Chs. 7, 8 and Conclusion.