Instructor: Kevin Karpiakkarpiak@berkeley.eduOffice: Office Hours: 1:45-3:00 TuTh

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ANTHROPOLOGY 130-A

Cultural Dimensions of GlobalizationFall 2008, TuTh 12:10-1:30pm, 223 Olson

This reading intensive upper-level class seeks to explore recent anthropological approaches to a contemporary world increasingly characterized by interconnection on a planetary scale. In other words, we will be studying the ‘cultural’ dimensions of recent economic and political developments frequently termed ‘globalization’. In adopting so, we will attempt to develop an anthropological approach towards understanding an often ill-defined and omnipresent topic of debate.

Rather than taking a specific geographic entry point for our inquiry, the class will be situated around a series of recurring questions and problems. These include but are not limited to the following: What is new about the large-scale connections that characterize the present moment? What is old about globalization – how does it rely on, resemble or reassemble older forms of connection? What are its silences and its elisions? How do people live at globalization’s margins? Does globalization inevitably result in homogenization, in a single world culture or are more subtle processes at work? How can we adapt anthropology’s traditional method of place-based ethnographic study to the challenges of a world in which people are “chronically mobile and routinely displaced”?

Course gradesCourse grades will be based on one Mid-term exam (25%), one Class Project (20%), one Final Exam (35%) and regular section participation (20%).

Mid-Term Exam (25%) Section participation (20%) Project (20%) Final Exam (35%)

Required Books

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt2005 Friction : an ethnography of global connection. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press..

Plus a READER, available at Davis Copy Shop. It is located at 231 3rd Street (at University Avenue). In addition the class project on “The Coke Complex” will require that you download material directly from the journal website (to be explained in class).

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Introduction: Course Organization, Goals & Key ConceptsWhat are we talking about when we talk about globalization? How have anthropologists approached the subject? Have anthropologists broached the topic? What role can anthropologists play in debates on globalization?

Week 1: Thursday, September 25th – Thursday, October 2nd 2008 Inda, J. X., and R. Rosaldo. 2002. "Introduction : a world in motion," in The anthropology of globalization : a reader, Blackwell readers in anthropology ; 1. Edited by J. X. Inda and R. Rosaldo, pp. 1-34. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.

Film: 2007. “Babel”. Hollywood, Calif.: Paramount Home Entertainment. [selections]

Recommended Reading (read at least two): Friedman, T. L. 2005. "It's a Flat World, After All," in The New Times Magazine, pp. 33-37. Fukuyama, F. 2000 [1989]. "The End of History?," in Globalization and the challenges of a new century : a reader. Edited by P. O'Meara, H. D. Mehlinger, and M. Krain. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Huntington, S. P. 2000 [1993]. "The Clash of Civilizations?," in Globalization and the challenges of a new century : a reader. Edited by P. O'Meara, H. D. Mehlinger, and M. Krain. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Barber, B. R. 2000 [1992]. "Jihad vs. McWorld," in Globalization and the challenges of a new century : a reader. Edited by P. O'Meara, H. D. Mehlinger, and M. Krain. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Anthropologies of InterconnectionHow old is global interconnection? How did it emerge? What are the forces and motivations behind this emergence? What does ‘globalization’ have to do with ‘power’?

Week 2: Tuesday, October 7th 2008 – Thursday, October 10th 2008 Wolf, E. R. 1982. "Introduction," in Europe and the people without history, pp. 1-23. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mintz, S. W. 1985. Sweetness and power : the place of sugar in modern history. New York, N.Y.: Viking. (pages xv-xxx, 19-73, 151-186)

Film: 1989. Isle of Flowers

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Recommended Reading: Wallerstein, I. M. 1978. "A World-System Perspective on the Social Sciences," in The capitalist world-economy : essays, pp. 152-164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Anthropology UnboundWhat happens when anthropologists discover ‘globalization’? How can we understand cultural difference in an interconnected and mobile world? Has anthropology become out-moded?

Week 3: Tuesday, October 13th 2008 – Thursday, October 17th 2008 Appadurai, A. 1996 (1991). "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," in Modernity at large : cultural dimensions of globalization, Public worlds ; v. 1, pp. 27-47. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press. Clifford, J. 1988. "Introduction: The Pure Products Go Crazy," in The predicament of culture : twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and art, pp. 1-18. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Marcus, G. E. 1998. "Ethnography in/of the World System: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography," in Ethnography through thick and thin, pp. 79-104. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Film: 1991. "The Japanese version." New York: The Center for New American Media

Migration, Movement & CitizenshipWhat can we learn by studying people, things and ideas that move? Do anthropologists have a particular insight into this domain?

Week 4: Tuesday, October 20th 2008 – Thursday, October 23rd 2008 Rouse, R. 1991. Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism. Diaspora 1:8-23. Gross, J., D. McMurray, and T. Swedenburg. 1996. "Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap and Franco-Magrebi Identities," in Displacement, diaspora, and geographies of identity. Edited by S. Lavie and T. Swedenburg, pp. 119-155. Durham: Duke University Press. Ong, A. 2000. Graduated sovereignty in South-East Asia. Theory Culture & Society 17(4):55-75.Film: 2001. Chain of Love.

MidTerm Exam, 3

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

(Re)placing, (Re)stating: Putting the State in its Place Why is ‘place’ such a large part of our lives despite the degree and importance of movement and global flows? How are people and spaces ‘placed’, and why? What kind of politics is possible when the States no longer can claim a monopoly of legitimate political action over their territories? How can anthropologists study power relations in a world in flux?

Week 5-6: Thursday, October 30th 2008 – Thursday, November 6th 2008 Gupta, A., and J. Ferguson. 1992. Beyond "Culture": Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference. Cultural Anthropology 7:6-23. Ferguson, J., and A. Gupta. 2002. Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality. American Ethnologist 29:981-1002. Malkki, L. 1997. "National Geographic: the rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees," in Culture, power, place : explorations in critical anthropology. Edited by A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, pp. 52-74. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Fassin, D. 2007. "Humanitarianism: a nongovernmental government," in Nongovernmental politics. Edited by M. Feher. New York: Zone Books.

Recommended Reading: Foucault, M. 2000. "Governmentality," in Power, vol. 3, The Essential Works of Michel Foucault. Edited by J. D. Faubion, pp. 201-222. New York: New Press. Foucault, M. 2000. ""Omnes et Singulatim": toward a critique of political reason," in Power, vol. 3, The Essential Works of Michel Foucault. Edited by J. D. Faubion, pp. 298-325. New York: New Press.

Film: 2006. Hip Hop Colony: the African hip-hop explosion

Class Holiday (Veteren’s Day), Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

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Global AssemblagesIs the topography of globalization, its flows and interconnections, totally arbitrary? Are the global forms we see pre-determined by a guiding teleology? What other means are possible of understanding the ways things “come together” on a global scale?

Week 7: Thursday, November 13th – Tuesday, November 18th 2008 Collier, S. J., and A. Ong. 2005. "Global Assemblages, Anthropological Problems," in Global assemblages : technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. Edited by A. Ong and S. J. Collier, pp. 1-21. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Dunn EC. 2005. Standards and person-making in East Central Europe. In Global assemblages : technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems, ed. A Ong, SJ Collier. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing

Roitman, J. 2005. "The Garrison-Entrepôt," in Global assemblages : technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. Edited by A. Ong and S. J. Collier, pp. 417-436. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Film:

2008. Seda: People of the Marsh

Class Holiday (AAA Meetings in SF), Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Tales from the FieldWhat has happened to anthropology’s ‘field’ and its associated narrative form, the ethnographic monograph, since the turn to studying globalization? Has it withered away, or become re-entrenched in unexamined ways?

Week 9: Tuesday, November 24th 2008 Dubois, L. 1995. ""Man's Darkest Hours": Maleness, Travel, and Anthropology," in Women writing culture. Edited by R. Behar and D. A. Gordon, pp. 306-321. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gupta, A., and J. Ferguson. 1997. "Discipline and Practice: "The Field" as Site, Method and Location in Anthropology," in Anthropological locations : boundaries and grounds of a field science. Edited by A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, pp. viii, 275. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marcus, G. E. 2006. Where have all the tales of fieldwork gone? Ethnos 71:113-122.

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Mintz, S. 2000. Sows' Ears and Silver Linings: A Backward Look at Ethnography. Current Anthropology 41:169-189.

Film: 1987. Cannibal Tours.

Class Holiday (Thanksgiving), Thursday, November 27th, 2008

Friction, or, Moving ForwardGiven the variety of concerns, approaches, orientations and projections that we have learned in this class, what is the way forward for the anthropological study of globalization? Where, and how, is anthropology “going” now?

Project Due, Thursday, December 4th, 2008

Week 10: Tuesday, December 2nd – Thursday, December 4th 2008 Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2005 Friction : an ethnography of global connection. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. [selections]Film: 2004. "Cola wars: message in a bottle." Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences

Final Exam, Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

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