Anthropology 240

How This Electronic Syllabus Works

The Course

My hope is that this course will increase student interest in South Asia and illuminate the contrast between individualism in societies such as our own and the holism of traditional societies. That contrast is both a powerful way to approach South Asia and an useful way to understand what distinguishes Western societies as such. In this regard, this course concerns us as much as a distant part of the world.

Required Books

1. Eck, Darsan
2. McGilvray, Symbolic Heat
3. Courtright and Harlan, eds., On the Margins of Hindu Marriage
4. Rudolph, Gandhi

Reserve Readings

1. Marriot and Inden, "Caste Systems."
2. Moreno, "A Bride for Raman," Natural History, March 1989, pp. 6-10.
3. McGilvray, "Sexual Power and Fertility in Sri Lanka: Batticaloa Tamils and Moors," in MacCormack, ed., The Ethnography of Fertility and Birth, pp. 25-73.
4. Mahmood, "Rethinking Indian Communalism," Asian Survey, pp. 722-37.
5. Mallick, "Affrimative Action and Elite Formation: An Untouchable Family History, Ethnohistory, pp. 345-73,
6. Appadurai, "Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia," ms., pp. 1-42.
7. Appadurai, "Number in the Colonial Imagination," Appadurai, Modernity at Large, pp. 114-35.

1. Introduction

2.Hinduism and History

3. Temples and Villages

4. Lives and Life Cycles

5. Colonialism and Courage
 
 

November 14 (Tu)

Colonialism Appadurai, "Number in the Colonial Imagination," pp. 114-35, on reserve Poet of Colonialism: Rudyard Kipling

November 16 (Th)

Colonialism and Change Mallick, "Affirmative Action and Elite Formation: An Untouchable Family History," Ethnohistory,pp. 345-73, on reserve

                            Thanksgiving RECESS: 18--26 November
 

November 28 and 30 (Tu) and (Th)

Gandhi Rudolph, Gandhi  Gandhian service

December 6,8,10

READING WEEK Gandhian Organizations:  The SEVA Foundation

 
 

Course Requirements

An in-class examination on October 17 is worth 25% of the final grade.  A short research paper is worth another 25%, and the final is worth 35%.  The balance (15%) depends on class participation.

I value what students have to say and will try to encourage everyone to voice their opinions.  I am not very good at drawing out people who do not raise their hands.  Help me out--raise your hand.  Allocating 15% of the final grade to class participation represents a gentle form of coercion, but I believe learning to talk in an academic setting is as important as learning to think analytically or use a computer. Students usually assume that they are being judged on the content of their comments. I judge students merely on whether they say something. There are no dumb comments--there are only students who do not contribute to class and students who do. In my experience, the only mistake a student makes in class is imagining her or his comments are worth airing on every topic. If you are a verbal person, let other people have a chance at it. If you are not, recognize that your ideas may well be more incisive than those of people who talk regularly. Make an effort to make your ideas known, whether it is the first day of class or late November.

What I would like you to do for the only non-orthodox requirement for this course is to write a paper--of 8 pages or so--critiquing or commenting on one of the course's reading assignments in an adverturesome way. The first part of the assignment is to lay out what you find interesting or unconvincing in the reading; the second part of the assignment requires research on your part.

Your job is to put the reading in some larger intellectual context, which means that I want you to do one of several things, beginning with important points raised in the article or book you've chosen:
 

1. Compare the issue under discussion to some other part of South Asian life--another time, place, or community. We've talked about caste in a village context. Are there interesting examples, for example, of caste working differently in urban settings?
2. For some readings, you can put the issue in that context by thinking about the competing claims of text and context, What does the textual tradition, for instance, say about life cycle rituals? What differences appear when one begins to focus on a particular caste's observance of those rituals?
3. Simply go more deeply into the material by way of further readings in the library. Doing well on this assignment requires taking on an issue from your reading and expanding on it--not by way of your feelings about it by by investigating other sources.
4. What other questions need to be asked of this material and why? Approaching the paper from this perspective requires more argumentation than simply asserting, "I think Rudolph should have discussed the position of ordinary villagers in the British Raj" because that is interesting (to me or to you). Of course it is entirely legitimate to say that Rudolph should have discussed ordinary people or villagers or the poor more thoroughly, but for the commentary you are writing it is legitimate only to the extent that what he does not say about these categories diminishes, contradicts, or recasts what she does say (about the British Raj and so on).

Ladd Library has a great collection of South Asian materials. You will not be thwarted by lack of material, and the assignment requires not simply speaking about the readings, but commenting on those readings by way of your own efforts to sort out a particular issues that emerges in the reading by looking at other readings. You can also get ideas by visiting the various South Asian newsgroups and sites on the web.
 

All students are responsible for reading and understanding the Bates College statements on academic honesty, crediting of sources, and plagiarism.

 e-mail responses: skemper@bates.edu

Last Updated: 21 August 2000