Fall 2006
New College of Florida
Professor Uzi Baram
Email: Baram@ncf.edu
Office: College Hall 205
Office Hours: Tuesday 1‑3 pm & by appointment
Office Telephone Number: extension 4217
Mailbox: SSC 102
Class Meets on Monday and Thursday 2:00 – 3:20 p.m. in the Anthropology Lab
URL: http://faculty.ncf.edu/baram/colonial_encounter.htm
Catalogue Description
From the later Middle Ages onward, diverse, mostly traumatic, cultural encounters accompanied European expansion across the world. The course examines those interactions as well the understandings of colonized peoples generated by colonialism. Historically and geographically wide‑ranging, this course explores how the asymmetric patterns of interactions then imposed are sustained in the present. The course includes theory on the development of the modern world, ethnographies on social identity under colonialism, and some of the recent debates created by Anthropology confronting its colonial legacies.
Course Prospectus
The goal of the course is to construct an anthropological perspective on the emergence of the "modern world system," an epoch with colonialism as its key component. A key feature of the approach revolves around case studies in order to explore the local level impacts of colonialism, imperialism, and globalization on the peoples of the Americas, Africa, and Asia.
The key question for the course: how did the peoples of this planet get to be the way they are? In previous generations of scholarship, biology was seen as the key determinate factor for human cultural diversity. Then environment and ecology were stressed to explain differences. This course uses history to investigate the concern. We will consider the casino phenomenon in Native America, tourism to slave ports, and the colonial legacy for development. Using history to trace the transformations, the course sets up a non‑racial, non‑determinist approach to better understanding the accelerating connections among the peoples of the world, commonalties of connections that are leading to greater diversification of cultural identities.
Colonialism, similar to modernity, capitalism, and globalization (all terms that will be discussed in the course), is fundamental to global history and to immediate aspects of people's lives. Colonialism needs to be theorized and discussed, but the discussion will get shunted if the term gets reified. Colonialism is global but local histories are necessary for insights into the colonial encounter and to avoid creating a unitary totality for diverse experiences and realities. This course will strive to frame the inter‑level interactions among the local, regional, and global of the colonial encounter via a political economic analysis and perspective. Hopefully, the course can illuminate the similarities between colonialism and contemporary globalization.
For Fall 2006, we will give particular attention to colonial images and colonial legacies. This theme requires we examine carefully visual and verbal descriptions of colonialism, the colonized, and otherness.
Course Description
This is not a course about explorers and adventurers; the focus revolves around global power, domination, accommodation, and resistance to Western European colonialism and hegemony. As an anthropology course, our concern will focus on people's face‑to‑face interactions, the legacies of the encounters, and the impact of global processes of change on the local and individual level. With the recognition that power structures understandings, this course contains a critique of Anthropology, a critical consideration of representations and contemporary debates in the discipline. As we study colonialism in several parts of the world and the long-term implications of the colonial encounter, we will consider the relationship between contemporary ideologies and anthropological identities.
The course contains a critique of colonial knowledge but also an alternative history for colonialism. The volume by Eric Wolf provides the theoretical support and the empirical evidence for this endeavor; Europe and the People without History is a significant volume for students interested in anthropology, ethnohistory, and the social sciences in general. Wolf's focus on political economy, history and power are key components of the investigations into the colonial encounter. The two ethnographies provide in-depth examination of colonial situations. The articles provide more examples and discussions of theory and method; they should aid in expanding on the arguments in the course. The brief volume by Osterhammel provides definitions and framing concerns for colonialism.
Since colonialism was a global system, our task will be to find the commonalities and unearth the underlying mechanisms that lead and sustain uneven power relationships. The schedule of topics follows geography rather than topics. Thus a certain amount of recursiveness is built into the course. During the first few weeks, the readings and presentations will introduce theoretical concerns, issues, and themes. Then we will explore them around the globe, starting with the Middle East and moving to the Americas, then Africa, and ending with the Pacific before concluding the course. We will consider the elements that are contested in colonialism including such topics as social memory, gender, identity, and history. The course clarifies notions for and about colonialism within an anthropological context.
Required Texts
Available at the Campus Bookstore and via the usual internet sources.
Eric Wolf 1997 Europe and the People without History
Jurgen Osterhammel 2005 Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview
Herald Prins 1996 The Mi'kmaq: Resistance, Accommodation, and Cultural Survival
Dorothy L. Hodgson 2001 Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Cultural Politics of Maasai Development.
Articles and book chapters, listed on the Schedule of Topics, are available on electronic reserve via the Cook Library.
Supplemental Readings:
For those interested in going further with the encounter between anthropology and colonialism, the seminal work is Talal Asad's Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (the book is the antecedent for the course title); its chapters might interest some members of the class. For more current considerations, see Decolonizing Anthropology, edited by Faye V. Harrison in 1997; the volume is available from the American Anthropological Association. For an overview of the scholars and scholarship in post colonial studies, see Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith, and Helen Tiffin's The Post Colonialist Studies Reader (1995), which provides seminal though not necessarily accessible examples. Of particular interest from The Post Colonialist Studies Reader, in terms of this course, are selections from Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Jamaica Kincaid, and Sara Suleri.
There are many responses to colonialism: among the classics are Frantz Fannon The Wretched of the Earth and Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart. Other post colonial authors include J.M. Coetzee and Toni Morrison. Insights from literature are welcomed in the course.
Beyond the scholars listed on the syllabus, significant anthropological voices include (you should search for articles and books) include Sydney Mintz, Nicholas Thomas, Nicholas Dirks, Jennifer Cole, and Arjun Appadurai. The next steps for the analysis in this course are found in studies edited by Jonathan India and Renato Rosaldo (2002) The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader and in the theoretical concerns expressed in Anna Tsing (2004) Friction.
Requirements for the course
Course evaluations will be based upon three elements:
1. Class attendance and discussion
You are expected to attend each and every class, to complete the readings for that day, and be prepared to discuss the readings and your own interests in the course subject matter. Absences are a basis for not satisfying this course. If you need to miss a class, let the professor know via email, voice mail, or a note in the divisional mailbox. Attendance is stressed because this course should be run as seminar‑style, with all members of the class contributing their understandings of course readings, interpretations and observations, and questions. The key for discussion is quality not quantity.
2. Class presentation
The Colonial Encounter examines the scholarly implications of the uneven power relations of colonialism. Toward that end, we will consider three debates in Anthropology. One is focused on the ethnographic research of Napoleon Chagnon among the Yanomamö of Amazonia. The second debate focuses the testimony of Rigoberta Menchú and the implications of personal accounts for anthropology. The third revolves around what happened when Captain Cook went to Hawaii. Groups of students will present the context, issues, and implications for each of the debates during class meetings. The dates for the presentations are listed on the schedule of topics.
3. Written work
a. Definitions of Colonialism
Osterhammel provides typologies and definitions for colonialism. What general conclusion can be researched based on the volume’s exploration of the diversity of colonialism? How is that conclusion useful for the Anthropology of the Colonial Encounter? An essay of two to four double-spaced typed pages responding to those questions is due, in class, on September 18.
b. Response Paper to Mi’kmiq: History and Culture
Prins provides a historical anthropological view of the Mi’kmaq. Discuss your reaction to the history of this group. In what ways is the historical perspective useful? What is the connection between the Mi’kmaq that encountered Europeans explorers and colonialists and the contemporary Mi’kmaq? Please note: this is not as simple a question as it might seem. An essay of three to five double-spaced typed pages is due, in class, on October 9.
c. Final Paper: Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter
Wolf argues that history matters for Anthropology. Does it? Is the colonial encounter, the processes of change unleashed since the 16th century, relevant for today’s world? What are the implications of Europe and the People without History for Anthropology in terms of the ethnographic endeavor and understandings of histories? Please center your argument with a critical examination of Hodgson’s ethnography of the Maasai. An essay of six to ten double-spaced typed pages is due, in class, on December 7.
Schedule of Topics
Mini-class
8/24 Two Hundred Years Ago: The Lewis and Clark Expeditionary Encounters
Week 1: Studying Encounters: Memories and Amnesias of the Colonial Past
8/28 First Encounters – a unique view
8/31 Memories and Amnesias of the Colonial Past: the role of anthropology
Readings:
1. Michel‑Rolph Trouillot 1995 "An Unthinkable History: The Haitian Revolution as Non‑Event" Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, pages 70‑107.
2. Alexander Stille 2002 "The Man Who Remembers" The Future of the Past, pages 155‑181.
Week 2: The Creation and Implications of Anthropology
9/4 is Labor Day, no class
9/7 People without History: a survey of the peoples of the modern age
Readings:
1. Wolf (1) Introduction
2. George Marcus 1995 "Ethnography in the World System" Annual Review of Anthropology 14:95‑117.
3. Vine Deloria 1969 "Anthropologists and Other Friends" Custer Died for Your Sins, pages 83-104.
Week 3: Colonialism and the Modern World
9/11 Explorers, Travelers, and Anthropologist create People without History
Readings
1. Osterhammel chapters 1‑4
2. Johannes Fabian 2000 "Charisma, Cannabis, and the Crossing of Africa" Cultural Studies 15(3/4):405‑429.
9/14 Definitions for Colonialism, Capitalism, Imperialism, and Modernity
Readings:
1. Wolf (2) the Worlds of 1400s and (4) Europe
2. Osterhammel chapters 5‑10
Week 4: The West Goes East: the Middle East and India
9/18 The West in the Middle East: From Crusades to Mandates
Readings:
1. Elizabeth Fernea 1981 "An Early Ethnographer of Middle Eastern Women: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689‑1762)" Journal of Near Eastern Studies 40(4):329‑338.
2. Dror Ze’evi 2004 Back to Napoleon: Thoughts on the Beginning of the Modern Era in the Middle East. Mediterranean Historical Review 19(1):73-94.
3. Mary Wilson 2002 “The Damascus Affair and the Beginnings of France’s Empire in the Middle East” Histories of the Modern Middle East, pages 63-74.
4. Mulk Raj Anand 1990 "The Sweeper" From Other Fields, Other Grasshoppers, pp. 161-176.
5. Wolf Chapter (8) Trade and Conquest in the Orient, pages 232-252.
9/21 Orientalism and the Representation of the Middle East
Readings:
1. Edward Said 1978 "Napoleon in Egypt" a selection from Orientalism, pages 81‑88.
2. Gyan Prakash 1995 “Orientalism Now” History and Theory 34(3):199-212.
Weeks 5‑6: Fur Traders, Missionaries, and the Weight of History in North America
9/25 Europeans Cross the Atlantic: cannibalism and other misunderstandings
Readings:
1. Caston Gordillo 2002 "The Breadth of the Devils: Memories and Places of an Experience of Terror" American Ethnologist 29(1):33-57.
2. Curtis Keim 1999 “Cannibalism: No Accounting for Taste” Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind, pages 91-96.
3. Claire Smith 2005 “Decolonising the Museum: the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.” Antiquity 79:424-439.
4. Mi'kmaq chapters 1-4
9/28 Europeans Search for Furs
Readings:
1. Wolf (6) The Fur Trade
2. Mi'kmaq chapters 5-8
10/2 No Class
Readings:
1. Mi'kmaq chapters 9-13
10/5 Post-Colonial Implications of European Contact and Conquest in North America
Readings:
1. James Clifford 1988 "Identity in Mashpee" Predicament of Culture, pages 277-346.
2. Russell G. Handsman and Trudie Lamb Richmond 1995 "Confronting Colonialism: The Mahican and Schaghticoke Peoples and Us" Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaeology and History in Non‑Western Settings, pages 87‑117.
3. Paul Pasquaretta 1994 "On the "Indianness" of Bingo: Gambling and the Native American Community" Critical Inquiry 20:694‑714.
Week 7: The Caribbean and South America: Testimonials, History, and Culture
10/9 De Soto’s Trail of Conquest in the Southeast: remembrances and silences
Readings:
1. Wolf (5) Iberians in America
2. Michael Taussig 1980 "The Devil and Commodity Fetishism" Chapter two (pages 13‑38) of The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (Please note that the entire book is on reserve.)
10/12 Testimonials, Truth, and Culture: the case of I, Rigoberta Menchú
Readings:
1. Hal Cohen 1999 "The Unmaking of Rigoberta Menchú" Lingua franca 9(5):48-55.
Week 8: Fall Break
Week 9: Ethnography among the Kayapo and Yanomamö
10/23 Post-Colonial Anthropology: handing over the camera to the Kayapo
Readings:
1. Terence Turner 1993 "The Kayapo Resistance" Conformity and Conflict, pages 365‑382.
2. Andre Gunder Frank 1956 "The Development of Underdevelopment" Selection from Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution, pages 3-17.
10/26 Ethics in Ethnography: Napoleon Chagnon among the Yanomamö
Readings:
1. Napoleon Chagnon 1992 "Doing Fieldwork among the Yanomamö" selection from Yanomamö: The Fierce People
2. Patrick Tierney 2000 "The Fierce Anthropologist" The New Yorker October 9:50‑61.
Weeks 10‑11: Slavery and Africa: People as Commodity, Experience as Commodity
10/30 Europeans in Africa
Readings:
1. Immanuel Wallerstein 1973 "Africa in the Capitalist World” Issue: A Quarterly Journal of Africanist Opinion 3(3):1‑12.
2. Wolf (7) The Slave Trade
3. Julia Wells 2005 “Eva’s Men: Gender and Power at the Cape of Good Hope” Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History, pages 84-105.
11/2 Tourism of Slave Ports in West Africa and Colonial Nostalgia in East Africa
Readings:
1. Paula Ebron 1999 "Tourists as Pilgrims: Commercial Fashioning of Transatlantic Politics" American Ethnologist 25(4):910‑932.
2. Edward Bruner 1996 "Tourism in Ghana: The Representation of Slavery and the Return of the Black Diaspora" American Anthropologist 98(2):290‑304.
3. Hodgson Introduction and chapters 1-2
11/6 Colonial Maasai
Readings:
1. Hodgson chapters 3-4
11/9 Development and Post Colonialism
Readings:
1. Hodgson chapters 5-6
2. Todd Sanders 2003 Reconsidering Witchcraft: PostColonial Africa and Analytic (Un)certainties. American Anthropologist 105(2):338-352.
Week 12: Following the History and the Commodities to the Present
11/13 African Responses and Voices: the empire writes back
Readings:
1. Julius Lips 1937 chapter one of The Savage Hits Back (Please note that the entire book is on reserve – look through the images.)
2. Erlend de Groot 2005 “The Earliest Eyewitness Depictions of KhoiKhoi: Andries Beeckman in Africa” Itinerario 29:17-50.
3. Chinua Achebe 1959 chapter 25 of Things Fall Apart (Please note that the entire book is on reserve.)
11/16 Commodities: making things for the market
Readings:
1. Wolf (11) The Movement of Commodities
Week 13: The Indian Ocean and the Pacific: Impacts of Colonialism
11/20 The Pacific Ocean World System: the search for goods/global commodities
Readings:
1. Wolf (8) Trade and Conquest in the Orient, pages 252-261.
2. Miriam Kahn 2000 "Tahiti Intertwined: Ancestral Land, Tourist Postcard, and Nuclear Test Site" American Anthropologist 102(1):7‑26.
11/23 is Thanksgiving: no class
Weeks 14-15: Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter: Social Identities and Anthropological Histories
11/27 No class
Readings:
1. Wolf (12) The New Laborers
11/30 Contested Histories: what happened to Captain Cook?
Readings:
1. Keith Windschuttle 1997 "The Return of Tribalism: Cultural Relativism, Structuralism, and Captain Cook" The Killing of History, pages 253-283 (Please note that the entire book is on reserve.)
12/4 Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter: new ethics, contemporary concerns
Readings:
1. Wolf – Afterword
2. William Rosenberry 1991 "European History and the Construction of Anthropological Subjects" Anthropologies and Histories, pages 125-144.
12/7 In Search for the Other Today
Readings:
1. Edward Hansen 1995 "The Great Bambi War: Tocquevillians versus Keynesians in an Upstate New York County" Articulating Hidden Histories, pages 142‑155.