Marshall Sahlins
212/430. Fiji. PQ:
Open to third- or fourth-year students. Analysis of Fijian cultural
orders and their early modern history. Theoretical emphasis on anthropological
modes of historical interpretation. Particular topics vary year to year,
but all are considered from the general theoretical perspective of the
relations between events, individual agents, and cultural order. M.
Sahlins. Spring, 1998, 1999.
30001. Culture I: The Nature of Culture. PQ:
Third- or fourth-year standing. May be taken in sequence or individually. This
is the first of a three-quarter sequence on the nature and varieties of
culture. Culture I considers academic theories of culture and their sources
in Western philosophies of humanity and society. M. Sahlins. Autumn, 1995,
1996.
30002. Culture II: Varieties of Cultural Order. PQ:
Third- or fourth-year standing. May be taken in sequence or individually. This
is the second of a three-quarter sequence on the nature and varieties of
culture. Culture II is concerned with classical anthropological depictions
of cultural differences C that is, from the early modern period or the
so-called ethnological present. M. Sahlins. Winter, 1995.
30003. Culture III: Cultural Change and Contemporary
Ethnography. PQ:
Third- or fourth-year standing. May be taken in sequence or individually. This
is the third of a three-quarter sequence on the nature and varieties of
culture. Culture III is a discussion of cultural change in general and
in the context of modern world history. M. Sahlins. Spring 1996.
52100. Seminar: Eskimo/Inuit: Then & Now. Review
of classical Eskimo ethnography and culture history with an emphasis on material,
social and ideological aspects of subsistence techniques, as well as consideration
of the survival of Inuit cultures in the modern world. M. Sahlins, R.
Fogelson. Spring 1999
558. Seminar: Culture and History [Formerly
428]. PQ: Consent of instructor. Class limited to twenty
students. This course features the role of cultural order in historical
change, with analytic examples from diverse ethnographic sites in the
early modern and modern periods. M. Sahlins, M. Carneiro da Cunha.
Spring 1996.
515. Seminar: The Peloponnesian & Polynesian Wars. This
course is designed to examine the historiography of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian
War in comparison with a Fijian war of similar form – between
a great sea power and a great land power, each at the head of allied lands – and
duration. The object is to bring anthropological concepts of culture into
the study of history in order to see what difference that might make for
the historiography we have inherited from Thucydides. M
Sahlins & J. Redfield. Winter 2001.
51700. Structural Work: How Microhistories become Macrohistories
and Vice Versa. This course will concern the symbolic and structurally-induced
amplification of local oppositions into large-scale conflicts, covering
five cases from widely-distant times and places. (1) The Elian Gonzalez
custody issue, which became a showdown of Miami Cubans and Havana capitalism
and communism, with a parallel dispute in the U.S. at large involving “parental
rights” and individual liberty, 1999-2000; (2) The nationalization
of Catalan peasant disputes on the border of Spain and France in 17th-19th
centuries; (3) A struggle over Hawaiian kingship that became a global confrontation
of civilizing missions when American missionaries and merchants allied
with different Hawaiian factions, 1825-35; (4) The culture of an assassination:
structure and contingency at a turning point in Fijian history, 1845; (5)
The exacerbation of civil strife in Greek city states by their involvement
in the Peloponnesian War, 431-404 BCE. Sahlins. Wed 2:30-5:20.
Autumn 2004
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