(PDF) Syllabus: Kinship

SOAN 323AL KINSHIP Fall 2023-24 Tuesday, 4:30 to 7:00pm Nicely 204 Instructor: Dr. Sylvain Perdigon

, Nicely 201D Office hours: Wednesday, 2-4pm, by appointment (click on link to make an appointment) WHAT THE SEMINAR IS ABOUT There is an old story about anthropology and it goes like this. In the beginning the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. Then, anthropology discovered itself and was born when (at some point in the 1850s) it discovered kinship among the Seneca Nation in upstate New York. There followed a long age during which kinship was almost everything to anthropology, and anthropology would find kinship in almost everything it studied — kinship was everywhere in the procedures anthropologists used to interpret social facts of all sorts. On and on it went, until, having examined kinship inside out, as it were, anthropologists came to wonder more and more whether ‘kinship’ might not be, in fact, something they had collectively invented in their discussions, and projected onto other societies, rather than something they had discovered out there in the world. The implications were far-reaching. If anthropology had, in fact, invented kinship rather than discovered it, it meant that anthropology had to reinvent itself anew. And so it did, by and large, and it is only then that you and I come into the scene, after all that had already happened. It is not the whole story, just one story, but it is not a bad one, as far as stories go, and as far as we tell ourselves stories to understand who we came to be and what we came to do. It is also an old story of which it is very unclear — when we pause and look around a bit — whether it has in fact ever ended and which part we play in it. For as anthropology reinvented itself and continues to do so, it keeps on finding kinship again at every turn, and what it finds is quite different from, yet in other ways the same thing(s) as, what earlier anthropologists grappled with under the name of kinship. Perhaps one would need to imagine the end of kinship itself for the story to truly end. But can we imagine such an end, and do we even want to? Thinking about the futures, and the future meanings, of kinship as the world burns is also one way in which kinship continues to be at the forefront of anthropological discussions. In this story, kinship is a bit to anthropology like what the unconscious is to psychoanalysis, or the body in motion to dance, or the camera to film - it is very hard to imagine one if you don’t also imagine the other. What we will do in this graduate seminar is take a long dive into and explore this story and connection. We will ask what kinship was and is to anthropology, and what anthropology brought and continues to bring to our understanding of kinship. The connection runs very deep, and by looking at how anthropology grappled with kinship, we will be looking at the development and logic of anthropological inquiry itself. Kinship is the terrain on which anthropologists got to grips with some of the most fundamental and enduring questions for the social sciences: the relation between language and (social) reality, between “nature” and “culture” and whether there are in fact such things, how social reproduction and distribution operates, what separates morality from law, modern and late modern being from the pre- and non-modern, race, gender, desire and sex certainly, late capitalism and how it colonizes our social and intimate relations. .. 1 In parallel, we will also constantly ask ourselves what we can learn from anthropology about kinship and its place and role in our lives and those of the people we work with. In a fundamental way, kinship is about how some people are (part of) who we are and how we are (part of) some other people. Relatives are people who “live each other’s lives and die each other’s death” is how one anthropologist put it, and surely we see what he meant.1 It is stunning but also terrifying when you think of it, so terrifying in fact that we late moderns have become notoriously bad at understanding and even living with it. More and better than any other discipline, anthropology can help us on this topic. WHAT ARE THE SKILLS WE WANT TO CULTIVATE? This seminar is designed to challenge you to cultivate a dynamic way of moving between speaking, writing, and thinking. How can writing be a form of thinking, rather than just the product of thinking? How can speaking about an idea in our collective discussion play a critical role in thinking about how to write an analysis on paper? How is thinking itself a powerful form of paying attention to the world we live in and ourselves? The heart of this seminar consists of three critical elements: lectures, discussion and writing. We will collectively determine what we consider to be the foundation that fosters an engaged, sustained discussion. Such discussions require you to delve into the readings thoroughly and arrive at class ready with questions, selected quotes, and connections between our readings throughout the semester. If you feel that you are having difficulty participating in class, please come see me so we can discuss different ways of contributing to the class discussion. LEARNING OUTCOMES Upon completion of this class, students will: • have acquired a range of methodological and analytical tools to investigate the place and role of kinship in a variety of social and cultural contexts, including our own. • have become proficient in the fundamentals of the logic of anthropological inquiry. • have acquired reading and writing skills for applying themselves to and using scholarly literature not as a student but as a researcher. 1 Sahlins, Marshall. 2013. What Kinship Is - and Is Not. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press (p. ix). 2 COURSE REQUIREMENTS Requirement Percentage Attendance 20 % Participation 10 % Discussion Leading 15 % Weekly Responses 25 % Essay Project 30 % 1. Attendance (20%) and participation (10%). This is a graduate seminar. The attendance and informed participation of each and every student is not just required, it is the very substance of our endeavor. At times I will deliver lectures on the course material, but what we learn will be driven in good part by the questions, comments, ideas and energies that you bring to our discussion. There is no point in coming to class if you have not read, annotated and thought carefully about the course material and have no intention to contribute to the discussion. A failure on your part to do this work of preparation on a regular basis, or to make it evident to me through your participation in class, would significantly impact this portion of your final grade. Note in this respect that this a rather reading-intensive course. The reading load for each week often exceeds 100 dense pages; shorter reading assignments mean that the texts are peculiarly difficult and that you should devote a significant amount of your time to them all the same. I cannot insist on this enough: you must plan on keeping a strict, organized reading routine throughout the semester in order to cope with this load (i.e. starting the readings the day before class will not work). If you are not ready to cultivate such a routine, this will automatically translate (through the weekly postings and the participation grades) into a weak final grade, so you should drop the course right now. I expect participants in this seminar to do close, active readings of the material. You should come to class with a clear idea of the plan of the chapters or articles you have just read, of the argumentative strategies that authors employ, and a handful of key words and specific passages in mind for discussion. I ask that you print out all of our materials and that you bring the reading(s) for the week to class. Take notes in the margins, highlight passages, draw arrows between ideas you would like to connect — in other words, grapple and wrestle with the text itself. Do you have questions at certain points? Write that down. If the scholar/author was sitting across from you, would you have a question? Write that down. Did something prompt and inspire you to think about a topic for a paper? Write that down. A valuable resource for methodological tips and guidelines on how to engage anthropological readings critically can be found in the section “Moves anthropologists make” (pp. 13–18) of the Student Guide to Reading and Writing in Social Anthropology (SGRWSA) published by Harvard’s Anthropology department. 2. Weekly Response Postings (25%). Each week, starting on week 2, you will post on Moodle a short response/reaction to the reading(s) of the week. This exercise is designed to help you both reflect upon and write critically about the reading. It is also a space for you to experiment with ideas for your final research essay. This response should be short (about 250 words) and you have one pass on a weekly posting (i.e., you must submit 10 weekly postings in all). I will give you in class, and make available on Moodle, directions on how you should go about writing your responses. Each of your posting will receive a default grade of 85% or A- on the AUB grading scale. I will then adjust the aggregate over the course of the semester depending 3 on the regularity of your postings, their quality and depth, and your effort and progress in this exercise. As a rule, weekly postings must be submitted on Moodle by Monday, 11pm. 3. Discussion Leading (15%). Twice over the course of the semester, you will have the respon- sibility of starting and orienting our class discussion. Those introductions should be short: 8 minutes or so, not more. I will give you instructions on how to approach this exercise. The goal should be to initiate a class conversation on the ideas you found most interesting in the reading, and why. In order to prepare for this task, you should rely on your thoughts, ideas and questions generated by the reading, on the comments and questions generated by my previous lectures and our previous discussions, finally, on your classmates’ postings for the week, which will be available for all of us to read on Moodle upon submission. I’ll give you in class more directions on how to approach this task so as to generate a focused and exciting class discussion. You should come to class ready to do this work of introduction every week, and each time I’ll pick two students for the job. 4. Essay project (in stages, 30% of the final grade). Finally, you will compose over the course of the semester an in-depth research essay on kinship and its relevance to your research interests for your MA degree. You should start thinking of a research topic for this assignment in the very first weeks of the semester, and this reflection should extend through your weekly postings and class discussions. I will be happy to consider and discuss with you topics you bounce off me in advance. In general, three considerations should guide the choice of the topic you will research. First, this topic should be specific enough to undergo a reasonably thorough treatment in the space of 15 double-spaced pages. Second, it should concern theoretical claims that you can appraise, if possible ethnographically, with relative ease over the course of the semester. Finally, it should be guided by the ideas and concepts we discuss in class. In other words, the point is to put the analytical and reflective tools we will acquire to the test of a case study. The composition of the paper itself will involve a number of steps, each of which will count toward the final grade. You will first submit a paper proposal (5% of the final grade), followed by an essay synopsis (5%), and finally at the end of the semester the research paper (20%) itself. Take advantage of the writing resources available to you, first among them the AUB Writing Center where you can schedule an appointment for advice and feedback at any stage of the writing process. The Writing Center’s website includes a page collecting most useful writing links. Specific guidelines on how to write an anthropology paper can be found here. In accordance with the conventions followed by the American Anthropological Association, you should use the Chicago citation style Author-Date in your written assignments. Refer to the How to cite your sources page on the AUB library website for the necessary information on the Chicago citation style and useful citation management tools. Schedule an appointment at the library or the writing center if you are unsure of how to use these resources. Those tools will be of great use to you throughout your college years and beyond. LOGISTICS (Moodle, Office Hours) Moodle If you are not already familiar with it, it is imperative that you familiarize yourself as soon as possible with the Moodle Learning Management System. The Moodle page for the course will be a virtual meeting room for us to stay on the same page and interact with one another next to the class sessions. I will constantly use it to post announcements regarding the organization of our work, and forums for discussions between ourselves. It will also be a repository where you can always find important 4 course resources such as the syllabus or PDFs of our readings. You will use it to submit your answers or papers. Finally, I will enter your grades in the relevant section of the site over the course of the semester so that you can have a fairly good idea of how you are doing in the course and what your final grade might look like if you do not decrease or increase your efforts. If you have any question or problems regarding your Moodle account, use the following links: Moodle for Students and Moodle FAQ. Office Hours I hold office hours on a weekly basis on Wednesday between 2 and 4pm. I strongly encourage you to come and meet with me during these office hours since it is one of the few ways we have to get to know each other better. At first, meetings will be limited to a 15-min. duration to be able to accommodate as many of you as possible. All meetings (even during office hours) must be scheduled in advance. There is an “Office Hours Sign-Up” button on the top of the Moodle site for the class. Use this link to make an appointment: https://calendly.com/sylvain-aub. COURSE POLICIES AND ETIQUETTE Attendance: Timely attendance at each class meeting is required. Your attendance and engaged participation are essential for the success of this seminar, as they are for the benefit of your classmates and of yourself. I will take attendance at the beginning of each weekly meeting. By coming late to class, you will be marked as absent, unless you come to see me at the end of the session with a valid excuse for being late. Absences for which a medical excuse is provided (on professional letterhead) will be recorded but not figured in the attendance grade. Likewise, one absence for which advance notice is given by email will not be figured in the attendance grade. Any significant tardy arrival in, or early departure from, class will be figured as a half absence. Anyone who has more than four class-long, unexcused absences will be dropped out from the course. Late assignments: Late assignments will not be accepted without penalty unless there is an emergency situation and you contact me immediately and in advance to discuss an extension. On listening and note-taking in class. A basic ground rule: there is to be no computer, cell phone or electronic notepad usage in class. You will be publicly shamed and asked to leave the classroom if caught using any of the above. Instead, use a pen and notebook to take notes. A core element of discussion is engagement, not transcription. The listening is just as important (or perhaps even more important) than the speaking during discussion, and active listening is more easily achieved through longhand note-taking than when an electronic device stands in the way with its distractions. In addition, recent studies show that students who write out their notes on paper learn significantly more and better2 . Academic honesty. The strength of the university depends on academic and personal integrity. In this course, you must be honest and truthful. In accordance with the AUB Student Code of Conduct, Sections 1 and 2, plagiarism of any kind will be penalized to the fullest possible extent, without warning or exception. I will give a grade of zero on the assignment where the offense has occurred and refer the case to the Student Disciplinary Affairs Committee. The most common causes of plagiarism are not deliberate dishonesty, but stress and uncertainty. You are encouraged to begin assignments well in advance of the deadline, and to check with the instructor if you have any questions. Whenever 2 May, C. “A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop”. Accessed January 23, 2017. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/. 5 you draw upon somebody else’s words or ideas to make a point, give them credit in a note. If you have questions about documentation requirements, don’t guess – just ask. The AUB website contains a useful page with information and tutorials designed for students on this topic. On chat-GPT and other AI writing software. You are not permitted to use AI writing software for any written submission in this course. Chat-GPT is a text generating machine with no heart that spits out clichés, not living thought. This can be beneficial for some uses but not for what we do in this course and in anthropology more generally. In this course, we want to built up your independent thinking and creativity muscles. Chat-GPT and other such software stifle this critical part of your university education. They take away that most precious thing, your voice. In anthropology, these tools also just produce really lame results or downright nonsense. Be aware that 1) in my experience, it’s as plain as the nose on your face when a student has used such tools for writing an assignment — to an experienced teacher and reader, it immediately shows in myriad details of the form of the submission itself, 2) in case of doubt, I reserve myself the right to use AI-use detection software, 3) when I evaluate your submissions, a big part of what I evaluate is indeed your work, your effort, the connections you make in thought and words, the risks you take, your trajectory over the course of the semester — and all this fizzles out when you use AI. Accessibility. AUB strives to make learning experiences as accessible as possible. If you anticipate or experience academic barriers due to a disability (including mental health, chronic or temporary medical conditions), please inform me immediately so that we can privately discuss options. In order to help establish reasonable accommodations and facilitate a smooth accommodations process, you are encouraged to contact the Accessible Education Office:

; +961-1-350000, x3246; West Hall, 314. On the ethics of anthropology. The anthropology class is often an ethical space where differences are negotiated. These differences pertain not only to the unfamiliar forms of life conjured up in ethnographic texts, but also to the diverse political, moral, spiritual or intellectual commitments that students and instructor bring with them into the classroom. Taking this course implies a willingness, on each participant’s part, to learn to recognize, through the medium of anthropology, the layering of dispositions, heritages and social forces that help to compose our personal orientations to the world. It also implies a firm commitment to attend to our differences in this regard in a spirit of mutual responsiveness, generosity and respect. 6 WEEKLY READING SCHEDULE Electronic copies of all the required journal articles or book chapters will be made available on Moodle. I strongly encourage you to print out these PDF files: recent studies show readers benefit and remember more from a text when they read it in print (as opposed to on a screen), can underline important passages with a pencil, write keywords or their thoughts in the margins, etc. The semester is divided into topics: the goal is to cover as many of those topics as possible, but we shall adapt the list depending on the pace of our work in the current circumstances. Topic 1 Beginnings Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1871. Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Selection TBA) Trautmann, Thomas R. 1987. Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Selection TBA) Simpson, Audra. 2014. “Constructing Kahnawà:ke as an ‘Out-of-the-Way’ Place: Ely S. Parker, Lewis Henry Morgan, and the Writing of the Iroquois Confederacy.” In Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham: Duke University Press. Topic 2 Descent Theory Kuper, Adam. 1982. “Lineage Theory: A Critical Retrospect.” Annual Review of Anthropology 11 (1): 71–95. Fortes, Meyer. 1949. The Web of Kinship Among the Tallensi : The Second Part of an Analysis of the Social Structure of a Trans-Volta Tribe. London: International African Institute by the Oxford University Press. (pp. 12-43 and 222-235 and 337-347) Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R. 1940. “On Joking Relationships.” Africa 13 (3): 195–210. Optional: Atran, Scott. 1986. “Hamula Organisation and Masha’a Tenure in Palestine.” Man 21 (2): 271–95. Topic 3 Performance, Complementarity, Schismogenesis Bateson, Gregory. 1936. Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Selection TBA) Optional: Houseman, Michael, and Carlo Severi. 1998. Naven, or, the Other Self: A Relational Approach to Ritual Action. Leiden: Brill. (Chapter 1 to 6) Topic 4 Alliance Theory Lévi-Strauss, Claude. [1949] 1971. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press. (Selection TBA) Topic 5 Kinship and/as Desire Trawick, Margaret. 1990. Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Chapt. 4, 5 6, pp. 117-214) 7 Topic 6 Feminist Reckonings Rubin, Gayle. 1975. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” In Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by Rayna Reiter, 157–210. New York: Monthly Review Press. Collier, Jane Fishburne, and Sylvia Junko Yanagisako. 1987a. “Introduction.” In Gender and Kinship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis, 1–13. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1987b. “Towards a Unified Analysis of Gender and Kinship.” In Gender and Kinship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis, 14–50. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Topic 7 Is It Still Kinship If Kinship Is a Matter of Choice? Strathern, Marilyn. 1992. Reproducing the Future: Essays on Anthropology, Kinship and the New Reproductive Technologies. Manchester: Manchester University Press. (Introduction, Chapter 1, 2, 3, 5, 6) Topic 8 The Persistent Life of Kinship in Anthropology Carsten, Janet. 2000. “Introduction: Cultures of Relatedness.” In Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Franklin, Sarah, and Susan McKinnon. 2001. “Introduction.” In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. McKinnon, Susan, and Fenella Cannell. 2013. “The Difference Kinship Makes.” In Vital Relations: Modernity and the Persistent Life of Kinship, edited by Susan McKinnon and Fenella Cannell, 3–38. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press. Plus: Pick one article in one of these three volumes according to your interest that you will quickly present in class. Topic 9 Kinship in/vs. the Empire of Love Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2006. The Empire of Love : Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality. Durham: Duke University Press. (Introduction p. 1-26, Chapter 1 p. 27-94, Chapter 3 p. 175-236) Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2002. “Notes on Gridlock: Genealogy, Intimacy, Sexuality.” Public Culture 14 (1): 215–38. Topic 9 “Make Kin Not Babies” ? Kinship for the Age of Collapses Haraway, Donna. 2015. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities 6: 159–65. Clarke, Adele, and Donna Haraway, eds. 2018. Making Kin Not Population. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press: • Benjamin, Ruha. “Black AfterLives Matter: Cultivating Kinfulness as Reproductive Justice” • Haraway, Donna. “Making Kin in the Chthulucene: Reproducing Multispecies Justice” • Murphy, Michelle. “Against Population, Towards Alterlife” • Huang, Yu-Ling and Wu, Chia-Ling. “New Feminist Biopolitics for Ultra-love-fertility East Asia” 8 • TallBear, Kim. “Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex and Family” Strathern, Marilyn, Jade S Sasser, Adele Clarke, Ruha Benjamin, Kim Tallbear, Michelle Murphy, Donna Haraway, Yu-Ling Huang, and Chia-Ling Wu. 2019. “Forum on Making Kin Not Population: Reconceiving Generations.” Feminist Studies 45 (1): 159–72. Appleton, Nayantara Sheoran, and Danya Glabau. 2022. “Critical Engagements on Making Kin Not Population: An Epistolary Review Essay.” American Anthropologist 124 (4): 891–99. Topic 11 Kinship and the Everyday Goodfellow, Aaron. 2015. Gay Fathers, Their Children, and the Making of Kinship. New York, NY: Fordham University Press. or Han, Clara. 2020. Seeing Like a Child: Inheriting the Korean War. New York: Fordham University Press. Topic 12 Researching Kinship Here and Now (I): Allyship Rabih Hajaig, Intimate Allies: Familial Becomings in Beirut, M.A. thesis defended at AUB, SOAM Department, M.A. in Anthropology, January 2023. Topic 13 Researching Kinship Here and New (II): Violence, Family, Intimacy Dr. Sarah El Bulbeisi, Research Associate, Orient Institute Beirut 9