European Ethnography

Dr. Julia Offen, SUNY Oswego, 2008

In this course, we turn the anthropological lens to the variety of cultural forms and identities found within the diverse historical and social contexts of Europe. We explore how people make cultural meanings out of their lives, and how social and cultural anthropologists investigate these meanings. A central theme running through the course is how people and institutions construct and negotiate identities – as Europeans, as “civilized” peoples, as proper middle-class citizens, as women or men, or as members with a sense of belonging to national, ethnic, religious, or political groups. The themes and issues we cover are particularly significant for the European region, as well as broadly applicable to understanding human experience across cultural and geographical locations.

Texts

Frykman, Jonas and Orvar Löfgren. 1987. Culture Builders. Rutgers University Press.

Vale de Almeida, Miguel. 1996. The Hegemonic Male, Masculinity in a Portuguese Town. Berghahn Books.

Berdahl, Daphne. 1999. Where the World Ended. University of California Press.

Thiessen, Ilká. 2007. Waiting for Macedonia. Broadview Press.

Additional Articles/ Book Selections

Said, Edward, 1978. Orientalism (excerpt)

Rothfels, Nigel. 1996. “Aztecs, Aborigines, and Ape-People: Science and Freaks in Germany, 1850-1900” in Freakery

Césaire. 1953. Discourse on Colonialism (excerpt)

Evans, Andrew. 2002. “Capturing Race” in Colonialist Photography.

Booth, Sally S.1999. “Reconstructing Sexual Geography: Gender and Space in Changing Sicilian Settlements,” in House Life: Space, Place and Family in Europe.

Orwell, George. 1937. “The Lower Classes Smell,” from The Road to Wigan Pier, in Violence in War and Peace

Hebdige, Dick. 1987 [1979]. Subculture: the meaning of style. (excerpt)

Smith, Jeffrey Alyn. 2007. “The Five-Year Plan to Trap Your Man: Discourses on Marriage, Family, and Divorce in Hungary,” J. Soc. Anth. of Europe, 7:2 (3-18)

Mandel, Ruth. 1989. “Turkish Headscarves and the ‘Foreigner Problem’.”

Cohen, Anthony. 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Community. (excerpt)

Bringa, Tone. 2002. “Averted Gaze, Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992-1995,” in Annihilating Difference, The Anthropology of Genocide.

Shore, Cris. 1999. “Inventing Homo Europaeus.”

Selected Articles from the New York Times

Films

The Life and Times of Sara Bartmann (Zola Maseko) 1998 [http://www.frif.com/new99/hottento.html]

Kypseli: Women and Men Apart -- A Divided Reality 1973

Young, Muslim and French 2004 [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/france/]

When the Wall Came Tumbling Down 1999

We are All Neighbors (Tone Bringa) 1993 [http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/aeer12_1/neighbrs.html]

Whose is this Song? (Adela Peeva) 2003 [http://www.osce.org/item/21006.html]