Hi! I'm a Cultural Anthropology student transferring form a community college to a big University in the fall. I'm a little nervous about keeping up and was wondering if you have any book/ article recommendations to help me brush up on upper division concepts and prepare for the type of work done on the quarter system vs semester system. or just good reads in general. The school is UC San Diego if you need specifics. Thank you for your time.
I’ve only even been to semester schools, so I can’t really help you there. Below I’m reposting a list of readings I’ve suggested to others before (see FAQ), and surely people will comment here others:
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture.” In The interpretation of cultures.
Geertz, Clifford. 1974. “‘From the native’s point of view’: On the nature of anthropological understanding.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 28 (1): 26-45.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. “Introduction.” In Argonauts of the Western Pacific.
Farmer, Paul. 1996. “On suffering and structural violence: A view from below.” Daedalus 125 (1): 261-283.
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim women really need saving? Anthropological reflections on cultural relativism and its Others.” American Anthropologist 104 (3): 783-790.
Foucault, Michel. 1976. The history of sexuality.
Chomsky, Noam and Edward S. Herman. 1998. Manufacturing consent.
Chomsky, Noam. 2016. Who rules the world?
Mead, Margaret. 1928. Coming of age in Samoa.
Bohannan, Laura. 1961. “Shakespeare in the bush.” Natural History.
Said, Edward. 1978. “Introduction.” In Orientalism.
The Combahee River Collective. 1977. “A Black feminist statement.”
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1992. “Price formation and the anticipation of profits.” In Language and symbolic power.
Duggan, Lisa. 2003. “Introduction” and “Equality, Inc.” In The twilight of equality?
Harris, Marvin. 1976. “History and significance of the emic/etic distinction.” Annual Review of Anthropology 5: 329-350.
Benedict, Ruth. 1934. Patterns of culture.
These are in no particular order. Just the order I remembered them.
Any article you can look at that’s from a major anthro journal like American Anthropologist or American Ethnologist or things like that is also good. A lot of the ones I want to recommend are actually from queer theory, not anthropology. I tried limiting it to that field specifically. Actually I lied some are queer theory good luck figuring out which.
Anything by any of these authors is also worthy.
You may be able to find a lot of these as PDFs online but you didn’t hear it from me.
Edit: you can also find films or short videos featuring a lot of these people, especially Chomsky @starlightprincess17
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
prguitarman
titsay
