OFFICE HOURS: By appointment – via email – only. Feel free to email me also if you have any questions and concerns.

email: Fotta@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Session	Date	Topic
1	01.10.2019	Welcome and introduction
2	08.10.2019	*no lecture*
3	15.10.2019	School
4	22.10.2019	Love
5	29.10.2019	Sex
6	05.11.2019	Father
7	12.11.2019	Mother * a university climate occupation strike *
8	19.11.2019	Children Mother
9	26.11.2019	Household Children
10	03.12.2019	Work Household
11	10.12.2019	Aging
12	17.12.2019	Death
13	07.01.2020	Final Session

Session 1: Welcome and introduction

As a social science, anthropology was allocated the ‘savage slot’ (Trouillot), to study people with whom Westerners could not have imagined any conversation as with equals (because they were ‘primitive’ or more generally ‘other’). But is anthropology still suited for the 21^st century?

· Hage, G. (2012). Critical anthropological thought and the radical political imaginary today. Critique of anthropology, 32(3), 285-308.

· Wallerstein, I. (1996). Open the social sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the restructuring of the social sciences. Stanford University Press.

Session 2: *** NO LECTURE*** (Imatrikulace)

Session 3: On schooling as a rite of passage

You are at the university in order to learn something new and to get prepared for the labour market. But ‘preparation for the labour market’ is only a mode of talking about a process through which we are made into social persons and pass from one stage to another. From this point of view, schooling can be seen as belonging to what anthropology have called ‘rites of passage’. Key anthropological topics: rites of passage; initiation rites; ritual; social personhood.

Required reading:

Turner, V. 1967. “Betwixt and between: The liminal period in rites of passage.” In: The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual. Ithaca NY: Cornell University, 93-111.

Recommended readings:

Poole, Fitz John Porter. “The Ritual Forging of Identity: Aspects of Person and Self in Bimin-Kuskusmin Male Initiation.” Rituals of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guinea (ed. Gilbert Herdt). Berkeley: University of California press, 99-154.
Van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites of passage.

Session 4: Being In love

As many university students know, it is hard to study when one has a ‘broken heart’. But what does it mean? How universal is this feeling? Is romantic love a modern invention? Does ‘love’ mean the same thing for all people? By exploring these questions we look at understanding emotions as cultural categories and explore the role emotions play in the politics of social life. Key anthropological topics: self; emotions; affect; individual.

Required reading:

Lindholm, C. (2006). Romantic love and anthropology. Etnofoor, 5-21.

Further reading:

Rosaldo, M. Z. (1983). The shame of headhunters and the autonomy of self. Ethos, 11(3), 135-151.

Session 5: On sexual desires and practices

In this session we will look at human sexuality from the perspective of different cultures. How does modern anthropology analyse phenomena such as hijras of India or berdache of the North America? And what does the way these have been conceptualised (as homosexual practices, as third sex, as transgender) tell us about our own ontological categories pertaining to sex and sexuality? Key anthropological topic: sex and gender; ‘third gender’; heteronormativity; social construction.

Required reading

Rubin, G. 1992 Thinking sex: notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. in Pleasure and danger. Carole Vance (ed). Harper Collins.

Further reading

Herdt, G. H. (1984). Semen transactions in Sambia culture. Ritualized homosexuality in Melanesia, 167-210.

Session 6: In the name of the father

Anthropology has always been interested in how a natural process of biological reproduction connects with social organisation. But why do some cultures misrecognise physical paternity? We look at how at the core of anthropological kinship studies, and thus anthropology itself, has stood a European (patriarchal, monotheistic and heteronormative) view of conception and how it has been challenged by ethnographic data from other cultures and today by new procreative technologies. Key anthropological concepts: kinship; paternity; nature/culture.

Required reading:

Delaney, C. (1986). The meaning of paternity and the virgin birth debate. Man, 494-513.

Further readings:

Inhorn, M. C. (2006). He won't be my son. Medical anthropology quarterly, 20(1), 94-120.
Leach, E. (1966). Virgin birth. Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 39-49.
Franklin, S. (1998). Making miracles: Scientific progress and the facts of life. In: Reproducing reproduction: Kinship, power, and technological innovation, 102-117.

Session 7: What does your mother do?

One might think: ‘OK, fathers are not certain, but surely mothers are’. Indeed, given a variety of kinship and family models that have existed in human history, a mother-child dyad has been posited as the real nucleus of all family groups. But why should the fact of giving birth automatically translate into individualisation of the mother and the structural importance of a mother-child dyad? Is mother-child bond essentially the same, immutable and based on a natural affective link? Key anthropological term: gender; families; private vs. public spheres.

Required reading:

Drummond, L. (1978). The transatlantic nanny: notes on a comparative semiotics of the family in English‐speaking societies. American Ethnologist, 5(1), 30-43.

Recommended reading:

Barnes, R. (2016). She Was a Twin: Black Strategic Mothering, Race‐Work, and the Politics of Survival. Transforming Anthropology, 24(1), 49-60.
Rosaldo, M. Z. (1974). Woman, culture, and society: A theoretical overview. In: Woman, culture, and society.

Session 8: The world of children

Contemporary anthropology acknowledges that ch