Social Structure
Anthropology 412/812
(Fall 2007)
Tuesday & Thursday 2:00-3:15,

Room # 118 Burnett Hall

Last update: 11/15/07
Instructor: Raymond Hames

Phone # 472-6240, 2411
Office: 836 Oldfather Hall

E-mail  

Course Web page: http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/social/socout007.htm

Office Hours:
Monday 2:00-4:30
Tuesday 8:00-9:00
Wednesday 2:-3:00
Friday 8:00-9:00

This course on social organization focuses on family, marriage, and kinship in non-western society and, to a lesser extent, historic and current western societies.  The aim is to firmly ground students in anthropological concepts and theories relevant to those topics and to assess the impact of evolutionary approaches on the study of social organization. The first part of the course will be devoted to a grounding in the traditional topics and theoretical issues in the study of social organization. This section will conclude in the sixth week with an essay examination covering Jack Goody's Production and Reproduction, and chapters 1-5 in Pasternak, Ember, and Ember's Sex, Gender, and Kinship, and lectures. In the second part of the course, we will cover chapters 6-13 in Sex, Gender, and Kinship and then turn to evolutionary interpretations of human social organization and behavior by reading various chapters in Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective (edited by Cronk, Chagnon, and Irons). You will be examined on those readings and lectures in the fourteenth week of the course.   Remember web readings in the weekly schedule are required readings.

Research Paper
All students will be required to write research papers but requirements will differ for graduate and undergraduate students.  By the end of the first exam (7^th week) you should have a basic understanding of issues and topics in social structure and this knowledge should guide your choice of a term paper.  Each student must visit me and propose a paper topic for my approval.  I should be able to help you with source materials and clarify your approach.  Sample topics include: causes of divorce, determinants of lineal descent, patterns of adoption, factors influencing mate choice, adoption, cooperative child care, determinants of female status, etc.

Undergraduate students (412 credit) will write a 10-12 page paper while graduate students (812 credit) will write a 20-22 page paper. In addition, graduate students will present a fifteen minute oral version of their paper during the last two weeks of class.   The format for the paper can be found by clicking here.   References should be formatted following the American Anthropologist style sheet which can be found here.  Writing clearly (and hopefully well) is of great importance to effectively communicating your ideas.  Towards this end, I will give all the opportunity to submit a complete rough draft of your paper prior to the final paper's due date (see timing below).  Please use the Writing Assistance Center if you need help.  Their web site is http://www.unl.edu/english/wac/wacmain.htm Please note the WAC is not a proof-reading service.  Nevertheless, they will provide you with important proofing and editing skills that all writers need.

Paper topics should deal with analytic issues.  Click here for paper titles and abstracts created by former students and here for this semester's abstracts.   I encourage you all to be aware of what your fellows are doing so that you may provide one another with support especially on topics that overlap or when one of you have a particular expertise you can offer a peer.  

Finally, academic honesty is expected of all students.  Any plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty will result in an automatic “F” for the course  and I will report you to the Director of Student Judicial Affairs.

Each exam (2) will count 25% toward the final grade and the term paper will count 50%. Class participation is strongly encouraged and will be rewarded.
Students will be expected to be familiar with the assigned reading so they can contribute to class discussions. This means that one has read and taken notes on, for example, the assigned readings for week two when we meet during week two.  In general, I'll begin the class by highlighting the main issues in the readings by clarifying definitions, elaborating theory, and filling in empirical and historical gaps.  Later, I'll move on to empirical tests of theory, especially focusing on how a particular hypothesis was deduced, the kinds of data required, methods used to gather the data, and the outcome of the test of a particular hypothesis. You should feel free to interject comments at any time to force me to clarify or extend what I'm talking about or to present an alternative way of dealing with a particular issue.  Indeed, I'll stimulate this process by simply asking students to give us their position on particular issues and case studies.

Date

Topic

Reading

Aug. 28-30

Introduction

Same Sex Marriage

HRAF research

 Goody 1-30

Sep. 4-6

History of Social Organization 

Demonstration of HRAF (perform some of the exercises on the web)

Goody 31-85 

Do co-wives get along?

Sep. 11-13

Diverging Devolution: the Model

Goody 86-132
Honor-Shame & Death

Sep. 18-20

Labor, Marriage, & Family Organization

PEE: 1-3
Lesbian & Gay Families

Sep. 25-27

Parental investment

PEE:4
Read NY Times on Step-mothers and
Lincoln Journal Star on child murders

Oct. 2-4

First Exam (exam on 4 Oct., review on 2 Oct.).  Text coverage: all of Goody and Chaps 1-4 in PEE

PEE:5-9

Oct. 9-11

Polygyny & Polyandry

PEE:10-11

Oct. 16-18

Sexual Selection and Marriage

PEE: 12-13
Goddess Theory

Oct. 23-25
Student Holiday on 23^rd

Behavioral Ecology

History and Evolutionary Anthropology in Social Structure

AHB  Ch. 1-  Note: no class October 17,  Fall Semester Break

Oct. 30-

Nov. 1

Manipulation & rule breaking 

Exploitation

Buying wives

AHB: Ch. 4-6

Nov. 6-8

Trivers-Willard and preferential
investment

Helpers at the nest

Click here to view an article on The Value of Grandmothers

AHB: Ch. 8-11

Nov. 13-15

The mystery of menopause

AHB Ch. 12

Nov. 20-22

A curious problem: RS, wealth, and & modern society

AHB Ch. 17 &18

Nov. 22
No Class today

Eat more ham!

Thursday: work on your papers and prepare to meet about your papers with the instructor individually next week.

Nov 27-29

Second Exam
November 29 Thursday

Click here for notes on
Lectures
sample questions
& PEE notes

Dec. 4-6

Discuss Term Papers with Instructor: Complete rough drafts may be turned in early on December 7^th for comments & preliminary grade.

Work on your papers and meet with me.

First Exam

Sample Test Questions for First Exam

Notes on Goody and Pasternak and Ember

Power Point Collection for 1st Exam (pdf format)

Cultural Evolution

Goody's General Model

 Dowry

 Family and marriage

Division-labor.pdf

Marriage among foragers

Female Political Participation

Male-female.pdf

Sexual-selection.pdf

Second Exam

Lecture notes for second segment
Sample question for second exam
Pasternak, Ember & Ember

Power Points Converted to PDF

 Electronic HRAF

This site contains complete data on 80 societies from the HRAF.  New societies are added on a quarterly basis.  It is the place to go to retrieve full text information indexed using the OCM or you may do word searches.  For example, you can enter the work "divorce" and then restrict it to "Africa".

Learning About the HRAF
This site provides a helpful tutorial on using the HRAF and contains links to the OCM, a index of more than 700 subject entries that represent a systematic classification of culture.
 

Brain Schwimmer's  Kinship Tutorial  
An excellent site to learn about kinship and especially kinship terminological systems and it can be found here.   
 

© Brian Schwimmer

Annual Review of Anthropology 
This journal is published yearly with 10-15 chapters that are bibliographic overviews of current research in all fields of anthropology.  If you want to explore recent research on a possible term paper topic (e.g., "Social Organization & Technology", "African Kinship Studies"), it is a great place to start.   


 

Kinship Sites:
General kinship (excellent gateway to kinship web sites with pdf's of published works)
Michael Fisher's "Calculating Kinship" Site

Tozzer Library of Harvard University
This site holds the contents of the Tozzer Library's anthropological collection and content listings of 876 anthropological journals!  Unfortunately, you cannot read any of them on-line.  However, it is a great place to do keyword, title, author, or topic searches.