I. INEQUALITY & DEVELOPMENT
What poverty looks like today. Seeking to help in what we call the "development" of other societies, we often intervene without realizing the depth of our own commitment to our particular vision of a good life. Do we really oppose poverty? Inequality? If we were going to, how would we? Mead, Rebecca
        2003  "Dressing for Lula." The New Yorker (March 17): 82-84, 86-8,  91. [7pp
Silverman, Debora
        1986  Selection from the "Preface"; "Introduction". From her: Selling Culture: Bloomingdale's, Diana Vreeland, and the New Aristocracy of Taste in Reagan's America. Pp. ix-xiii, & 3-5, 8-20. [16
Isbister, John
        1998  Chapter 2: "A World of Poverty." From his: Promises Not Kept: The Betrayal of Social Change in the Third World.(4th edn.)  Pp. 7-31. [25
Robbins, Richard H.
        2001  "Why Don 't Poor Countries Modernize and Develop in the Same Way as Wealthier Countries?" & "The Case of Brazil". From his: Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach. (3rd edn.) Pp. 52-56. [5
Olivera, Marcela & Jorge Viana
        2003  "Winning the Water War." Human Rights Dialogue 2: 9.  (but read it on the web) [2
Background and code for reading Max-Neef
Max-Neef, Manfred
        1982  Chapters 6 & 7: "Peasants Get Together" & "In a World of Our Own." From his: From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation). Pp. 98-112. [15

Carter, Sarah
        1995  "'We Must Farm to Enable Us to Live': The Plains Cree and Agriculture to 1900." From: The Canadian Experience (2nd edn) (R. Bruce Morrison & C. Roderick Wilson, eds.). Pp. 444-70. [27
BRODY, Hugh
        1981  Chapter 15 "A Hearing". From his: Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier. Pp. 256-270. [15
    The setting for this research was preparation of information for the major government study of the human and environmental impact of a potential Alaska Highway gas pipeline. This chapter reports on the public hearing held in one of the communities of Beaver Indians for whom Brody was working. It's a classic description of the failure of cross-cultural communication: not knowing you're not listening.

II.  WHAT IS AN ECONOMY?
    Mode of production. Production & reproduction. Foraging,  horticulture, intensive agriculture,  peasantry,  commercial agriculture. State & civilization. Class. Reciprocity, redistribution, markets. Types of leadership & control structures.

Schultz, Emily & Robt. Lavenda
        2001  Chapter 10 "Making a Living". From their: Cultural Anthropology (5th edn.) Pp. 206-230. [24
Meillassoux on Foraging as a Mode of Production  [2
Two Quotes on Sharing & Reciprocity  [2
Clastres on The Duty to Speak & the Power of not Listening.    [2
Polanyi on Market Economy & Worldview   [2

BRODY, Hugh
        1981  "Introduction 1988", "Preface", and Chapters 1-6, 8-9, 12, 14, 16 (skim the rest). Pp. ix-xxv, 1-102, 115-135, 190-213, 230-255, 271-283. [190+
    Especially for Canadians, this is a very rich book. It's an exemplary discussion of the situation of one First Nation: a thoughtfully put-together account by an outsider. There are different kinds of understanding & different kinds of presentation. How are they related? The nature of a mixed economy based on foraging. Their maps & our maps, their dreams & ours. What is a frontier? Whose is it?
SCHIEFFELIN, Edward L.
        1976  Selection of the "Introduction" to his The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers, pp. 1-5. [5
    A wider sense of reciprocity: reading beyond economy.

III.  MORE SOCIAL FACTS: SOCIAL STRUCTURE, KINSHIP, COMMUNITY
    Classes include: Social relations are always organized, but in accord with different principles in different places: these principles come to be what "makes sense" to the populace, their sense of what's appropriate. Social groups & social categories. Kinship as a key example. Economic, political, and cultural power.
Kinship and Marriage: Concepts and Jargon  [2
Robbins, Richard H.
        2001   Ch. 5: "Patterns of Family Relations." From his: Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach. (3rd edn.) Pp. 138-67. [30
SCHIEFFELIN, E.L.
        1976 Chapters 1, 2, 3 of The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers. [70
    We'll discuss the whole book later. For now, the areas of interest are the nature of communities in Bosavi, relations between them, & the nature & place of clans in social life. Note that Kaluli society is egalitarian (critically: except for gender).

CARLSEN, Robert S.
        1997 The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town.  [180
    Read it all. This book is intended as a study of processes of change & continuity in a town under great stress: what it traditionally was, and how it came under under colonial control and military occupation. See the middle paragraph on p. 23.  The army, businessmen, missionaries, tourists. IV.  WHAT IS A CULTURE & HOW DOES ANTHROPOLOGY STUDY ONE?
        "Culture." Fieldwork. Cultures are composed of symbols: that is, are meaning-lived-through. How symbols, meanings, cultural lives are made: motivating behaviour. Cultures as improvisations. Actor-oriented v.s. Observer-oriented perspectives.

Barrett, Richard A.
        1991  "The Meaning of Culture." From his: Culture and Conduct: An Excursion in Anthropology. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth. Pp. 54-76. [23
    Culture as symbol, code, communication, improvisation, creativity.
Geertz on the Enlightenment Concept of Culture [2
Wagner, Roy
        1975  Chapter 2: "Culture as Creativity." From his The Invention of Culture, pp.17-34  [18
V.  COMMUNICATION & LANGUAGE, SYMBOLS & MEANINGS
        Social life is communication (including language). The nature of language & some special qualities of symboling consciousness.
Bolinger, Dwight
        1975  "Some Traits of Language." As Reprinted in: The Human Way (H.R. Bernard, ed.), pp. 95-101. [7
    Arbitrariness, digital coding, universality. Words mean differently than, for example, tone of voice. What we say vs. how we say it. An old piece, but it says a lot quickly.
Koestler & Burke on Symboling and Consciousness  [1

VI.  INTERLUDE ON RACE
 One of the most important social catagories that operates in North American society is that of race. It can't be ignored. We'll briefly discuss racial & ethnic categorization, and how it's used.
Crapo, Richley H.
        2002  "Race, Racialism and Racism". From his: Cultural Anthropology: Understanding Ourselves and Others. (5th edn.) Pp. 86-98  [13
Friedlander on Being Indian in Central Mexico   [2
  VII. RITUAL LIFE AND CULTURE

Zwieg, Paul
        1974  "The Adventure of Storytelling." From his: The Adventurer: The Fate of Adventure in the Western World. Pp. 81-96. [16
@Black Elk on the Significance of Circles and on Ritual. [2
    Examples of an integrating symbol or image, of shamanism, & of the efficacy of ritual.
SCHIEFFELIN, E.L.
        1976  Chapters 4-11. From his: The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers. Pp. [160
    This excellent example of contemporary ethnography attempts to portray the "sentiments" of a people: to show how events & experiences among a people are "brought into meaning" through the play of symbols in social life. It therefore focuses on the way that peoples' feelings & responses are constructed, motivated, & expressed both in ritual and in everyday life. "Opposition scenario": the place of reciprocity in the creation & maintenance of social ties. Giving vs sharing. Spirit mediums, unseen realities, witches. Several levels of understanding of the Gisaro ritual. When to be is to be related, the absence of society is death.