Ryan Schram's Anthrocyclopaedia

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# What is this seminar about? 

Welcome to *ANTH 6916: Culture and development---Key concepts*, a seminar that explores the many different ways people make society and social conditions thinkable. This class was developed to serve as a required unit on the basic concepts of social sciences for students of development. Over time, it became an all-purpose introduction to social theory. When the development studies degree was brought into the Masters of Social Justice as a concentration, it had to change again, and this version of the class is the first attempt to bring development studies closer to the question of social justice. 

This class is not trying to cover everything. It is instead meant to be a provocation. Social theory ain't what it used to be. We live in an era where previous generations' faith in progress has been ripped to shreds. Social theory, and the social sciences generally, are based on the idea that society is knowable. If we use our rational brains we can achieve better and better knowledge of how societies work. That feels less and less possible in the face of so many crises. This is a good time to ask deeper questions: What is the purpose of studying society and social change? What kind of knowledge do we want to have? 

In that light, we can also ask why we assume that social thought has to be part of social sciences. Many people, in many different intellectual traditions, who were each devoted to different purposes besides scholarship and contemplation have also thought about the nature of society. In many cases it was because they wanted practical knowledge necessary for change. In other cases, it was because they wanted to set fire to the world and challenge the authority of people, groups, and ideas in their own societies. What better time than now to expand the voices to whom we listen to understand the world we live in? (And for this reason the new title of this class will be *The social in justice*.) 

As noted, this class is new and it's like a first draft. One idea I'm playing with is that there are many types of voices in which social thought is spoken, and people speaking in one voice have trouble understanding people who use another voice. Tentatively, there are four distinct types of voices of social thought and I tried to bring them into this class equally. They are the voices of 

1. the expert, or scientist
2. the prophet
3. the practitioner, or the wise, experienced craftsperson
4. the cynic

Each of the people whose work we read combines these different voices. No scholar or thinker is ever speaking in just one voice at the exclusion of the others. As I said, it's a hypothesis I'd like us to play with in this class. 

Like many classes at the postgraduate level, this class is organized as a seminar, and thus centers on an open discussion among students. I provide guidance to the discussion. I will not, however, give any lectures in this class. Each week we will come together to help each other understand a set of readings better. Each week's readings represent the work of one important scholar whose ideas have influenced the way people in many social sciences formulate and seek to answer questions about social life. Our job is to find out all the different ways that these ideas can be interpreted and applied. This means we all have to contribute something to the discussion each week, so that we discover as many different perspectives as possible.

Indeed, in many cases we will be reading the original works of these key thinkers. Each of them speaks in different voices of social thought and some of these can be unfamiliar to us. Part of this class is learning to hear voices that are hard to hear. When these authors were writing, they were arguing for ideas which many people found hard to understand and hard to accept. They were breaking new ground. The authors themselves often had to struggle to figure out what they wanted to get across because it was new. This means that they often present their ideas in dense prose or in evocative but obscure metaphors and poetic language. These works will not be clear on the first reading, or even after several readings, since they are open to interpretation. After decades of debate, the scholarly community has arrived at several possible interpretations, but we can always find others. 

Our job in this class is to enter into this kind of discussion, and thus become part of this scholarly community ourselves. Every week, we will know if we have done a good job if: 

  1. students have done most of the talking, and 
  2. everyone in the class has had a chance to ask questions and contribute their ideas.
      
Your participation in discussion is, in that sense, something you do for your fellow students. By offering your views, especially to people who disagree with you, you help them to reflect critically on their own reasoning. Likewise, when you seek out the perspectives of other people, you are able to become aware of your own thought processes. This is ultimately what you will take away from this class: an understanding of your own perspective, rather than familiarity with the ideas of major theories.