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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
Joukowsky_Institute@brown.edu
Course Instructor: Rod Campbell Office: Room 102, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, 70 Waterman st. Office Hours: 1-2 PM Tuesday and Thursday Email: Roderick_Campbell@brown.edu
Many ancient societies were characterized by striking practices of social violence ranging from warfare to slavery to human sacrifice. While most normative definitions of civilization are set up in opposition to such practices, our modern world has not escaped from either the routine or cataclysmic violence of the past - as the persistence of prisons, camps and ghettos, world wars, genocides and terrorism continue to demonstrate. This course will be an exploration of social orders through time and their practices and moral economies of permissible and impermissible violence. Different conceptions of violence will be explored such as “symbolic”, “structural”, and “everyday” violence, along with their intersections with the many ambivalent meanings of “civilization”.
While the burgeoning sub-field of the anthropology of violence has focused on the present or recent past, historians and prehistorians have tended to ignore social violence in their models of long-term social and political development. This course will bring work on social violence from across the social sciences and humanities together with theories of history, politics and civilization.
Aims: The chief aim of this course is to foster a sustained and critical reflection on social violence, history and humanity. Through a wide range of reading and response papers, students will acquire the skills to read efficiently and critically. Student will also hone their public-speaking skills through presenting their response papers. With a final research paper, students will have the opportunity to develop some of the course themes on their own. The transdisciplinary and provocative nature of the readings will hopefully encourage students to think across disciplinary boundaries and normative frameworks. Finally, I hope to sow the seeds of a broadened and deepened engagement with some critical issues of human history.
Requirements and grading: This course will be largely discussion-based with short lectures and case study presentations throughout the course. The focus will be on reading through a large quantity of diverse material and critically engaging with it through writing and discussion.
Discussion participation: 30% Response papers: 40% Final Research Paper: 30% (due the Monday after the last day of class)
Response Papers: One response paper based on the readings will be required each week. Students will have the option of which of the three weekly classes they write it for. The response papers are to be between 750 and 1000 words. Concision will be one of the major grading criteria. For most classes 2-3 students will be selected to read their papers to the class to stimulate discussion. Each student must present a response paper at least once during the course.
Final Paper: Students will research and write a final paper between 2500-3000 words (8-10 pages, double spaced) in length for undergraduates; 4000-5000 for graduate students). The topic of the paper must be approved by the instructor and a short written proposal is due on the Monday, March 11th. The deadline for the final paper submissions is Monday May 11th. Late papers will be deducted a letter grade per day.
Required Readings: The following books have been ordered and are available at the bookstore. All except Violence in War and Peace will also be on reserve at the Rock.
Agamben, Giogio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel
Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bauman, Z. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Carrasco, David. 1999. City of Sacrifice: the Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in
Civilization. Boston: Beacon Press.
Elias, Norbert. 1994. The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State
Formation and Civilization. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. New York:
Vintage Books.
Lincoln, Bruce. 2007. Religion, empire, and torture: the case of Achaemenian Persia, with
a postscript on Abu Ghraib. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lorenz, Konrad. 2002. On Aggression. New York: Routledge.
Patterson, Orlando. 1982. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Patterson, T.C. 1997. Inventing Western Civilization. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Bourgois, Phillipe. 2004. Violence in War and Peace: an
Anthology. Malden: Blackwell.
1) Defining Civilization
Wednesday January 21st: Introduction: “Violence and Civilization: Social Violence through Time”
Friday January 23rd: Civilization and its uses in archaeology.
Civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Monday January 26th: Civilization and Civilizing Processes
2) The Ambivalence of Civilization
Wednesday January 28th
Friday January 30th:
Monday February 2nd:
3) Violences
Wednesday February 4th: Symbolic Violence
Friday February 6th: Structural Violence
Monday February 9th: Spaces of Terror, Cultures of Violence
4) The Pre-histories of Violence?
Wednesday February 11th: Pre-civilization, human condition or modern projection?
Friday February 13th: Violence and the Anti-state?
5) Histories of Violence: Sacrifice
Wednesday February 18th:
Friday February 20th: Case Study – Shang Sacrifice (30 minute presentation, followed by discussion)
Monday February 23rd: Sacrifice then and now?
6) Histories of Violence: War
Wednesday Feb 26th: War and History
Friday February 28th: What is War?
Monday March 2nd: War in Ancient China
7) Slavery Wednesday March 4th: Social Death
Friday March 6th: Slaveries
Monday March 9th: Workshop discussion Students attend and report on the Violence and Civilization workshop (March 6-8th). Present short response paper on workshop (be it an individual paper or the workshop as a whole).
8) Violence and Religion
Wednesday March 11th: Religion and History
Friday March 13th: Religion, Power, Identity, Violence
Monday March 16th: Religion, Power, Identity, Violence
9) Violence, Subjectivity and Truth
Wednesday March 18th: Truth and Pain
Friday March 20th:
Monday March 30th: Social discipline through time
10) Violence and Sovereignty
Wednesday April 1st: Homo Sacer
Friday April 3rd: Homo Sacer
Monday April 6th: Politics and Violence
11) Identity, Ethnicity and Violence
Wednesday April 8th: Violent Behavior
Friday April 10th: Identity, ethnicity, community and violence
Monday April 13th: Community and Violence II
12) Genocide
Wednesday April 15th: Modernity and the Holocaust
Friday April 17th: Genocides
Monday April 20th:
Wednesday April 22nd and Friday April 24th no class (I’ll be away at a conference)
Final Paper Due: Monday May 11th. Late papers will be deducted a full grade per day late.
Posted at Jan 26/2009 02:25PM:
Rod:Bookstore apparently doesn't have Patterson yet - I'll post Wednesday's readings before noon Tuesday - sorry for the mix up.