COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN CULTURES & TRANSFORMATION

CUNY – Brooklyn College         Dr. Tom Miller

Anthropology 1105                     Spring 2020

Part One: The Big Picture

WEEK 1. Jan27-Feb2

• Tues 1/28 Introduction to class
• Thurs 1/30 Overview of topics and areas
• Text (password-protected PDF): Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind — Metalogue 1: Why Do Things Get In A Muddle?

WEEK 2. Feb 3-9

• Tuesday
  • Geographies and Ecologies
  • River systems

Part Two: Circumpolar Peoples

 

LINKS

• Arctic Centre: Arctic Indigenous Peoples
• National Museum of Natural History: Arctic Studies Center
• American Museum of Natural History: Jesup North Pacific Expedition
• Online Documentation of Kolyma Yukaghir
• Humanistic Texts: Yukaghir
• Arctic Centre: Definition of indigenous peoples
• Circumpolar peoples study guide (PDF)
• ARMAP- The Arctic Research Mapping Application
• Arctic Administrative areas (image)
• Arctic definition (image)
• Arctic Centre: Arctic Calls
• Circumpolar Languages (image)  

 

• Thursday
  • Quiz #1
  • The Sámi

WEEK 3. Feb 10-16 Northern Peoples

• Tuesday: Sápmi history and land rights issues

 

 

• Text (password-protected PDF): Vars, Susanna Laila. 2019. The Indigenous World 2019: pp. 52-61. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA).

 

• Thursday: The Sakha-Yakut

WEEKS 4-5

JNPE – American Museum of Natural History Library Special Collections

• • The Jesup North Pacific Expedition
    • Introduction to Siberian shamanism

WEEK 6. Mar 2-8 The Yukaghir

• Text (password-protected PDF): Derlicki, Jaroslaw. 2007. Spirits of the Land. Academia – Focus on Ethnology No. 4(16):12-15.

• Text (ProQuest eBook Central PDF): Willerslev, Rane. 2007. Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs. Berkeley: University of California Press.

 

• Recommended reading (supplemental texts, not required):

• Text (password-protected PDF): Miller, Thomas Ross. 2019. Reading the Ethnographic Past in the Present: Waldemar Jochelson and The Yukaghir. In Erich Kasten, ed., Jochelson, Bogoras and Shternberg: A Scientific Exploration of Northeastern Siberia and the Shaping of Soviet Ethnography. Furstenberg/Havel, Germany: Kulturstiftung Sibirien. [Electronic edition for www.siberien-studies.org]

• (Library ProQuest eBook): Landscape & Culture in Northern Eurasia (2011)
  • Chapter 2 – Rane Willerslev, Seeing with Others’ Eyes: Hunting and ‘Idle Talk’ in the Landscape of the Siberian Yukaghir
  • Chapter 6 –  Virginie Vaté, Dwelling in the Landscape Among the Reindeer Herding Chukchis of Chukotka

• 

WEEK 7. Mar 9-15

• Jochelson, The Yukaghir and Yukaghirized Tungus: Nervous Diseases (Vol I, pp. 30-38)
• Text (password-protected PDF): Willerslev, Rane. 2010. “Urbanites without a City: Three Generations of Siberian Yukaghir Women. Acta Borealia, Vol. 27, No. 2:18-207.

Resource:

• Waldemar Jochelson, The Yukaghir and Yukaghirized Tungus. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History

Photo: Bolot Bochkarev 2010

 

WEEK 8. Mar 16-22

• Text (password-protected PDF): Derlicki, Jaroslaw. “I’m the son of the oliero”: Yukaghir identity and land issues. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Scholarship:272-282. Nga Pae o te Maramatanga. University of Auckland.

Part Three: Africa

 

Online Module #1: Introduction to Zambia

• Text (password-protected PDF): Cultures and Customs of Zambia – excerpt

 

The Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River flooded the Tonga people’s territory and

separated them by creating the world’s largest artificial lake, Lake Kariba.

 

• Video (YouTube embed below): Faces of Africa – Nyami Nyami: The River God

 

Birds of the Zambezi River Valley

Field recordings from the Cornell Ornithology Lab MacCaulay Library

Online Module #2: The Tonga

Lwaano Lwanyika: The Tonga Book of the Earth

• Text (password-protected PDF): Lwaano Lwanyika – Tonga Book of the Earth (excerpts)

Online Module #3: Media in Africa

https://www.znbc.co.zm/radio-live-streaming

• Text (password-protected PDF): Personal News and the Price of Public Service

Online Module #4:  Building Radio Bridges

Media: Radio Bridges Across the Zambezi

PLAYLIST

• Total listening time = 1 hour 44 minutes 29 seconds
• Click here to hear “Zubo Women recording Women’s Stories” (by Zubo Trust, Publication date: 2016, Programme length = 24:26)

A RADIO BRIDGE ACROSS THE ZAMBEZI by Radio Continental Drift

• Programme length = 1:19:43
• Click to hear “A Radio Bridge Across the Zambezi – Part 1” (41:28 long)
• Click to hear “A Radio Bridge Across the Zambezi – Part 2” (38:35 long)
• Links: Radio Continental Drift – Zongwe FM

• Final Assignment: Audio letters to Zongwe FM

Click here for Internet Archive page of your Audio Letters to Zambia from NYC: Building Radio Bridges: Link to Audio Letters