Spring 2024 | Yale University
This course examines, explores, and analyzes the human propensity to move. Movement of various kinds has great significance for past and present societies and whether you are a pastoralist, a hunter-gatherer, a gypsy, an economic migrant, or a modern day tourist, regimes and technologies of movement have fashioned your life and culture in unexpected ways. Using a variety of case studies, this course examines the impact of mobility and transport technologies on subsistence, trade, ecology, kinship, information transfer, inequality, interaction networks, and international World Systems. The course draws upon examples from both the Old and New Worlds, from archaeology, ethnography, sociology and geography and attempts to trace commonalities between present trends in human mobility and mobility related changes and processes in the past. This course is designed to inspire creative thinking about the relationships between movement, society, culture, and politics. It is also intended to help you gain a better understanding of the kinds of research anthropologists do, the range of questions they ask about societies, and the ways we use different kinds of data to answer those questions. In the process of becoming better informed about the anthropology of movement, you will work on the development and improvement of your academic skills through reading, discussion, presentation, and writing and ideally get some exercise beyond the classroom!
General
Readings
Feb 2: The “Mobilities Turn” – Theory, Conceptions, & Metaphor
[\c] Urry, J. 2007. Mobilities, selected sections.
[\c] Ingold, T. 2000. Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, selected sections.
[\o] Cresswell, T. 2010. Towards a Politics of Mobility, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28: 17–31.
[\c] Leary, J. 2014. Past Mobilities, Chapter 1.
Feb 9: Original Mobility and Being Human – Why Move?
[\o] Potts, R. 2002. Complexity and Adaptability in Human Evolution. In Probing Human Origins, pp. 33–47.
[\o] Bower, B. 2003. The Ultimate Colonists, Science News, pp. 10–12.
[\o] Gamble, C. 1998. Paleolithic Society and the Release from Proximity: A Network Approach to Intimate Relations. World Archaeology 29: 426–449.
[\a] Potts, R., et al. 2018. Environmental dynamics during the onset of the Middle Stone Age in eastern Africa, Science 360: 86–90.
[\o] Fowles, S. 2011. The Chimpanzee's Cringe, Conference presentation text.
[\o] Optional: Interview with Potts — https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/adaptable-human/
Feb 16: Mobility and Race
[\c] Brace, C.L. 2005. “Race” is a Four-letter Word: The Genesis of the Concept, selected sections.
[\o] Cresswell, T. 2016. Black Moves: Moments in the History of African-American Masculine Mobilities. Transfers 6(1): 12–25.
[\a] Tolnay, S. 2003. The African American “Great Migration” and Beyond. Annual Review of Sociology 29: 209–32.
[\a] Jackson, M. 2020. Twelve Minutes and a Life. Runner’s World.
[\o] Michelle Singletary on Racism, Washington Post, 2020.
Feb 23: Pastoral Nomads and the State
[\c] Salzman, P.C. 2004. Pastoralists: Equality, Hierarchy, and the State (selections).
[\o] Fratkin, E. and Mearns, R. 2003. Sustainability and Pastoral Livelihoods: Lessons from East African Maasai and Mongolia. Human Organization 62(2): 112–122.
[\a] Stepanoff, C., et al. 2017. Animal Autonomy and Intermittent Coexistences: North Asian Modes of Herding. Current Anthropology 58: 57–70.
[\a] Honeychurch, W. 2010. Pastoral Nomadic Voices: A Mongolian Archaeology for the Future. World Archaeology 42: 405–417.
Mar 1: Transport, Automobility, and Urban Landscapes
[\o] Urry, J. 2004. The ‘System’ of Automobility. Theory, Culture and Society 21(4–5): 25–39.
[\a] Sheller, M. and J. Urry. 2000. The City and the Car. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24: 737–57.
[\o] Lin, P. 2013. The Ethics of Autonomous Cars. The Atlantic, October 8.
[\c] Muller, P. 1986. Transportation and Urban Form: Stages in the Spatial Evolution of the American Metropolis. In S. Hanson (ed.), The Geography of Urban Transportation. New York: Guilford.
[\a] Rink, B. 2016. Race and the Micropolitics of Mobility: Mobile Autoethnography on a South African Bus Service. Transfers 6(1): 62–79.
Mar 8: Mobility, Economy, and Networks – A New Haven History
[\c] Brown, E. 1976. New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design, selections. Yale University Press.
[\c] New Haven Colony Historical Society. 2002. New Haven: Reshaping the City 1900–1980, selections.
[\c] Dawidoff, N. 2022. The Other Side of Prospect, selections. W.W. Norton.
[\o] Hopkins, J. 2016. Developing Dixwell. https://newhavenurbanism.wordpress.com/developing-dixwell/
Mar 29: Global & Local – Moving Money and Food
[\c] Urry, J. 2014. Offshoring, selections. Cambridge: Polity Press.
[\a] Phillips, L. 2006. Food and Globalization. Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 37–57.
[\a] Hart, K., and Ortiz. 2014. The Anthropology of Money and Finance: Between Ethnography and World History. Annual Review of Anthropology 43: 465–482.
Apr 5: Migrant vs Tourist – Mobilities of Privilege and of Need
[\a] Constable, N. 2009. The Commodification of Intimacy: Marriage, Sex, and Reproductive Labor. Annual Review of Anthropology 38: 49–64.
[\a] Hayes, M. 2014. “We Gained a Lot Over What We Would Have Had”: The Geographic Arbitrage of North American Lifestyle Migrants to Cuenca, Ecuador. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40(12): 1953–1971.
[\a] Shin, H-R. 2011. Spatial Capability for Understanding Gendered Mobility for Korean Christian Immigrant Women in Los Angeles. Urban Studies 48(11): 2355–2373.
[\c] Urry, J. and M. Sheller. 2004. Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play, selections. Routledge, London.
Apr 12: Corporeal Movement versus Stationary Travel – Virtual Space
[\a] Green, N. 2002. On the Move: Technology, Mobility, and the Mediation of Social Time and Space. The Information Society 18(4).
[\a] Urry, J. 2002. Mobility and Proximity. Sociology 36(2): 255–274.
[\c] Messeri, L. 2024. In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles. Duke University Press.
Apr 19: Digital & Spatial Surveillance
Readings:
[\o] Edelman, J. 2016. Is Anything Worth Maximizing?
[\c] Whyte, W. 2001. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, selections. Project for Small Spaces.
[\o] Buckley, C., and Mozur, P. 2019. How China Uses High-Tech Surveillance to Subdue Minorities. New York Times.
[\o] Beauchamps, M. et al. 2017. Security/Mobility: Politics of Movement, selections. Routledge, London.