Aesthetic Realism and Anthropology

Summer 2006
Arnold Perey

Class is given from 6:00 - 7:30 PM on Alternate Wednesdays

 "The Marriage of Anthropology and Sociology"

In this semester we will be studying Eli Siegel’s early essay “The Scientific Criticism,” a turning point in the history of social science methodology. In it Mr. Siegel sets forth guidelines for a scientific approach to social criticism. This essay, while it accentuates the criticism of art, provides a method for being honest about value in every field. And I can hardly think of anything people need more than to be a scientific critic of a society which has war, poverty, inequality, and is not clear about what it should value.

Anthropology has been called “the sociology of the barefoot people” and sociology, “the anthropology of people who carry library cards.” Their core ideas are the same but the people they study are often different. In this semester we’ll go for a formal merging of the two disparate social sciences by comparing the human self and human collectivities in both tribal and industrial societies. Using “The Scientific Criticism” as our basic reference we’ll study how people have praised and blamed their own societies and themselves--and how wrong and right can be approached objectively.

May 24     Thorstein Veblen, or: Humor about Economic Injustice                                 

June 7     The “Experts” of Our Time &  and Tribal “Witch Doctors”    

June 21    In Tropical Vanuatu & the U.S.A – How Do Men and Women See?                                

July 5       Roy Rappaport, New Guinea Warfare, and “Can’t We Stop This Madness?”  

                 Sources: Pigs for the Ancestors by R. Rappaport  /  Video from West Papua

Saturday   July 22   “Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

                 We meet with The Visual Arts and the Opposites class taught by Marcia Rackow. Time: 11:00 AM.

 August 2   The Islamists, or Wahabis, & Seeing Cause as Deeply as Mind Can               

 August 16.  The Opposites As We Find Them                                              

                  Papers and discussions by students in the Aesthetic Realism
 and Anthropology Class