Social and Cultural Anthropology MA and PhD Programs

MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation with an Emphasis in Activism and Social Justice
PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Department Chair
Andrej Grubacic

Core Faculty
Motumbo Mpanya
Hodari Toure
Fouzieyha Towghi

Adjunct Faculty
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Manolo Calahan
Chris Carlsson
Sasha Lilley
Boots Riley
Tamara Spira
Targol Mesbah

About the Program

Founded in 1981, the Anthropology program offers a critical, advocacy approach to education. In 1997, the program expanded to include a doctoral track. In 1999, the program was re-envisioned to prioritize issues of social and ecological justice in the context of a multicultural, postcolonial world. In 2012, the program was re-envisioned to support and develop the knowledge generated by contemporary social movements, with a particular emphasis on struggles that engage critically with capitalist globalization and the neoliberal development project, and that prefigure alternative practices.

Our understanding of the integral mission of the Institute is distinctive in several key aspects. First, we attempt to integrate worlds of academic and grassroots knowledge. We believe that universities and social sciences are, for the most part, isolated from new practices and new movements, as they keep insisting on concepts and theories that are not adequate to new realities of creation and resistance. On the other side of this gap, activists are in serious need of new theories: theoretical knowledge (s) that can assist them in reflecting analytically on their practices, methods, and strategies for social change. At a moment when education is more then ever in danger of becoming enclosed and commodified, we have an urgent responsibility to defend universities as autonomous and critical places of knowledge production. The most important part of this process, we believe, is a construction of situations and contexts of translation and creative dialogue between academic knowledge and the knowledge held outside of higher education. It is only through the process of mutual learning and reciprocal exchange that we can hope to approximate another possible knowledge: one that is integral, relevant, and useful.

Second, our program reflects integration of social, political, economic, and environmental themes and issues. Instead of analyzing them separately, we treat these themes as interconnected.

Third, our understanding of integral relates to a specific research methodology, an activist ethnography that rests on the notion of integral activist research, or co-research, that integrates the community at every step of the research process. Integral research is a practice of intellectual production that does not accept a distinction between "active" researcher and "passive" research subjects. Rather, the aim of co-research is an integral relationship that transforms both the researcher and the community into active participants in producing knowledge and in transforming themselves. It is an uncertain process wherein the researcher knows "how to start but not how to end," an open process that discovers new possibilities within the present, a collective wondering and wandering that is always difficult and never resolved in easy answers.

Finally, our vision of the social sciences is not simply interdisciplinary: instead of antagonistic epistemologies and disconnected disciplines, predicated on a split between "two cultures" (separation of science and philosophy/humanities), and the division of singular human experience into artificial spheres of state, market, and society, we support a project of an integral epistemology and integrated social science.

Innovative approach to theory

In our theoretical courses we focus on movement relevant knowledge with a view to changing the world. The basis for our effort to think collectively is an ideal of a prefigurative social theory: the theory that embodies, in its own organization, an articulation of extremely diverse philosophies, a vision of what a more reasonable political order might look like. Students are expected to obtain extensive knowledge of radical theories, global resistance struggles and strategies for social justice. We engage many different theoretical traditions, including, among others, Marxism, anarchism, feminism, post/decolonial, gender, queer, and critical race theory. Our theory courses are organized around key concepts and key thinkers emerging from all of the traditions mentioned above. For instance, Marxism is not being taught as a separate theory course, but key ideas emerging from Marxist (or feminist, anarchist, or postcolonial) tradition are studied in our theoretical sequence. Our electives are carefully crafted to respond to urgent issues like environmental racism (in, for instance, Hunters Point), migrant labor (in Central California), prison activism (in Chowchilla) and political ecology (as a problem that transcends the local). In our department one will find distinguished scholars, artists, and activists teaching elective courses in political ecology, political science fiction, anarchist anthropology, temporary autonomous zones, hactivism, occupy wall street movement, feminist geography, CyberMarx, environmental racism, direct action, autonomy of migration, radical history of the Bay Area, cultural production, and food sovereignty.

Distinctive approach to methodology

In our graduate program we give special attention to research and to what we call activist ethnography. Our approach to methodology rests on interrogating traditional research approaches as well as presenting alternative research tools, techniques, and strategies associated with militant and convivial community-based research approaches. By emphasizing direct action and co-research, we prioritize reflexive, interactive, and horizontal practices of knowledge production. Unlike other efforts at community research that often objectify "the community," we attempt to combine recent innovations in cultural cartography, militant and convivial research, insurgent investigation, guerrilla history, oral history, social genealogies, critical ethnography, life histories, and prose of counter insurgency, as part of an integrated strategy that includes the local community in every stage of the research process. Our goal is to facilitate emergent knowledge communities, a convivial collective composed of a diverse representation from the university and community.

The research process explores various approaches to activist ethnography and the complications presented by observant participation. The goal is to interrogate the tension between quantitative and qualitative methodologies by taking advantage of subaltern strategies of knowledge production. Students will interrogate activist ethnography by examining more traditional approaches to participant observation and constructing field notes against alternative, collective approaches to engaged knowledge production. Through critical review of selected secondary literature on ethnography and locally grounded fieldwork, students will examine critical ethnography, autoethnography, testimonies, and drifts, just to name a few, paying close attention to dilemmas in the field, the complications around representation, and more recent innovations in collective strategies of knowledge production.

Participatory approach to learning

The graduate program in Social and Cultural Anthropology brings together scholars and activists engaged not in teaching but in co-learning. Our approach to co-learning is inspired by a long and beautiful history of education developed in popular universities, modern schools, universities of earth and without walls, and free schools. We find ourselves in the tradition and legacy of educators such as Leon Tolstoy, Paul Robin, Francisco Ferrer, Emma Goldman, Alexander Niell, Ivan Ilich, Paul Goodman, Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Paulo Freire. We are excited to learn from past educational experiences in the Bay Area: Black Panther community schools, San Francisco Liberation School, New College of California, and Berkeley Free School are only some of the exciting traditions that inspire our educational vision. We conceive the classroom as a convivial space of facilitation and consultation, of interactive and horizontal processes of knowledge exchange and production.

Convivial Approach to Communication of Knowledge

We offer several forms of convivia, or convivial spaces of knowledge communication:

Emergency Library is a space that affirms the original meaning of the library as a communal institution: it is a convivial space of exchange of books, poetry, and ideas. In this convivia, we exchange ideas, skills, and organizing knowledge with the communities outside the Institute. We are scholars on call, responding to the emergent needs of the communities in struggle, who might be in need of legal advice, activist companionship, scholarly input, or a media suggestion. We bring this information not as impositions but as gifts, in the spirit of exchange and mutual aid, learning from the communities in the process.

Political Laboratory is held once each semester as a weekend-long convivial encounter of local or international scholars working on a particular project, students, and selected participants from the local community. Together they think collectively about a particular idea, book, concept, or project.

Atelier of Insurrectionary Imagination is a space of occasional magic, where artistic production is combined with political imagination, and subversive creativity. Here, artists inspire students and members of the community to dream collectively and explore the unsettling alchemy of art and social justice.

Autonomous Classroom is an experimental class created convivially by MA and PhD students, a class where the world is turned upside down, students become teachers, teachers become students, and all graduate students autonomously design a class that they teach and self-manage over the course of one semester.

Guerrilla Workshop is an improvised event-space where students, faculty, or students and faculty, present on their current work. This includes papers to be presented at various conferences, report backs from academic or activist events, and dialogues relevant to anthropology, social justice, and critical theory.

Dialogues and Interrogations. Instead of interrogating people, in this public convivia we interrogate ideas. This takes form of a bi-monthly conversation between activist journalists and prominent organizers and activist intellectuals.

Events, Workshops, Research Working Groups, and Visiting Scholars

The program regularly hosts lectures, conferences, and workshops on variety of social justice issues that bring together scholars, activists and artists, both local and international. A one-day political laboratory on Radical Pasts, Radical Futures combined the intellectual and political experience of social movement theorists and activists Selma James, Peter Linenbaugh, Andayie, Gustavo Esteva, George Katziaficas, Ruth Reitan, and scott crow. Aymara feminist from Bolivia, Julieta Paredes, gave a workshop presentation of "feminismo communitario." Against the Grain producer Sasha Lilley interviewed Lain Boal on his book on communes in Northern California. Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber gave a key-note lecture on the first 5000 years of debt. Our first research working group is "Black Research Working Group." We are in the process of instituting a role of visiting activist scholar.

About the MA Program in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation

The master of arts program in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation is unique among graduate programs in the United States due to the its focus on activism and social justice. We recognize social movements as a key location of knowledge production alongside that of the university. The mission of the MA program is to generate a dialogue among agents active in these two locations of knowledge production. Our intention is to establish a particular kind of institutional space where social movement activists immersed in organizing would meet scholars primarily engaged in theoretical work. The program is envisioned as a space of translation of academic and grassroots knowledge and experiences, produced in the encounter among social scientists, artists, and activists from the Bay Area. Students will work with some of the most prominent activists in San Francisco Bay Area, as well as with core faculty from the department and the Institute. In this process of encounter and co-learning, students and faculty are expected to share ideas, debates, and practices of radical politics and social movements, as well as practical skills in research, organizing, campaigning, policy analysis, legal and environmental work, and activist media.

The MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation provides students with an opportunity to simultaneously engage with the world of social movements and with the world of social science and radical theory. As our program is located in an area that is unique in terms of diversity and richness of social struggles, we encourage students to establish a relationship with local social justice groups, organizations, movements, and campaigns. Activist ethnography with a focus on integral research makes this graduate experience rewarding both for students and for the local community.

Emphasis In Activism and Social Justice

The Activism and Social Justice Emphasis focuses on creating contexts and spaces of encounter among social scientists, theorists, artists, and activists. We welcome students interested in becoming activists and scholars. The program offers three interrelated sets of courses. Required theoretical courses include ideas for action, global social movements, radical political economy, radical theory, and unthinking social science. Research courses include activist ethnography and activist research. Activist skills include media skills (strategic filmmaking, writing and publishing, Internet skills, radical radio), legal skills, policy analysis, environmental skills, and campaigning and organizing skills. Students are expected to choose three out of the five activist organizing skills courses (organizing, analysis, campaigning, environmental, or legal) and three out of four activist media skills courses (radical radio, filmmaking, web, or activist writing).

A key aspect of the MA program is a research-based portfolio. In the first year of the program students are expected to begin to make contacts or seek out appropriate material for the completion of a research portfolio. Students are encouraged to do an activist research practicum with a community group or organization in order to undertake original research. This work culminates in an integrative seminar that students are expected to take in the last semester of their graduate study. The portfolio is comprised of a project based on activist research (this could be a campaign report, research report, website, video, or radio document), a collection of essays from core courses in the program, and one shorter integrative essay. These three pieces of work are linked and reflect the interaction between theory and practice.

Career Outcomes

The MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation offers an opportunity to develop knowledge and skills at the interface of university education and political activism that are relevant to careers in education and social justice work. The program has been structured to respond to two related aims: the first is to provide a particular experience in training for research in university and higher education; and the second is to provide relevant knowledge and skills required by social movements, nonprofit and non-governmental organizations, environmental and political campaigns, and trade unions.

The program will offer students extensive knowledge of critical theory and history; academic skills needed for continuation of their graduate studies; in-depth understanding of the conceptual foundations of key debates in theory and social science; knowledge of social movement history; experience in working with social movements; competence in cutting edge activist research techniques; an understanding of the range of methodologies that social scientists use in their research; organizing, campaigning, legal, and media skills appropriate for employment in a range of settings such as community groups, non-governmental organizations, and progressive media; and an opportunity to be part of an intellectually inspiring and innovative learning and research environment.

We encourage students to consider PhD study in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Many of the themes in the MA program can be followed up at the PhD level with our core faculty.

MA Program Admission Requirements

Applicants must meet the general admissions requirements of the Institute. In addition, we require two letters of recommendation, one from an academic advisor or someone familiar with the applicant's ability to do academic work, and one from a supervisor in a recent professional or volunteer setting.

Applicants are also asked to include a recent sample of scholarly writing. The required autobiographical statement should describe significant events in the applicant's life that have led to the decision to pursue admission to this department.

A goal statement reflecting areas of academic interest should be included. Applicants to the Activism and Social Justice Emphasis need not have an undergraduate major in anthropology; however, it is necessary to have had at least three upper-division-level social science courses. If lacking, these courses can usually be taken concurrently with graduate courses, although they will not be counted toward required degree units. The Activism and Social Justice MA is a residential program.

Part-Time Curriculum

Students may pursue a part-time course of study in consultation with their academic advisor.

Taking Courses in a Particular Sequence

The graduate curriculum is designed in a particular sequence to help further student development. Students are expected to follow the MA Semester Curriculum in the order that it is structured, unless advised otherwise by their academic advisor.

Curriculum

MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation with an Emphasis in Activism and Social Justice-36 units
I. Required Courses-26 units
ANTH 0000 Ideas for Action: Social Theory for Radical Change (3 units)
ANTH 0000 Unthinking Social Science (2 units)
ANTH 0000 Global Social Movements (2 units)
ANTH 0000 Radical Theory (3 units)
ANTH 0000 Activist Ethnography 1 (3 units)
ANTH 0000 Activist Ethnography 2 with practicum (3 units)
ANTH 0000 Radical Political Economy (3 units)
ANTH 0000 Organizing for Social Justice (1 unit)
ANTH 0000 Campaigning for Social Justice (1 unit)
ANTH 0000 Activist Legal Skills (1 unit)
ANTH 0000 Activist Policy Analysis (1 unit)
ANTH 0000 Activist Environmental Skills (1 unit)
ANTH 0000 Activist Writing Skills: Writing, Editing, and Getting Published (1 unit)
ANTH 0000 Activist Media Skills: Producing Radical Radio (1 unit)
ANTH 0000 Activist Media Skills: Introduction to Documentary Videography and strategic film-making (1 unit)
ANTH 0000 Activist Media Skills: Web Publishing and Digital Media (1 unit)
ANTH 0000 Integrative Seminar (1 unit)
III. General Electives-10 units

About the PhD Program

The Social and Cultural Anthropology PhD is unique among graduate programs in the United States due to its focus on exploring counter-hegemonic alternatives, postcapitalist cultures, and prefigurative practices. In a certain sense, we are a department of postcapitalist studies. However, by this complicated word, postcapitalism, we do not wish to refer to some dreamed-up utopia, nor to a speculative exploration of futuristic scenarios. While we agree with Lewis Mumford on the "importance of building castles in the sky," we see as an even more urgent necessity to study politics of alternatives in the here and now: the need to engage with postcapitalist cultures that are already being built, and to understand other worlds that are already possible.

Together with the activists of the World Social Forum, we believe that "another world is possible." The role of the new social movements, we are reminded, is not to conquer the world, but to make it anew. What, then, is the role and responsibility of anthropology and other social sciences? In a world riddled with so many crises, few things appear to be more relevant than systematic research of counter-hegemonic knowledge and practices. Social scientists should leave pessimism for better times. Anthropology, in particular, is well equipped to participate in the "nowtopian" task of constructing social scientific knowledge that looks beyond capitalism, hierarchy, and ecological disaster.

The practice and technique of ethnography provides an important model of a possible "postcapitalist" social science. As one contemporary anthropologist, a friend of our program, recently noted, when one "carries out an ethnography, one observes what people do, and then tries to tease out the hidden symbolic, moral, or pragmatic logics that underlie their actions; one tries to get at the way people's habits and actions make sense in ways that they are not themselves completely aware of."

We ask our students to do precisely this: to look at those who are creating viable alternatives, to try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are already doing, and then to offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions, but as contributions, possibilities-as gifts.

This program offers the space and the possibility to engage with many traditions of radical scholarship and emancipatory social science. We believe that social sciences should analyze, discuss, and explore the possible; that we should describe and imagine alternative institutional structures; that we need to collectively reflect and debate the dilemmas of the democratic and egalitarian world we wish to build. The collective effort of understanding alternative visions of possible futures takes the form of analytic and ethnographic study of real historical alternatives in the present. This, in turn, requires a serious engagement with social movements involved in the production of alternatives. Students are expected to have an excellent command of history, debates, and perspectives of contemporary social movements. These movements exist in the historical, social, and epistemological context of colonization, development, and globalization. More then one in six humans now live in slums, over one billion in a world of jobless growth, or no growth, which is a modern problem for which there is no modern solution. Indeed, modern solutions are often the source of the problem, and our students are expected to have a good understanding of intertwined historical processes of colonization, development, and liberal modernity.

The SCA doctoral program is distinctive for its focus on alternatives. What are some of them? Worker cooperatives in Oakland, social centers in Italy, autonomous systems of justice in Guerrero, community gardens in Detroit, occupied self-managed factories in Argentina, "good government" of the Zapatistas, buen vivir (good life) and plurinationalism in Bolivia, participatory democracy in Kerala, solidarity economics of Mondragon, participatory economics in Winnipeg, pedagogy of the block in African-American communities, alternative environmentalism in Afro-Colombian river regions, legal pluralism, autonomy of migration, marginalized medical practices in South Asia, solidarity unionism in New York City, communal agriculture in Malawi, shack dweller democracy in South Africa, Copwatch in Berkeley, the U'wa battle against oil companies, biodiversity in Brazil, restorative justice in Ohio, knowledge commons and globalization, independent media, and autonomous food systems in Japan, are only some of the examples of postcapitalist possibilities. There are so many more, and one of the responsibilities of our students is to discover them.

The program is distinctive in its emphasis on:

• Postcapitalist analysis of historical alternatives in the present
• Global social movements and lost revolutionary treasures
• Issues of colonialism, globalization, development
• Anarchist, Marxist, feminist, subaltern and post/decolonial theoretical perspectives
• Political ecology
• Integration of activism and scholarship: developing research skills in activist ethnography, intercultural translation, and emancipatory research

 

Many classes include a research component, and the doctoral dissertation is based on activist ethnographic research.

Activist ethnographic frameworks include traditional research approaches as well as research tools, techniques, and strategies associated with militant and convivial community-based research approaches (see methodology section of the introduction).

Part-Time Curriculum

Students may pursue a part-time course of study in consultation with their academic advisor.

Required Coursework

The PhD requires 36 units of coursework divided between required units and electives. Student should consult with their academic advisor when selecting their directed electives. The electives may be taken from outside the Anthropology program.

Comprehensive Examinations

After completing the Comprehensive Exams students are required to take Specialization Seminar/Dissertation Proposal Writing before advancing to candidacy. Exams are designed to demonstrate the student's knowledge in the program area. Both comprehensives are individualized, are taken at the end of the student's coursework and are in the form of written papers.

Language Examination

If students are conducting research in a country or in a culture with a language other then their own, they need to pass a written language examination to demonstrate competency in a second language before advancing to candidacy. The three-hour examination consists of translating scholarly work in the second language into English.

Dissertation Proposal Writing

Students are required to write a 30-35 page long dissertation proposal (in the course titled ANTH 9000: PhD Specialization Seminar/Dissertation Proposal Writing). This course is taken on a flat-fee basis. After the student receives a pass in this course, the dissertation committee, including an external reviewer, reviews the proposal and may require further revisions. All proposals must meet the standards of the Human Research Review Committee.

Dissertation Research, Writing, and Defense

The PhD dissertation is based on relevant and applied research conducive to scholarship with an emancipatory interest. After advancing to candidacy, students are required to undertake applied research, followed by dissertation writing. The dissertation committee includes an external member. During the applied research and dissertation-writing phase, students are not expected to register for units but pay a flat fee toward maintenance of status. After the committee has approved the dissertation, students are expected to conduct and pass a public defense.

PhD Admissions Requirements

Entry into the PhD program in Social and Cultural Anthropology requires a master's degree. Students with an MA from another school or from another department at CIIS may require up to one additional year of coursework as part of their PhD program.

Students with an MA in the Activism and Social Justice emphasis in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from CIIS do not require additional coursework.

The Social and Cultural Anthropology PhD concentration is a residential program. We are interested in creating a convivial community of scholars, not competitive academics; we believe in educating intellectuals and not professionals. We believe that professors and students are co-learners, and that learning, and knowledge production, is a participatory, inclusive, and horizontal process. Our program is probably not the best fit for those who want to be taught in the vertical space of a traditional classroom. Rather, this is a unique and inspiring place for activist scholars who are passionate about co-creating knowledge that is useful, relevant, and integral.

Applicants must meet the general admissions requirements of the Institute. In addition, two letters of recommendation, one from an academic advisor or someone familiar with the applicant's ability to do academic work, and one from a supervisor in a recent professional or volunteer setting, are required. Applicants are also asked to include a recent sample of scholarly writing. The required autobiographical statement should describe significant events in the applicant's life that have led to the decision to pursue admission to this department. A goal statement that includes areas of academic interest should be included.

Admission to the PhD Program Without an MA in Anthropology from CIIS

Students entering the PhD without an MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from CIIS are required to take an additional 12 to 15 units of MA-level coursework within the Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation Program.

Students may require an additional year in which to complete these courses.

Once students are admitted, advisors will facilitate the drafting of a tailored curriculum contract that incorporates these additional courses and suggests a timeline. These additional courses include three of the five courses:

• Ideas for Action: Social Theory for Radical Change
• Global Social Movements
• Unthinking Social Science
• Radical Theory
• Radical Political Economy

Curriculum

PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology-36 units

I. Required Courses-21 units

ANTH 0000 Introduction to Postcapitalist Politics: Beyond Liberal Democracy
ANTH 0000 Activist Ethnography
ANTH 0000 Politics of Economic Possibility: Solidarity Economy and Alternative Production Systems
ANTH 0000 Other Ways of Being Human: Alternative Sexualities, Family, and Kinship Systems
ANTH 0000 Other Ways of Knowing: Alternative Epistemologies, Rival Knowledges, and Justice Systems
ANTH 0000 Integral Research
ANTH 0000 Directed Seminar in Research
ANTH 9600 Comprehensive Examinations
ANTH 0000 PhD Specialization Seminar/Dissertation Proposal Writing
ANTH 0000 Thesis/Dissertation Proposal Completion (maximum of three times)
ANTH 0000 Thesis/Dissertation Seminar
II. Electives-15 units