Apes and Anthropologists

Spring 2015 – The New School for Social Research, New York

Course description

Apes and Anthropologists

Since the times when Marshal Sahlins declared that no ape could tell the difference between holy water and distilled water, sociocultural and evolutionary anthropology have parted ways. In recent years, however, ontological critiques of the nature/culture dichotomy and cultural anthropologists’ engagement with science studies and animal studies have paved the way for a renewed engagement with their biologically oriented colleagues. And, of course, evolutionary anthropology isn’t what it used to be in the heyday of sociobiology either. As Japanese primatologists initiated what Frans de Waal has described as a “silent paradigm shift,” primatology has developed its own forms of ethnography to study the cultures of chimpanzees. By examining this field of research in an ethnographic spirit this course will introduce students to science studies. Considering that culture and human nature used to be “the” epistemic objects of anthropology tout court, we will also use this opportunity to think about ways of recolonizing the discipline’s abandoned center.