Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Anthropology 23
Spring 2000

Meeting time and place
Hopkins B4, 9:00-9:50 MWF

My office: 307 Hopkins Center
Office hours for Fall semester:
Monday and Wednesday 1:00-3:00, Tuesday and Thursday 9:00-11:00
How to get ahold of me:

                      By phone:  #2219

                                          By e-mail:  thoops@austincollege.edu
 
  Class Pictures

 
 

What this course is about: enlarge

    Anthropology is unique among the social sciences in that it studies the human experience from a comparative perspective.  What this means is that it asks:  why do other people (whoever they may be) do things differently from the way we do them?  Does this mean that the way we do things, live in society, believe, may not be the only way; what does this tell us about ourselves?  Where did we gain the conviction that our way of doing things is the only and correct way?  Why is it that human have the ability to create for themselves very different kinds of life in groups and very different ways of perceiving the world?  As a discipline, anthropology believes that asking these questions about human society can lead to insights into who we are as humans, and how society works.

    I have five main objectives in this course.  My first aim is to provide you with an overview of the discipline of cultural anthropology.  We will explore the breadth of the discipline, some of the major areas of work of different sub-disciplines of anthropology, and how anthropology relates to the other social sciences.  We will examine some of the fundamental concepts, such as culture and society, which form the pillars of the discipline.  We will also examine briefly some of  the theoretical approaches that anthropologists take and have taken in studying culture, the methods they use to gather their data and to make sense of what they have observed and recorded, and the range of subjects which most anthropologists deal with in the course of their studies.

    My second aim of the course is to explore the diversity of human cultures on the planet.  How truly different are human cultures?  Where did this diversity come from?  In what ways are people from different cultures similar to each other?  While exploring cultural diversity we will also take an intimate look into a varied number of human communities in order to understand how they work, how they are different from us, the forces that shape their view of themselves.  We will do this by reading a number of ethnographies, which anthropologists define as intimate and comprehensive depictions of the ways of life and thinking of a community and its members.  Anthropologists base their ethnographies on the extended period of time they live in a community.  I will also be asking you to explore other human groups in class projects and discussions.

    Third, I want you to gain an appreciation of the anthropological perspective, a perspective that is arrived at through the comparison of different cultures, what is known in anthropology as ethnology.  Anthropologists claim that anthropology is a way of both understanding others around the world who live within the contexts of their different cultures, and a particular way to understanding ourselves and our own society.  Paul Rabinow, author of Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, says anthropology’s fundamental task is “...the comprehension of the self by the detour of the comprehension of the other.”  Can we understand ourselves better by attempting to understand others who are very different from ourselves?  We want to explore this question, and ask what exactly it is we learn about ourselves when we realize that our way of life and our perspective on the world is only one among many, who, by the way, think about themselves as we do.

    Fourth, we want to explore what anthropologists do, how anthropology is practiced.  The question anthropologists ask is how one might understand the world from the perspective of someone who is from another culture.  We will examine the ethnographic methods that anthropologists use to gain this perspective, and attempt to evaluate the success of these methods.  We will also do some anthropological research ourselves.

    Finally, I want to give you some tools to apply an anthropological perspective and ethnographic methods to study contemporary problems and issues not only among indigenous peoples and people in underdeveloped countries, but our own society as well.  It is my belief that anthropology has value not only for understanding societies radically different from our own, but offers a perspective that is valuable for understanding issues that confront us in our own social context.  We will explore the experience and causes of hunger, violence and powerlessness, the human causes of environmental crises, the response of people who are caught in the clutches of intimate webs of power over their lives.

    These five aims will be interwoven throughout the course of the semester.

Required Readings
Course requirements
Students will be evaluated on the basis of five criteria:  two tests, a quiz, a research paper, organized forms of class participation, and a small participant observation project.
 A      93-100 
 A-     90-92 
 B+    87-89 
 B      83-86 
 B-    80-82 
 C+   77-79 
 
 C     73-76 
 C-    70-72 
 D+   67-69 
 D     63-66 
 D-   60-62 
 F     below 60 

Extra Credit

There two ways of getting extra credit:
Attendance
Perfect attendance during the semester is often not possible, and in certain circumstances (attending a conference, a job/medical school interview, etc.) you may need to be absent.  Nevertheless, absences have detrimental effects on classroom discussions and interaction.  My attendance policy attempts to strike a balance, encouraging you to attend regularly, but not punishing you if you must be absent a few times during of the semester.  Accordingly, you may be absent from the course fives times during the semester without penalty.  More than five absences will bring your course grade down ½  a grade point, and each three absences following this will bring your grade down another ½  grade.  To encourage your faithful attendance, I will reward those who are absent three or fewer times by raising their average by ½ grade.  I should note that there is a hidden double penalty in too many absences… they also bring down your participation grade.
Academic integrity
Academic integrity:  it is important to remember that the effort you put into this class should be fully yours; you should take full credit, and be given full credit, for the products of your own efforts and insights in this class.  You want to remember as well that the work of others that you use in formulating your own ideas and writing should be attributed to them.  The notion of integrity underlies the scholarly enterprise, which really is simply an interchange or conversation among scholars examining topics of common interest.  We are all privileged to be taking part in this conversation.
Class schedule
It is important to recognize that while a syllabus is a guide which allows all of us in the class to be on the same track, it is not written in stone.  There may be times when we need to spend more (or less) time on a subject or issue than is called for, and we may need alter our schedule for other reasons as well.  When this happens I will be sure to let you know where we are on the syllabus.  However, the reading schedule will probably be followed pretty tightly, so you want to pay attention to that.