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Course Description

Socio-cultural anthropologists are interested in how people around the world deal with common human problems, like how we communicate with each other, organize ourselves to get things done, make our lives predictable and meaningful, and deal with conflict and change. What makes this such an enriching and engrossing subject is that there is tremendous global diversity in how people solve these problems. A central goal of this course is to help you understand the similarities and variations in how distinct cultures shape human thought, beliefs, and activities. This course also introduces you to the discipline of socio-cultural anthropology, and given the dynamic nature of its subject - after all, cultures are not static - its relevance for understanding contemporary global changes and social problems.

The approach we will take is problem-centered, the course being organized around a selective number of important and interesting questions that anthropologists have been asking and trying to answer for quite some time. The goal of this approach is to: 1) frame learning about culture as an active process of asking questions about real world problems and applying disciplinary and theoretical insights to understand them, and 2) help you develop the ability to pose good anthropological questions, and to begin answering them by introducing you to compelling areas of anthropological knowledge and analysis. This pedagogy emphasizes the importance of active learning, asking relevant questions, critical thinking, familiarity with theoretical concepts, and the impossibility of simple answers.

These problems include: 1) Why should we, and how can we, know our own and other cultures? 2) Why are some societies seemingly "more advanced" than others? 3) How do societies channel individual self-interest to common goals? 4) How do people respond when social order is threatened because of conflict? 5) What does it mean to be in a family? 6) Why do people believe things that others consider wrong? 7) How do people figure out and communicate who and what they are? and 8) What is the future of cultural diversity in a time of intense global interconnections?

In answering these questions, we aim to strike a balance between anthropology's interest in other cultures, our own culture, and what many of us are most worried about in the contemporary world: globalization, environmental degradation, sustainable development, ethnic diversity and conflict, international tensions, terrorism, religious fundamentalisms, and so on.

The following required texts are available for purchase at the University Store:

1. Robbins, R. (2006) Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach, 4th Edition, Thomson.

2. Haviland, W., R. Gordon and L. Vivanco (2006) Talking About People: Readings in Contemporary Cultural Anthropology. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill.

3. Igoe, J. (2004) Conservation and Globalization: A Study of National Parks and Indigenous Communities from East Africa to South Dakota. Thomson Wadsworth.

4. Weiner, Annette (1988) The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. Thomson.