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Anth 200(4)

Cultural Anthropology

Spring, 2001
J. Bilmes

Cultural anthropology deals with the nature of human life in the social and material world. It examines the great variety of ways in which human groups have come to terms with, modified, and even created their physical and social, natural and supernatural environments, and the ways in which people endow their lives and their world with meaning and order.

If the object of a liberal arts education is to open the mind to new ways of seeing and thinking, there is no more central course in the liberal arts curriculum than cultural anthropology. On every subject and issue, it enables one to consider the possibility of other perspectives and frees one from cultural constraints on thought and valuation. The basic objectives of the introductory course are:

1. Convey the major interests, issues, methods, theories, and findings of the field of cultural anthropology, i.e., introduce students to the discipline.

2. Develop the student's capacity to understand and appreciate other ways of living and thinking. In this, cultural anthropology is analogous to music or art appreciation. It teaches appreciation for the aesthetic qualities of human cultures, for their complexity, capacity to generate meaning for members, and ability to organize human life in specific environments.

3. Demonstrate how to use anthropology to think about topics and issues. This is arguably the most important function of the course.

4. Convey something of the anthropological experience. At the core of professional anthropological training is the transforming experience of fieldwork in another culture. Anthropology is a lived discipline, and in conveying a sense of the experience of fieldwork a unique dimension of meaning is added to the intellectual endeavor.

The course will be based largely on a series of "modules." A module is an integrated set of discussion exercises, films, lectures, and written assignments on a topic, such as marriage; food,body, and self; or belif systems. Texts for the course will consist of two general ethnographies (an ethnography is a description of a culture)--Yanomamo by N. Chagnon, and The Balinese by S. Lansing--one "specialized" ethnography--Body, Self, and Society: The View from Fiji by A. E. Becker--and a collection of anthropologist-in-the-field stories--The Naked Anthropologist edited by P. DeVita.

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