Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

This course is an introduction to some of the central questions, arguments, and concepts of Cultural Anthropology. Broadly defined, “cultural anthropology” is the study of human cultures. Historically, such study has focused on explorations of difference through conducting fieldwork over an extended period of time in a specific community. Understandings of the discipline have changed over time, from definitions of it as an objective social science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when anthropology was dominated by European and U.S. anthropologists conducting fieldwork in places in Africa, Latin America and Asia, to definitions of it as a subjective interpretative social science that has been transformed and critiqued by anthropologists across the globe studying a wide range of human cultures and institutions, including their own societies. In the 1970s and 1980s, anthropologists began to “study up” through focusing on cultures of entities such as the World Bank, corporations, the military, scientists and investment bankers. Today, almost anything can be a focus for anthropological study.

In this class we will address questions and arguments about structure, difference, power, colonialism, politics, representation and responsibility, both in terms of cultural anthropology’s own formation as a colonial discipline, and in terms of the tools for critical thinking that have emerged out of anthropological work. What kinds of social organization and economic systems tie people together? What produces conflict? What is the significance of myths, rituals and symbols? How are social systems reproduced over time? How do they change? What is the significance of relations of identification and interaction between individuals and group categories? What are the political implications of how the human is defined? As we learn about how different thinkers have engaged these questions, we will also critically examine the concepts that inform them, including ideas of agency, responsibility, representation and action. Texts will likely include work by Ruth Benedict, Lee D. Baker, Franz Boas, Jacques Derrida, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Clifford Geertz, Zora Neale Hurston, Alfred Kroeber, Claude Levi-Strauss, Karl Marx, Sidney Mintz, Rosalind Morris, Anand Pandian, Gayle Rubin, Marshall Sahlins, Edward Said, Marilyn Strathern, Deborah Thomas, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Victor Turner, and Eric Wolf. Course work will include engaging with ethnographic writing and ethnographic research methods, as well as with transdisciplinary encounters with anthropology, including work in literature, philosophy, feminist and postcolonial theory.

Students will be evaluated on individual and small group ethnographic research and writing assignments, class participation, and weekly reading responses.

Always visit the Registrar's Office for the official course catalog and schedules.