CULTURES IN A GLOBAL SOCIETY
Anthropology 101
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:35 - 1:50 p.m.
Fall 2009 / Hannan 108
Office Hours: Thursdays 10:00-12:30 p.m. or by appointment, Marist Hall 3
Teaching Assistant: Katherine Hoppe, e-mail: 23HOPPE@cua.edu
Course Description
The course is an introduction to the rich field of cultural anthropology. Our lives are influenced by media images and information, consumer desires, international markets, global ecology, diverse and conflicting political aspirations, religious revivals and rewritten histories of the world's peoples. Anthropologists pose questions about unexpected links among such phenomena.
In this course we will examine the tools, theories and techniques that anthropologists use to understand complex cultural dynamics. In order to do this we need to consider the following: Cultural Anthropology uses the study of different cultures to gain perspective on how reality, practices and beliefs are constructed and produced. This analysis is conducted within the understanding that cultures are not linear but constantly subject to change. Cultural Anthropology critically analyzes and illustrates the connections between practices and beliefs within cultures challenging normative world-views.
Cultural anthropologists seek to understand how global interconnections influence cultural practices and understandings. Some of the interconnections we will explore in this course are those between Guatemalan weavers and tourist markets, urban development and racism, international migrants and middle-class U.S. Americans. We will also examine instances of ethnic violence and the challenges that globalization poses to social organization. Moreover, we will explore social differences and the ways in which they become social inequalities within the United States. In posing and answering questions about cultures, we will use some of the concepts and methods of anthropological inquiry. Be prepared to engage in fruitful discussions.
The class will focus on:
- the diverse goals that people in families and communities have, and the ways that people use to reach their goals
- the symbolic resources through which people create meaningful lives
- the ways in which people construct identities, families and communities
- the political and economic processes that shape social organization
- the negotiations, contests and conflicts in which people participate to accomplish their goals.
Goals
The course seeks to provide students with specific analytical tools used for Anthropological inquiry that are essential to illustrate and understand the social construction of what is understood and interpreted as reality. The study of Cultural Anthropology will enable students to make further connections within and between cultures, communities, processes and the political economy of societies across the world. These connections and the spaces they open become vital forms for social inquiry and further research in the Social Sciences.
Course Texts Required for Everyone Enrolled in the Course
Barnes, Virginia Lee and Janice Boddy. 1994. Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl. Vintage Press.
Fadiman, Anne. 1997. The Spirit Catches and You Fall Down. Noonday Press.
Dávila, Arlene, Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People. Berkeley: University of California Press
Schultz, Emily and Robert Lavenda. 2001. Cultural Anthropology, 6th edition. Mayfield Press.
Kawagley, A. Oscar. 1995. A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit. Waveland Press.
Recommended texts:
Emerson, Robert M.; Fretz, Rachel I.; Shaw, Linda L. 1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Grades
Mid-term Exam #1 25%
Mid-term Exam #2 25%
Final Exam 25%
Written assignment (Outline is also graded) 25%
Class participation is considered when tallying final grades.
Course Requirements
The reading assignments in the Schultz and Lavenda, Dávila, Barnes and Boddy books, Fadiman and Kawagley are required reading for satisfactory work in the course. As a student and class participant you are expected to have prepared reading assignments for each class. Class attendance and participation becomes then essential for a successful and rewarding experience in this class. As a student you are responsible for reading all the material provided in the syllabus whether or not it has been covered in lectures. As a student, you are also responsible for all material covered in class lectures, maps, films and videos.
Exams
Two midterm exams will be given during the semester, one before the middle of the semester and one shortly after. Also, a two-hour final exam will be given at the end of the semester. All exams include multiple choice, short answers and essay questions. Essays must be well written and show mastery of concepts learned in the course; essays will ask that you use such concepts to think and reflect on your own experience. Concrete examples from class material that illustrate your understanding of such concepts become a must.
Written Assignments
A short written assignment of 5 double-spaced pages is due at the last class meeting on Thursday, December 10. An outline is due on Tuesday, October 27. Please see me before this date in order to discuss and have your topic approved. Papers on topics that are not approved will not be accepted. There will be a grade penalty for students who do not submit their papers on time.
Topics could be based on:
v Visits to Smithsonian museum exhibits
v Ethnographic data collection
v Comparative reflective commentary on two or more of the required books
Guidelines are posted on blackboard. Please review these early in the semester.
All students are encouraged to visit the Writing Center to get critiques of their written assignments and essays. All written assignments should be stapled in the upper left-hand corner. No loose pages, folders, or plastic covers will be accepted. There will be a grade penalty for students who do not submit their papers on time.
________________________________________________________________________
Course Outline
Week One: Cultures and Meanings
Tuesday, Sept 1: Course Introduction: The Anthropological Perspective
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 1
-- *Kawagley: Introduction and Chapter 1
Thursday, Sept 3:
NO CLASS, Mass of the Holy Spirit
Week Two: Culture and the Human Condition
Tuesday, Sept 8: Conducting Fieldwork
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 3
--- Emerson, Fretz and Shaw. Ch 1 and Ch 2
Thursday, Sept 10: Explaining Cultural Differences
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 2
-- Aman: Foreword, Chapters 1 and 2
Week Three: Communism, Colonialism and Adaptation
Tuesday, Sept 15: Communism and the Kazaks
-- Aman: Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8.
FILM: Race: The Power of an Illusion, Part I
Thursday, Sept 17: Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 4
Week Four: Language and Culture
Tuesday, Sept 22: The structure of language and languages
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 5
-- Fadiman: Chapters 1 and 2
Thursday, Sept 24: How we make words have meanings
FILM: American Tongues or Do you speak American?
Week Five: Cognition, Socialization, and Enculturation
Tuesday, Sept 29: Learning culture, learning to perceive the world
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 6
-- Dávila, Chapter 3
Thursday, Oct 1: Languages in Context
Work Study Questions, I Midterm
-- *Castañeda, Antonia I.: Language and Other Lethal Weapons: Cultural Politics and the Rites of Children as Translators of Culture. In Mapping Multiculturalism. (electronic copy on blackboard, print copy available at the Anthro Department)
-- Aman: Chapters 9 through 13
-- Kawagley: Chapter 3
Week Six: Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict
Tuesday, Oct 6: Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict
-- Aman: Chapters 3 and 4
-- Kawagley, Chapter 2
FILM: “Greetings from Grozny”
Thursday, Oct 8: I Midterm Exam
Week Seven: Play, Art, Myth and Ritual
Tuesday, Oct 13: Play, Art, Myth and Ritual
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 7
-- Kawagley: Chapter 4
-- Fadiman: Chapter 3-4
FILM : "Trobriand Cricket”
Thursday, Oct 15:How Beliefs Shape Social Life
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 8 pp. 171-183
-- Kawagley: Chapter 5
-- Fadiman: Chapters 5 and 6
Week Eight: The Social Construction of Reality
Tuesday, Oct 20: Branding, Globalization, Commodification of people
-- Dávila, Chapter 7
SHORT Documentary: No Logo, Part I
Thursday, Oct 22: When Worldviews and Politics Collide
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 8 pp. 183-198
Week Nine: Social Organization and the Power to Act
Tuesday, Oct 27: Social Organization and Power
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 9
-- Aman: Chapters 18, 19 and 20
Turn in your outline for your short written assignment
Thursday, Oct 29:Empowerment
-- Fadiman: Chapters 5 and 6
Week Ten: The Social Construction of Violence
Tuesday, Nov 3: Practices of War and Peace
-- Aman: Chapters 21, 22 and 23
--Bourgeois, Philippe: Understanding Inner City Poverty: Resistance and Self-destruction under U.S. Apartheid. In Exotic no More: Anthropology on the Front Lines. (electronic copy on blackboard, print copy available at the Anthro Department)
FILM: "Uneasy Neighbors"
Thursday, Nov 5: Resistance
-- Fadiman: Chapters 7 and 8
SHORT Documentary: No Logo Part III
Week Eleven: Making a Living
Work study questions for Second Midterm
Tuesday, Nov 10: The Meanings of Progress
-- Miner, Horace. "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" (available on line at http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~thompsoc/Body.html)
-- Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, Part IV
(Electronic copies available on blackboard, print copy available at the Anthro Depart)
FILM: ChocolateCity
Thursday, Nov 12:Forms of production, distribution, and consumption
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 10
WEBSITE: www.thestoryofstuff.com
Week Twelve: Kinship
Tuesday, Nov 17: SECOND MIDTERM EXAM
Week Thirteen: Globalization, and the Social Construction of Equality and Inequality
Thursday, Nov 19: Patterns of Family Relations
-- Schultz & Lavenda, Chapter 11
-- Fadiman, Chapters 9-12
Tuesday, Nov 24: Ideologies and Dimensions of Inequality
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 14
-- Fadiman, Chapters 13, 14 and 15
Nov 25 – Nov 30 Thanksgiving Break
Thursday, Nov 26: NO CLASS, THANKSGIVING BREAK
Week Fourteen: The Political Economy of Gender in the World System
Tuesday, Dec 1: Modes of Change in the Modern World
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 15 pp. 346-357
-- Fadiman: Chapters 16 and 17
Thursday, Dec 3: Capitalism, Political Economy and Gender Inequality
-- Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 12
FILM: Re-defining he and she (request Nov. 23)
Week Fifteen: Anthropology in our Everyday Lives
Tuesday, December 8: NO CLASS (Patronal Feast of the Immaculate Conception)
Thursday, December 10: Anthropology in Everyday Life
--Schultz & Lavenda: Chapter 16
Review for final exam (Please bring your questions)
Thursday, December 17: FINAL EXAM, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
Expectations and policies
Academic honesty: Academic honesty is expected of all CUA students. Faculty are required to initiate the imposition of sanctions when they find violations of academic honesty, such as plagiarism, improper use of a student’s own work, cheating, and fabrication. The following sanctions are presented in the University procedures related to Student Academic Dishonesty (from https://mail.cua.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://policies.cua.edu/academicundergrad/integrityprocedures.cfm): “The presumed sanction for undergraduate students for academic dishonesty will be failure for the course. There may be circumstances, however, where, perhaps because of an undergraduate student’s past record, a more serious sanction, such as suspension or expulsion, would be appropriate. In the context of graduate studies, the expectations for academic honesty are greater, and therefore the presumed sanction for dishonesty is likely to be more severe, e.g., expulsion. ...In the more unusual case, mitigating circumstances may exist that would warrant a lesser sanction than the presumed sanction.” Please review the complete texts of the University policy and procedures regarding Student Academic Dishonesty, including requirements for appeals, at http://policies.cua.edu/academicundergrad/integrity.cfm http://policies.cua.edu/academicundergrad/integrity.cfm.
Timely completion of assignments:
Assignments are due on the dates and in the formats indicated, either on paper at the beginning of class or as email attachments (DOC, RTF, or PDF only, please) before class. These are assists for discussion, for your orientation, and not notes after discussion or other afterthoughts. Late assignments, without University-recognized excuse, will be graded down one-half letter grade for the first day, one letter grade thereafter.
In the classroom:
The Anthropology Department has an established policy regarding behavior in class. Barring emergency, students will remain seated during class, not getting up to walk out and return. Bathrooms are available for use before and after class. The use of cell phones or other electronic devices such as iPods, Playstations, Palm Pilots, Blackberries or Trios is prohibited during class. Kindly turn these off.
Accommodations for students with disabilities:
Any student who feels s/he may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact the instructor privately to discuss specific needs. Please contact Disability Support Services (at 202 319-5211, room 207 PryzbylaCenter) to coordinate reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities. To read about the services and policies, please visit the website: http://disabilitysupport.cua.edu.
___________________ ____________________ __________
PRINT YOUR NAME SIGNATURE DATE
Contact Us/Directory
|
Copyright Information