Anthropology
2000-A: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Course
Outline and Reading List
Instructor: Dr. Christopher Fung
Office
Hours and Phone: MW
11-12 or by appointment MP 301
544-1413
Email
address: cfung@hpu.edu
Course
Meeting Times and Lecture Theater:
T, Th 910 –1035 am UB214
Website: www2.hpu.edu
click
on Fall
semester
click
on Anthropology
click
on course
number (Anth 2000)
notes
on assignments will be under “LEARNING RESOURCES” (click on
“References”)
Course
Description:
This course is an introduction to cultural anthropology which is a
sub-discipline within anthropology.
Briefly put, we will be examining the concept of culture: what it is,
the way it works and how anthropologists study it. We will look at the way in which culture operates in
different parts of the world and use this knowledge to better understand our
own cultures and those of people around us. In addition, we will look briefly at other branches of
anthropology such as ethnohistory, archaeology, biological anthropology,
cultural ecology and ethnomusicology.
Learning
Outcomes:
(1) You
will gain a sense of relationship with people possessing different experiences
from yourself.
(2) You
will grasp the importance of cultural and historical context for understanding
people and their behaviors.
(3) You
will develop a sense of place and time that may differ from your own
(4) You will understand and be able to use basic anthropological
vocabulary and concepts such as “culture”,
“ethnocentrism”, “cultural relativism”, “personhood”,
“symbol”, and “ritual”.
(5) You
will gain an appreciation of the way in which cultural frames of understanding
(including your own) affect the way you and other people think and behave.
Five Themes: the following themes will be addressed in this
class
World Cultures
Research and Epistemology
Communication
Required
Readings: We will be using a text-book (see
below) and a number of ethnographies which highlight particular groups of
people and the work of particular anthropologists.
Text
Kottak,
Conrad P.
2004 Mirror for Humanity: A
Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. 4th edition McGraw-Hill. Boston.
(the
fifth edition is also available, and can be used. Page numbers for the 5tb edition will be available online)
Menzel, Peter
1994 Material World. Sierra Club. San
Francisco
This
is a supplementary book which will give you a good visual sense of some of the
cultures we are discussing and also examples of several different ways of
looking at human societies.
Ethnographies Serious students should buy all the
texts. Those who wish may buy two
ethnographies and photocopy the relevant sections of the other texts using the
library's copies which will be placed on reserve.
Achebe,
Chinua
1994 Things Fall Apart. Anchor . New York.
Fordham,
Signithia
1996 Blacked Out. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.
Menchu,
Rigoberta
1984 I, Rigoberta Menchu. Verso. New York.
Assessment:
Your grade for the course will be evaluated on the basis of three written
assignments
(45%) , a project
(25%), a project
assessment (5%),
and a final examination (25%) which will be a take-home exam. I
will provide a more detailed handout on each part of the coursework through the
semester.
The written assignments will
be based on course material and will emphasize clear expression, logical
argument and critical reading skills.
Students will be allowed one revision per assignment.
The
project will be based on two field trips which are generally scheduled for
Saturdays OR Sundays. There are a
number of different field sites. In general I would like you to write about ONE
site. If you wish to write about
two sites, you should come and consult me.
If
you are unable to attend these field trips because of religious obligations,
family or other commitments, please let me know ahead of time and we can
organize alternative fieldwork opportunities for you.
Extensions
for coursework will be granted only under extremely serious circumstances, and
only with direct permission from the instructor. Extensions granted for medical reasons must be accompanied
by a doctor's certificate.
An
extra credit assignment will be provided for those students who wish to improve
their grade before the final exam.
The
best way to do well in this course is to keep up to date with the
readings. To do this, you may
adopt the following approach: BEFORE THE LECTURE: 1) Read the lecture topic below to give yourself a rough
idea of the subject matter to be covered.
2) Carefully read through the lecture outline (which will be handed out
in the preceding lecture).
This will give you a road map of the basic ideas or questions to be
covered in the lecture. 3) Read
the appropriate readings before the lecture. Notice the way in which
each author deals with the particular issues to be discussed in the
lecture. Note the things you
don’t understand so you can bring them up in class. The lectures will proceed on the
assumption that you will have done the readings already. Some lectures will
require quite a lot of reading so allow yourself plenty of time to get prepared
by looking ahead to see which lectures have more reading.
Lecture
1. What is Anthropology?
A brief introduction to anthropology as a whole
and to cultural anthropology in particular. We will also examine the ways in which anthropology
introduces us to important questions regarding the human condition and to our
own specific cultural experiences.
Reading
Kottak 1-19: Menzel 248-249; 14-21; 57-63
Lecture
2. What is Culture?
Culture is one of the defining characteristics
of humanity, and yet it is very difficult to define accurately. We will look at
the way in which anthropologists have thought about and utilized the concept of
culture.
Reading: Kottak:
pp. 22-34
Video: Dances With Wolves
Lecture
3. Symbols, rituals and core concepts
Reading: Lee
Lecture
4. Why is Anthropology useful?:
The study of race.
Race
is one of the most difficult issues for people in the United States. In this lecture we examine the
biological and social factors surrounding race and discuss the cultural
importance of the concept of race in the United States, Brazil and Japan.
Reading: Kottak: 37-51
Lecture
5. Anthropology and
Fieldwork (the Familiar and the
Other)
One
of the most important parts of anthropology is fieldwork. This lecture investigates
fieldwork and the way in which it shapes anthropological knowledge. We will focus on two different ways
that anthropologists have experienced and undertaken fieldwork situations. One
by Clifford Geertz and the other by Dorinne Kondo.
Reading:
Geertz; Kondo: pp. 3-24
Lecture
6. Anthropology and Industrial Societies (Japan)
In
addition to working in village settings and isolated regions, anthropologists
also do fieldwork in urban settings and examine social and cultural issues in
industrialized societies. In this
lecture we examine Dorinne Kondo's study of Japanese women factory workers to
show how anthropologists deal with issues such as class, power and the impact
of industrialization on human relations.
Reading:
Menzel: 48-55; Kondo: 49-74
Movie: The Colonel Comes to Japan
This
lecture introduces students to the field sites we will be visiting and gives
students a brief overview of the structure and nature of the project.
Saturday
September 16 mandatory first FIELD TRIP: Ulupo
Heiau (trip 1)
meet at 8.45 am at the downtown campus shuttle
stop (cnr Fort and Beretania St.s)
pick up at Hawaii Loa 9.15 am arrival at Ulupo
9.30 am
we will have lunch at the site and leave at 1.30 pm. Return to HLC by 1.45 pm and Downtown campus by 2.05 pm
Lecture
8. Colonialism and the Clash of Cultures
This
lecture examines the Death of Captain Cook in Hawai‘i. We hope to go beyond the superficial
accounts of "Western supermen" and "irrational savages" and
gain a better appreciation for what the actual process was like by examining
these events from an anthropological perspective.
Reading:
none
Lecture
9. Modern Hawaiian Society and Culture
What
is modern Hawaiian culture? This
lecture is an introduction to the issues facing modern Hawaiian communities.
Lecture
10. Economics and Anthropology:
Food Production
This
lecture will examine the ways in which economic activity can be understood
through anthropology. We begin
with the study of how and why people began to domesticate plants and animals
and how these developments changed human history.
Reading: Kottak: 85-99; Menzel 112-119, 56-63;
40-47; 144-151
Lecture
11. Economics and Anthropology II:
Surplus and exchange
In
this lecture, we will look at the issue of surplus and what this enables people
to do in any particular society.
In particular we will look at the phenomenon of economic exchange.
Reading: Kottak 99-107; 211-216
Tuesday
September 26 (no
class session, download the following online lecture)
Lecture
12 Economics and Anthropology III: The Anthropology of Consumption
Economics
is more than simply getting enough to eat. How people organize production and consumption are
fundamental aspects of their societies.
In this lecture we look at the ways in which different anthropologists
have tried to analyze production and consumption in different places and what
these aspects might tell us about the societies that follow these particular
practices.
Reading: Edwards
Movie:
Advertising and the End of the World
Thursday
September 28
(no class session, take part in the online discussion session)
Tuesday
October 3
(no class, work on your first essay)
Lecture
13 Kinship and Social Organization I
Anthropologists
believe that kinship is one of the most important tools in helping us to
understand how society works. The
ways that families are structured is one of the most basic arenas of social
relationships. We will examine two
different kinship systems to illustrate this point.
Reading: Kottak: 110-119
Video:
Strange Relations
Lecture
14. Kinship and Social Organization II Marriage systems
The
patterns surrounding choice of marriage partners are one way of looking at some
of the core issues within a particular society.
Reading: Kottak: 119-129
Video: Strange Relations
Lecture
15. Kinship and Social Organization III
Following
from the last lecture, we look at the way in which kinship influences
economics, politics and culture in several different societies including the
United States.
Reading: to be announced
Lecture
16 History and Memory: What do we mean by “traditional”?
(combined session with HUM 1000?)
Reading:
Achebe tba
Lecture
17. Colonialism in Nigeria: Ibo society in the early 20th
century
Reading:
Achebe tba
Reading: Achebe, Kottak ch. 12
Lecture 20.
Biology and Culture I:
Anthropology and Gender
What
do the differences between men and women mean as far as their roles in society
are concerned? Are all the
differences between men and women due to "biology"? Are these differences the result of
evolutionary processes or historical circumstance? We will take a look at all of these issues in this lecture.
Reading: Kottak: 172-189
Lecture 21. Culture and Identity I: Becoming a Person in
Different Cultures
Identity
is at the center of what makes each of us unique. Yet, are we all autonomous individuals, or do our
surroundings and our upbringings influence fundamental beliefs about what it
means to be fully human or a "real" person? This lecture sets forth some of the ways in which personhood
is understood in different cultures.
We will revisit some of Kondo’s ideas on Japanese identity and
also use this lecture as a springboard into a discussion of the ways in which
multiple factors come together to affect a child's perception of himself or
herself as a member of a specific
ethnic, racial or class-based group as discussed by Fordham.
Reading: Kondo: 26-33; Fordham:
39-65
Lecture 22. Preparing the Project
Lecture 23. Culture and Identity III: Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism (combined
class with Hum 1000)
How does culture shape a person's identity? How do various
differences in appearance, belief or custom become "ethnic"
differences and what happens when these differences become politicized?
Reading: Menzel (112-119); Menchu ch 1- 16 (pp1-86)
Videos: Power of Place vol 14:
Migration and Conquest - Collision of Cultures; Legacy 5: Central America - the
Burden of Time
Lecture 24.
Using the chilling first-person
account of Rigoberta Menchu, we will look at the question of being an Indian in
Guatemala and the ways in which Indian-ness has become stigmatized and
ultimately used to brutalize and murder citizens within a nation state.
Reading: Menchu ch 15-6;
23; 29-31
Video: Discovering Dominga
Lecture 25. Culture and Identity III: Race, Class and
Education
This
lecture examines the case study of Capital High School. A predominantly African-American high
school in Washington, DC. which was the fieldwork site for Signithia Fordham. In her book, Fordham examines the issue
of academic achievement being rated as "acting white" by inner-city
African-American children. She
discusses the cultural, economic and policy factors surrounding this phenomenon
as an anthropologist, a teacher and an African-American woman.
Reading: Fordham: Introduction,
ch. 1, ch. 7 and 8; espec. pp. 39-66 and 325-344
Lecture 26. Culture
and Identity II: Class and Social Status
What
is social class? How is it expressed in different countries? Is the US really a
class-less society?
Reading:
hooks
Lecture 27.
Biology and Culture II: Cultural Ecology
How
do people interact with the world around them? Is there one single way of relating to the natural world? In
this lecture we will investigate the way in which different notions about the
natural world influence the way people deal with resources and their
relationship with their physical environment.
Reading: None
Video:
An Ecology of Mind
Lecture 28. Biology and Culture III (Medical
Anthropology): the Human Body
The
body is an important focus for anthropology. It serves as the primary site for people to discuss notions
of belonging, of separateness and of individuality. The ways in which bodies are treated as normal or in need of
treatment is an important lens through which anthropologists can understand
different societies. In this
lecture we will look at the ways in which medical anthropologists have studied
the question of the female body and western medicine.
Reading: Martin
Lecture
29. Illness and Healing
Concepts
of illness and healing are often mediated by culture. In this lecture we will look at healing systems in different
cultures including Haitian Vodun and Faith healing in the United States.
Reading:
to be announced
Video:
Inventing Reality
Lecture
30. Religion and Politics
In
this lecture we will look specifically at the way in which politics and
religion affect one another. Our case studies will be drawn from Northern
Ireland and the United States.
Reading:
to be announced
Lecture
31. Urban Anthropology and Class in the United States
This
lecture will look at the city as a locus for fieldwork and discuss the ways in
which fieldwork in cities and in one's "home community" raise
particular issues.
Reading: Fordham: Afterword
Thursday
November 16 (no
class)
work
on your essay
Thanksgiving Break
Lecture
32. Urban Anthropology II: Social Dysfunction as Ethnic Art in New
Zealand
The
movie Once Were Warriors provides the springboard for a detailed discussion of the
similarities and differences between Hawaii and New Zealand and the ways in
which powerful stories located in a particular cultural context can
nevertheless provide important cross-cultural experiences and knowledge.
Reading:
Duff (xerox)
Lecture
33. Urban Anthropology II continued
Reading:
interviews with Roger Duff and Lee Tamahori (online)
Lecture
34. Alternate views of
Maori culture
Videos: Whale Rider; Pukana
Lecture
35. Living Together: "Can't We All Just Get Along?"
The
legacy of modern anthropology as a way of looking at the world and dealing more
successfully with the complexities of modern life.
This
list is an outline for your reference.
However, due to unforeseen circumstances I may have to change an
occasional lecture or reading. In
this event I will try to give you as much warning as possible, but you should
be aware that this outline is subject to change.
Other
field trips are available. Please consult the fieldtrip handouts for more
details.