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Week 1 Introduction to the Social Sciences: Anthropology

Week 1 Introduction to the Social Sciences: Anthropology. Prof. Joel Stocker, Ph.D. Kaohsiung Medical University. Course Textbook. Schultz, E. A., & Lavenda, R. H. (2005). Cultural anthropology: a perspective on the human condition (6th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

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Week 1 Introduction to the Social Sciences: Anthropology

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  1. Week 1Introduction to the Social Sciences: Anthropology Prof. Joel Stocker, Ph.D. Kaohsiung Medical University

  2. Course Textbook Schultz, E. A., & Lavenda, R. H. (2005). Cultural anthropology: a perspective on the human condition (6th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. (Available in the library)

  3. Course Grading (5 weeks) • 20% Attendance (including guest lecture) • 25% Participation and discussion (in class and online) • 20% Assignment: Anthropological field work exercise • 35% Quizzes (2)

  4. Schedule Highlights • Week 2: Quiz 1 (during discussion section) • Week 4: Hand in your written Assignment: fieldwork exercise (2-3 pages in English) • Week 4: Before class, watch the film Nanook of the North online or in the library • Week 5: Quiz 2 (during discussion section) • Dec. 8: Guest speaker, Dr. Huang (Friday, 2PM)

  5. The Social Sciences • The rise of the social sciences • Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology

  6. What is anthropology? The study of • human nature, human culture and society, and the human past; • how human biology, prehistory and history, economics, politics, religion, and kinship shape one another to make human life what it is; • local contexts situated in broader social, cultural, and political matrices; • what it means to be human.

  7. Anthropology’s Four Subfields • Biological (or physical) anthropology • The study of human beings as living organisms different from and similar to other animals. (subfields: primatology & paleoanthropology) • Archaeology (often spelled “archeology”) • The study of human remains for evidence of past cultural activity. • Linguistic anthropology • The study of language in relation to the broader cultural, historical, and biological contexts that make language possible. • Cultural & Social Anthropology • The study of cultural variation in people’s learned beliefs, ideas, and behaviors as members of a society.

  8. Basic Concepts in Sociocultural Anthropology • Culture • Comparative (cross-cultural comparison, generalization) • Holistic (integrative, whole greater than parts) • Domains of culture (biology, psychology, politics, economics, history, kinship, religion, communication, performance, etc.) • Symbol (abstract relationships) • Explaining human nature: dualism & determinism, materialism & idealism, empiricism & positivism, qualitative & quantitative (cf. holism) • Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism • Fieldwork (extensive, intensive involvement with a group) • Participant-observation (in multiple local contexts) • Reflexivity (highlighting intersubjective meaning creation) • Ethnography (writing about cultures)

  9. Culture • People’s learned beliefs, ideas, and behaviors as members of a society. • Human culture is learned, shared, patterned, adaptive, and symbolic. • The main way in which human groups differ from one another. • Began over 5 million years ago with hominid bipedalism and opposable thumb & fingers; 2.5 million years ago with stone tools; 200,000 years ago with homo sapiens’ complex symbolic representation and social organization.

  10. Assignment: field work exercise • Due Week 4 (beginning of class). • 2-3 pages, in English, typed & printed. • 30 minutes or more, observe and participate in the lives of several, or a group, of people. • Record their as well as your own behavior, thoughts, and feelings. Take notes. • Include in your report: method of observation, location and participants (setting and characters), research-related issues you experienced, and the social patterns and forms of cultural communication you observed.

  11. Next Week’s Reading • Schultz & Lavenda, Chapter 5. Language.

  12. Discussion Questions • Can cultural anthropology be used to study modern societies and large-scale urban societies? • What’s the difference between sociology and anthropology? Is it a matter of methods, topics, scale, academic tradition, or what? • Share your ideas about the difference between society and culture (which we’ll discuss more in the coming weeks). • Is cultural anthropology, as a “soft” science, less valid as a means of understanding reality, compared with “hard sciences” such as mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry? • Is there a universal knowledge? If so, could you call it a universal culture? Are the “natural sciences” really so “natural”?

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