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Usual instructor: Dr. Bhavani Sitaraman
This course introduces you to the discipline of anthropology, with primary focus on cultural anthropology, not archeology, paleoanthropology, or linguistics. Some of the questions addressed are as follows: What is "culture?" How does the concept of "culture" help us to understand human nature? And, how do anthropologists go about studying culture? A central theme in the course is also cultural diversity. We will examine how inequality in power, prestige, and resources is structured and explained in different cultures. The section on social structure and belief systems includes study of the institutions of sex and marriage; family, household, and kinship; and age, sex, and class (using texts such as I, Rigoberto Menchu...., and Nisa: Life and Words of a !Kung Woman.
This counts as the elective in the Women's Studies minor.
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