PRINCIPLES OF ANTHROPOLOGY

This course approach to the study of anthropology is ethnographic and comparative. The course examines particular peoples and places in depth, and compares particular places and peoples with one another, in order to gain a better understanding of what is general and what is particular about being human. Beginning with basic concepts in anthropology, ethnography as the core anthropological methodology, and some disciplinary history; the course later turns to a series of topics that anthropologists find important in understanding human beings, including kinship and family; domination and subordination in everyday practice; identity and politics; and modernization, capitalism, and globalization. Seminal texts in the discipline are read to understand how the fundamental questions asked by anthropologists have developed over the last century and how these questions are refashioned in the contemporary world around urgent matters like technological change, global warming, migrants and refugee flows.