We will examine some of the fundamental concepts, such as culture and society, which form the pillars of the discipline. We will also examine briefly some of the theoretical approaches that anthropologists take and have taken in studying culture, the methods they use to gather their data and to make sense of what they have observed and recorded, and the range of subjects which most anthropologists deal with in the course of their studies. My second aim of the course is to explore the diversity of human cultures on the planet. While exploring cultural diversity we will also take an intimate look into a varied number of human communities in order to understand how they work, how they are different from us, the forces that shape their view of themselves. We will do this by reading a number of ethnographies, which anthropologists define as intimate and comprehensive depictions of the ways of life and thinking of a community and its members.
Anthropologists base their ethnographies on the extended period of time they live in a community.
I will also be asking you to explore other human groups in class projects and discussions. Third, I want you to gain an appreciation of the anthropological perspective, a perspective that is arrived at through the comparison of different cultures, what is known in anthropology as ethnology. Anthropologists claim that anthropology is a way of both understanding others around the world who live within the contexts of their different cultures, and a particular way to understanding ourselves and our own society. We want to explore this question, and ask what exactly it is we learn about ourselves when we realize that our way of life and our perspective on the world is only one among many, who, by the way, think about themselves as we do. Fourth, we want to explore what anthropologists do, how anthropology is practiced.