Cultural Myths and Cultural Realities

Catalog description

This course focuses on how we study other, especially non-western, cultures. In it, we look at recent critical debates on the nature of anthropological inquiry and the representations of other cultures that anthropologists have constructed. Is anthropology a science or humanity? How accurate are the anthropologists' representations of other cultures? Why do anthropologists studying the same culture come up with very different pictures of that culture? How much of the anthropologist's own personal and cultural biases are revealed in the way other cultures are described? How does the anthropologist's own theoretical perspective affect the way the data are interpreted? Is the nature of anthropological inquiry such that we can never escape biases? What kinds of methodologies do anthropologists use and what are their limitations? How can restudies enable us to refine our methods and generate more sophisticated comparative categories to use in the understanding of cultures?Fulfills Core requirement(s): Diversity (DIV) and Cultural Elective (CE).