Cultural Anthropology

Catalog description

Advisory: ENGL 1A with a grade of C or higher, or English Placement Level 7. <br> <br> This introductory course explores how anthropologists study and compare human culture. Cultural anthropology presents fundamental concepts, data, methods, and theories employed by cultural anthropologists as they seek to understand the full range of human experience. Topics include how people around the world make their living (subsistence patterns), how they organize themselves socially, politically, and economically, how they communicate, how they relate to each other through family and kinship ties, what they believe about the world (belief systems), how they express themselves creatively (expressive culture), how they make distinctions among themselves such as through applying gender, racial, and ethnic identity labels, how they have shaped and have been shaped by social inequalities such as colonialism, and how they navigate culture change and processes of globalization that affect us all. Ethnographic case studies highlight these similarities and differences and introduce students to how anthropologists do their work, employ professional anthropological research ethics, and apply their perspectives and skills to understand humans around the globe. This course may be offered in a distance education format.