• Topics: the four sub-fields, field work and methodology, anthropological theories, and the concept of culture.   How do we come to understand others and ourselves?  What is "culture"?

• Video: Franz Boas (59 min., an excellent induction to this "father" of American anthropology and to the approach of the disciple.)  Along with the user ID and password provided in class, you will need a reliable high-speed Internet connection (suggested 10 Mbps, as clips are streamed at 450 Kbps) and a RealPlayer to access class videos.   Remember, videos can be enlarged by dragging your mouse on the bottom right corner.   For a free version, .  

• Readings: Lecture Outline, Eye Juggling  (Outline), and Paul Stoller's Ethnography/Memoir/Imagination/Story (username: reserve, password: Arn6pK).  You will need an Adobe Reader to access PDF printable files,

• Case Studies: Fakhouri - Foreword, Introduction, and 1 (pp.v-26); Lansing - Foreword, 1 and 2 (pp. 17-23 and skim pp. 23-46); and Tonkinson - Foreword and Introduction (pp. 1-18)
  Supplemental Materials: Theories of Anthropology, Tautology

• Dates: January 10 and 15

Visit with your instructor, ( during office hours MW 9:00 to noon, or by appointment)

Epistemology and Cultural Themes

• Topics:   Literal, metaphoric and anagogic ways of knowing; Tribal-Traditional and Euro-American cultural foundations and themes; and relation between language and culture.  How have various peoples come to know and define their worlds, and are we a part of the world or live apart from it?

• Videos: Three Worlds of Bali (59 min., 1980 Odyssey Series PBS; Notes on Bali) and The Living Stone (32 min., 1958 National Film Board of Canada).  These two classic films nicely illustrate key Tribal-Traditional cultural values.

• Readings: Lecture Outline, Sedna, Balinese Time, Dogon Seed, Pythagoras, Scientific Method, Glass Pane World View, Looking Glass World View, and Two Worlds

• Case Studies: Lansing - 2 (pp. 23-31); Tonkinson - 1

• Supplemental Materials: Plato's Cave, Humanity Mirrors the Cosmos, image of Pythagoras, Ptolemy and Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Locke, Descartes, and Newton

• Dates:  January 17, 22 and 24

A Question of Origin and Place - Evolution and Scientific Knowing

• Topics:  the scientific method, biological evolution, the fossil record, "race," nature and nurture.  As a species, what is our origins, and, as individuals, are we what we are taught or what we are born with?  Our origin and place as subscribed by the "evolutionary" story of it.

• Video: Lucy and the First Family  (58 min.,  In 1974 in Ethiopia, Donald Johanson and Tom Gray unearthed an early hominid bipedal, Australopithecus afarensis, whom they named, "Lucy," dating over 3 million years old.  This film is a nice introduction to evolutionary theory and the application of the scientific method and evidence.)

• Readings: Lecture Outline, Lactase and Natural Selection,  Persistent Hunter, and The Dream Animal

• Supplemental Materials: the Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program; Images of Lucy; Upper Paleolithic Cave Art; the American Anthropological Association's Statement on "Race" and Statement on "Race" and Intelligence

• Dates: January 29 and 31, and February 5

Exam

• Date: February 7

A Question of Origin and Place - Creation, Aesthetic, Mythological and Religious Knowing

• Topics:  orality and literacy; ritual and ceremonialism; oral literature and creation narratives; and art.  How have people related to the transcendent and spiritual worlds, what is "creation," what is "beauty," and who is "God"?  Our origin and place as subscribed by our "creation" story of it.

• Videos: Roy Sullivan (1 min.), Billy Yellow (18 min., on Navajo healing ceremony; notes on Billy Yellow), Huichol Healing (17 min.), Jane's Healing (15 min., on the healing process of an American woman), Balinese Wayang Shadow Puppets (8 min., clip from Three Worlds of Bali), Crow Sun Dance (22 min., a 1989 taping of key segments of the Dance), and Trance and Dance in Bali (21 min., filmed by Margaret Mead [1901-1978] and Gregory Bateson in the 1930s, released in 1952.  In 1999 this film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.)   Many of the following video clips are from David Maybury-Lewis' Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World series (PBS 1992).  Maybury-Lewis is a recently retired professor of anthropology from Harvard University.

• Readings: Lecture Outline, Orality and Literacy; Aboriginal Dreamtime, Navajo Words and Images, Salmon Always Goes Up River, and Typology of Rituals Begin Immediately.

• Case Studies: Fakhouri - 4; Tonkinson - 5

• Supplemental Materials: Balinese Arts, Aboriginal Ceremony, Navajo Dry Painting, Iroquois False Faces, Inuit Art and Ritual, Crow Sundance, The Caves, and Euro-American Transformations; in the News: Australia Apologizes to Aborigines

• Evening Session at the Movies: Ten Canoes (2006) February 27 Time 8:00 pm  Room TLC 145

• Dates: February 12, 14, 19 and 21

The Life Cycle, Rites of Passage and Pilgrimage

• Topics:  initiation rites and the "individual."  What is the process by which the "individual" is integrated within the larger fabric of his or her society and ecology?  What is a "healthy person"?  How are our self identities formed?

• Videos: Xavante Age Sets (15 min., notes on Xavante Age Sets), Weyewa Identity (17 min., notes on Weyewa Identity), Dogon Death (15 min.), Huichol Pilgrimage (33 min., notes on Huichol Pilgrimage), Inside Mecca (56 min., on the Muslim Hajj, Discovery Channel, April 2006) or Hajj (Nightline 2006, 22 min., on Google Video), and also consider the funeral ceremony of the Dani in Dead Birds and a girl's coming of age ceremony in Seasons of a Navajo (below)

• Readings: Lecture Outline, Lecture Outline: Pilgrimage, Rites of Passage, and Rites/Pilgrimage Diagram  Begin Immediately.

• Case Studies: Fakhouri - 5; Lansing - 2 (pp. 31-42); Tonkinson - 4 and 6

• Supplemental Materials: Aboriginal Rites of Passage, American Individualism 

• Dates: February 26 and 28, March 4 and 6    (March 10 - 14 - Spring Recess)

Exam

• Date: March 18

The Ecological Fabric

• Topics:  gatherer/hunter and the "Original Affluent Society," the objectification of the landscape, domestication and horticultural, agriculture and "civilization," industrial and informational societies, the "culture of consumption," and environmental stasis.  What are the various ways peoples have defined and related to the natural world and their "landscape"?   Why did we domesticate plants and animals, and what are the implications of doing so?  Why do some cultures seek mightily to live within their landscape as a part of it, while others, with equal commitment, attempt to live apart from it, controlling and dominating it? What is a "healthy environment"?

• Videos: N!ai's Life (39 min., John Marshall's 1952 account of this !Kung Bushman gatherer-hunter way of life prior to being placed on a reservation in 1978, as recounted by !Nai herself, with additional footage and commentary by Marshall; footage from both 1952 and 1978), Makuna Consent (23 min., notes on Makuna Consent), Gabra Finn (15 min., notes on Gabra Finn), Seasons of a Navajo (58 min., a 1984 view of the seasonal round of a Navajo family, including as segment on the Kinaalda, girls puberty rite of passage; an excellent depiction of family life; PBS), Nanook of the North (79 min., the Robert Flaherty 1920 classic of one family's seasonal round as hunters and fishermen in the frozen desert,  commentary by Flaherty), The Nuer (73 min., this 1971 Robert Gardner classic depiction of the Nuer of Ethiopia and their cattle-herding way of life), Dreamtime (60 min., a look at the Australian Aborigines relationship with the landscape), and Dead Birds (the 1964 Robert Gardner classic account of village life among the Dani of West Papua, New guinea; excellent depiction of horticultural subsistence; see below)

• Readings: Lecture Outline, Coeur d'Alene Ecology, Original Affluent Society, Jericho and Domestication, Capitalism, Culture of Consumption, and Bateson's "Mind"

• Case Studies: Fakhouri - 2; Lansing - 4; Tonkinson - 2

• Supplemental Materials: Aboriginal Ecology, Schitsu'umsh Landscape, Horticultural Ecology, Herding Ecology, Farming Ecology, and Industrial Ecology

• Evening Session at the Movies: - Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner (2002) Day: April 6, Time: 6:00 pm, Room: TLC 145

• Dates: March 25 and 27, and April 1

• NOTE: no class on March 20 on your own, view Nanook of the North and Seasons of a Navajo

The Social Fabric

• Topics: family, marriage, kinship, gender, leadership, power, "individualism," and the objectification of the species.  Why are we such a gregarious species, with a tremendous capacity for "love" and compassion, yet with equal passion also able to "hate" other humans?  Why are we the only species that can systematically kill and go to war with its own kind?  Why are there so many differing ways to define and relate to other humans?  Why do some individuals have greater "power" over others and more access to the "goodies"?  What defines "family"?  What defines a "rich person"?

• Videos: Gifts (3 min., considers the power of gift giving), Weyewa Stone (21 min., notes on Weyewa Stone), Gabra Stranger (23 min., notes on Gabra Strange), Wodaabe Love (17 min., notes on WodaabeLove), Nyinba Brothers (19 min., notes on Nyinba Brothers), Beatrice (13 min., followers the life of a Navajo woman), Wodaabe Beauty (18 min.), Maasi Women (60 min., follow the life of this east African cattle herding people through the eyes of its women), Dadi's Family (60 min., follow the life of a large extended family in Northern India, 1980), and also consider the kinship and family relations illustrated in Seasons of a Navajo (above)

• Readings: Lecture Outline, Descent Systems, Crow Matrilineal Kinship, Loves,  Bilateral Cross-Cousin Marriage, and American Individualism

• Case Studies: Fakhouri - 3 and 6; Lansing 2 (pp. 42-46); Tonkinson - 3, 4 (pp. 98-101), 5 (pp. 138-142) and 6

• Supplemental Materials: Marriage and Roles of Women

• Dates: April 3, 8, 10 and 15

  The Dynamic Fabric

• Topics: innovation, diffusion, assimilation, genocide, modernity and traditionalism,  technological change, and war.  How do societies change?  Why do we war against ourselves?  What is the nature of innovation and discovery?  Are we the masters of our own fate or pawns of society?  How have peoples initiated and/or responded to continuity and change through time?

• Video: N!ai's Reservation  (33 min., continuation of John Marshall's 1978 film on the !Kung, showing the impact of a cash economy, schools, missionaries and recruitment into the South African army.  In 1978 the South African government established a reservation on the Namibia/Botswana border which restricted the !Kung to an area one-half the size of their original territory.  The reservation lacks sufficient food and water for the !Kung to continue their gatherer-hunter life.) and Dead Birds (83 min., Robert Gardner's 1964 classic account of Dani life and the nature of warfare that underpins this society) 

• Readings: Lecture Outline, Change Model, Theories of War, Inclusivity, Bateson's Schismogenesis, Kroeber's Style Pattern, Greek Style Pattern, and Kuhn's Paradigm Shifts

• Case Studies: Fakhouri - 7 and 8; Lansing - 5; Tonkinson - 5 (pp. 133-138) and 7

• Supplemental Materials: Genius, Touched, Fish and Submarines, Pasteur, Hawaiian Religion, Flying Machines, Wallace and Darwin, Flag, Light, and Domestication

• Dates: April 17, 22, 24 and 29

Final Discussion

• Discussion Question: The Wisdom Gift

• Date: Thursday May8 at 2:00 pm Phinney 102