MnTC #07-135R

MnTC #07-135R

October 5, 2007

October 27, 2007

Normandale Community College

Common Course Outline

Effective date: October 2007

Anthropology 1127: Cultural Anthropology

Prerequisites: None Credits: 3 Credits

Catalog Description: 3 CR FALL, SPR The human way of life: cultural adaptation to natural and social environments. The cultural organization of non-western and western societies; language, subsistence, social structure, belief system, child training, personality. Cultural change and applied anthropology. MNTC: Goals 2, 5, and 8

Course Description: Cultural anthropology studies communities and societies of people, how they live, and why they live that way. Anthropology studies all kinds of communities and societies using a case study approach—ethnographic fieldwork. This course introduces the basic vocabulary and concepts necessary to understand anthropology’s concerns, and discusses what anthropologists have learned about how cultures and their various subsystems (kinship, family, religion, political organization) work. Through the scrutiny of selected case material we will come close to the cultures of people who may at first seem very different from us to try to understand why they live as they do and to understand our own ethnocentrism.

Texts: At the discretion of the instructor, typically a general text supplemented by one or two case studies and/or a set of shorter readings.

Major topic areas: All these topics are covered, but different instructors emphasize some more than others.

1. The scope of anthropology

2. The concept of culture

3. Anthropological theory

4. Methodology

5. Cultural evolution/societal types

6. Subsistence and economics

7. Kinship and family

8. Gender

9. Childrearing, personality, and the life cycle

10. Associations

11. Political organization and conflict resolution

12. Expressive culture: arts and folklore

13. Religion

14. Change: colonialism, industrialism, and the post-industrial world

15. Applied anthropology and careers in anthropology

Course Objectives and Learning Outcomes: Students completing this course should be able to

1. use terms, concepts, and intellectual frameworks important in describing and analyzing cultural dynamics. (5abcd, 8a)

2. recognize and critique the most basic conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of anthropology. (2cd, 5cd, 8a)

3. Identify the range of societal and cultural types and place them in an evolutionary/historical and ecological perspective. (5bcd, 8ab)

4. describe and analyze the subsystems of culture: family and kinship, economics, political organization, religion, and so forth. (2cd, 5abcd, 8ab)

5. interpret and evaluate various hypotheses that have been put forward to explain the cultural phenomena we encounter. (2cd, 5cd, 8a)

6. identify and analyze selected processes of global change: such as, colonialism and neocolonialism, industrialism and urbanization, population increase, planned change. (2cd, 5bcd, 8abd)

7. use information and concepts acquired in order to interpret case material. Both films and written case studies or readings are important for this purpose. (2cd, 5abcd, 8abd)

8. understand and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of anthropological research methods, especially participant observation, and be able to articulate problem issues in scientific research. (2cd, 5ac)

Evaluation system:

Objective and/or essay exams will be used to evaluate students.

Other graded assignments or projects will be given as deemed appropriate by the instructor.

Individual instructors devise their own specific methods and weighting systems.

Objective (multiple choice) test items 40% to 80% Essays (in class or take home) 10 % to 30%

Short answer test items 0% to 30% Miscellaneous assignments 0% to 20%