Social Anthropology

The aim of this course is to help you understand some of the basic questions, concepts and practices of social and cultural anthropology, or the study of the culture and society of human communities. The course will involve a short history of anthropology as a discipline, the definition of culture and cultural relativism and the exploration of various subjects including race and ethnicity, social inequality, gender, language, religion and rituals and political and economic systems. The course will also allow you to experience the most commonly used methods of anthropology such as participant observation and interviewing. As anthropology is based on hands-on fieldwork, we will use our own environment as our field site: you will have assignments to observe places or communities that are less familiar to you and make interview about topics of your interest. The readings will be a combination of theoretical works and field reports, emphasizing the various approaches that anthropologists take to understanding human cultures. As the class will be based on interactive methods, your participation will be crucial to the success of our common work.