Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

This course compares cultures found around the globe, focusing closely upon at least two specific cultures, with extended discussion of additional cultures and societies as appropriate.  Greater understanding of particular cultures will be achieved through an application of the comparative method. 

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

1. Describe basic concepts, methods, and theories associated with cultural anthropology.
2. Use an understanding of anthropology to identify and compare values, beliefs, norms, economic systems, and social organization or institutions in a variety of societies in different world regions.
3. Examine systems of power and social justice issues related to U.S. society and other cultures from an anthropological perspective.
4. Explore fieldwork methods and ethical considerations of doing anthropological fieldwork.

Over the past one hundred years anthropology has moved beyond the colonialist tendency to "study" other cultures, and seeks a deeper understanding of the patterns of behavior associated with differing cultural contexts.  At times the aim of this inquiry transcends "understanding" itself, striving for enhanced appreciation of differing human attitudes, perceptions, and modes of being.  The latter implies an attempt not only to understand, but also to comprehend and learn; in this task we hope to embrace the range of human potential immanent in cultures around the globe. 

 Course activities may include any of the following:

• lecture
• class demonstrations
• small group work
• viewing films or videos
• guest speakers
• community based learning
• field observations and other projects
• group discussions (either formalized "in-class" discussion topics, impromptu "in-class" discussions, or D2L "discussion forums")

Assessment strategies may include any of the following:

• exams
• quizzes
• student presentations
• experiential exercises
• term papers
• short papers or reports

Course content will be based upon a combination of different themes, issues, concepts, and skills relevant to cultural anthropology and based on the following topical lists.

Themes:

• engage in cross cultural comparison
• learn about fieldwork methods
• compare different cultural ideologies (values, norms, world view, cosmology)
• compare different cultural institutions (politics, marriage, kinship, gender roles)
• compare different cultural economic and technological systems
• recognize ethnocentrism
• recognize "naïve realism"
• examine the process of culture change
• compare patterns of enculturation
• examine systems of power and social justice issues

Issues:

• cultural relativism
• ethnocentrism
• social justice
• cross-cultural analysis
• comparative method
• globalization

Concepts:

• cultural adaptation  (the ways in which culture, or cultural systems, confer survivability)
• cultural institutions  (routinely-practiced behavior systems, or modes of sociocultural interaction)
• world view  (one's culturally-defined way of seeing things, or "cultural ethos")
• kinship  (one's culture-specific method of classifying "kin"--both "blood kin" as well as "marital kin")
• marriage  (one's culturally-acceptable method of establishing formalized spousal bonds)
• politics  (the culturally-established negotiation of power through decision-making, whether through formal governmental institutions and statuses, or informally, through day-to-day social interactions)
• economics  (the mechanism of social exchange, undertaken either between individuals or groups of individuals, and for a variety of culturally-designated goals or rationales)
• technology  (the instrumental tools, methods, or practices by means of which specific  goals--e.g., subsistence, or shelter--are achieved)

Skills:

• read and write at the college level