Anthropology 321 - Hunting-Gathering Societies

Institution:

Reed College

Subject:

Description:

Full course for one semester. Hunting-gathering peoples--those who live by foraging for "non-domesticated" plant and animal resources--are variously conceived as "living fossils" of proto-hominid and Paleolithic culture, exemplars of a "natural" condition of human sociality, subaltern victims of successive Neolithic, colonial, and postcolonial dominations, and masters of environmental noblility. After examining foraging in hominid evolution, the course focuses on similarities between prehistoric hunting societies and those known historically after Western Europe's 16th Century planetary reconnaissance. Ethnographic studies focus on Australia, India, Borneo, Africa, the Pacific Northwest Coast, and the Canadian Subarctic and attest the variousness of social designs, settlement patterns, foraging strategies, economies, and ontologies. This variousness indexes a certain failure of foraging societies to compose a definable "type" just as ambiguities accruing to the concept of "domesticated resource" problematize forager/farmer dichotomies. The course concludes with consideration of hunters' relations with non-hunters. Non-hunting societies have subjected hunters to displacement, exploitation, and assimilation; the course examines hunters' past and present tactics of accommodation and resistance. Prerequisite: Anthropology 211. Confer

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.reed.edu

Phone Number:

(503) 771-1112

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

The Course Profile information is provided and updated by third parties including the respective institutions. While the institutions are able to update their information at any time, the information is not independently validated, and no party associated with this website can accept responsibility for its accuracy.