ANTHRO 3331 - Anthropology and Culture Change

Institution:

Temple University

Subject:

Description:

For the last three centuries, intellectual and popular discourses have advanced conflicting ideas about culture change as either a welcome sign of progress or a detrimental process of irremediable loss. Considering this tension as constitutive of the topic at hand, the first part of the course will critically examine various theoretical explanations for culture change, its causes and results, as well as the social currency of “culture” and “change” in various social projects; for example in social, religious, and artistic movements. This examination will also include the testing the conceptual vigor of terms such as acculturation, syncretism, creolization, and transculturation, some of which have been recently revamped by some social theorists to depict the flux, indeterminacy, and heterogeneity of the world under globalization, while ignoring their past use within discriminatory social tactics. Contemporary ethnographic case studies will offer an opportunity to examine these issues, particularly the ways in which flows of, as well as restrictions upon, capital, people, commodities, media, and ideologies are affecting the lives of diverse social groups in different parts of the world, some of which eagerly embrace change while others strategically resist it. Mode: Seminar.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

WWW.TEMPLE.EDU

Phone Number:

(215) 204-7000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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