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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
Structured around choices and constraints regarding sources and uses of energy by households, firms, and governments, introduces managerial, economic, political, social and cultural frameworks for describing and explaining behavior at various levels of aggregation. Includes examples of cost-benefit, organizational and institutional analyses of energy generation, distribution, and consumption. Topics include the role of markets and prices; financial analysis of energy-related investments; institutional path dependence; economic and political determinants of government regulation and the impact of regulation on decisions; and other forms of government action and social norms regarding desired behavior and opportunities for businesses and consumers, including feedback into the political/regulatory system. Examples drawn from a wide range of countries and settings.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: 14.01 or permission of instructor
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3.00 Credits
Offers an international perspective on the environment. Using environmental conflict to consider the stakes that groups in various parts of the world have in nature, while also exploring how ecological and social dynamics interact and change over time, subject considers such controversial environmental issues as: nuclear contamination in Eastern Europe; genetic bioprospecting in Mexico; toxic run-off in the rural US; the Bhopal accident in India; and the impact of population growth in the Third World.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines the relationship between drugs, politics, and society in cross-cultural perspective; use of mind-altering and habit-forming substances by "traditional societies"; the development of a global trade in sugar, opium, and cocaine with the rise of capitalism; and the use and abuse of alcohol, LSD, and Prozac in the US. Finishes by looking at the war on drugs, shifting attitudes to tobacco, and by evaluating America's drug laws.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Offers an anthropological perspective on international development. Students consider development, not in policy or technical terms, but through its social and political dynamics and its impacts on daily life. Examines the various histories of, and meanings given to, international development as well as the social organization of aid agencies and projects. Follows examples of specific projects in various parts of the world. Examples: water projects for pastorialists in Africa, factory development in Southeast Asia, and international nature parks in Indonesia.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Advanced exploration of documentary film theory and production that offers a social scientific perspective on documentaries about science, engineering, and related fields. Student work focuses on final digital video projects. Discussion and readings tailored to the questions and issues raised by specific student projects; labs focus on the technical skills required to complete more advanced work. Enrollment limited.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: 21A.339J or permission of instructor
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3.00 Credits
Examines computers anthropologically, as artifacts revealing the social orders and cultural practices that create them. Students read classic texts in computer science along with cultural analyses of computing history and contemporary configurations. Explores the history of automata, automation and capitalist manufacturing; cybernetics and WWII operations research; artificial intelligence and gendered subjectivity; robots, cyborgs, and artificial life; creation and commoditization of the personal computer; the growth of the Internet as a military, academic, and commercial project; hackers and gamers; technobodies and virtual sociality. Emphasis is placed on how ideas about gender and other social differences shape labor practices, models of cognition, hacking culture, and social media.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. Examine such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. Offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology - ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic - are changing. Examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, asks how we might answer Erwin Schrodinger's 1944 question, "What Is Life?", today.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines the ways humans experience sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. Consider how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across sociocultural and scientific contexts. Learn how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally as well as the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, sound recording, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of sound ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the digital age are also addressed.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines how people learn, practice, and evaluate traditional and contemporary craft techniques. Social science theories of design, embodiment, apprenticeship learning, skill, labor, expertise, and tacit knowledge are used to explore distinctions among art, craft, and science. Also discusses the commoditization of craft into market goods, collectible art, and tourism industries. Ethnographic and historical case studies include textiles, Shaker furniture, glassblowing, quilting, cheesemaking, industrial design, home and professional cooking, factory and laboratory work, CAD/CAM. Demonstrations, optional field trips, and/or hands-on craft projects may be included.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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3.00 Credits
Examines how people acquire the skills necessary to perform expert activities, using apprenticeship as a subject and method for anthropological research. Case studies cover theories of learning and their application in a wide range of domains, from medical imaging, lawyering, and navigating a warship to capoeira, dance, and jazz piano. Students conduct ethnographic and experiential activities, generating original data for analysis.
Prerequisite:
Prereq: None
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