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Course Criteria
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3.00 - 4.00 Credits
An introduction to modern Chinese society and culture, rural and urban, with an emphasis on enduring cultural practices and modern transformation. Using ethnographies and films, this course looks at changing ideas about cosmos, the individual, family, gender, social relations, ethnicity, politics, and the state from late imperial times to the present. Distribution area: alternative voices.
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4.00 Credits
not offered 2008-09 An introduction to the society and culture of the Tibetan, Yi, Naxi, Jingpo, and other peoples living in the region of southwest China, northern Mianmar (Burma) and Tibet. Studies in history, religion, politics, and social structure point out the differences as well as the similarities among these Tibeto-Burman peoples. Distribution area: alternative voices.
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3.00 Credits
An introduction to the history and culture of the highland Andes region of South America. The first half of the course will be focused on pre-Columbian cultures of the Andes with an emphasis on the art, architecture, religion, and political structure of the Inca Empire. The challenges of Spanish conquest and the culture of colonialism that followed will be analyzed for clues to understanding modern Andean culture. The second half of the course will be devoted to an ethnographic survey of modern Andean societies (in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru) with emphasis placed upon issues of race and ethnicity, mestizaje, ritual and religion, exchange and reciprocity, health and medicine, gender and family life, and environmental adaptation. Distribution area: social science or alternative voices.
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3.00 Credits
The course investigates the history and current status of the theories and methods used to obtain, analyze, and interpret information in the archaeological record for the purpose of reconstructing human cultural development. The course material includes projects using artifactual materials curated at the Maxey Museum, and at least one field trip to an archaeological site in the Northwest is planned each semester.
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4.00 Credits
not offered 2008-09 An introduction to the history, theory and practice of ethnographic documentary, focusing on film and video, but including drawing, painting and photography as modes of visualizing the anthropological subject. The work of the course is evenly divided between theory and practice. Students view, read about, and discuss ethnographic documentaries, while simultaneously producing their own in cooperative small groups. Prerequisite: Anthropology 102.
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3.00 - 4.00 Credits
Language is examined as a cultural system. The first half focuses on language structure and includes a discussion of signs, reference, meaning, and categories. The second half examines language use in socially situated contexts (pragmatics), and deals with problems of participant relations, poetic and discourse structure, and the analysis of myth and ritual as linguistic genres.
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3.00 - 4.00 Credits
The course will trace the development conceptually and historically of explanatory theory for socio-cultural phenomena. "Schools" of thought such as Racism, Environmental Determinism, Marxism, Cultural Evolutionalism, Structuralism, and Neo-Boasian Particularism are presented and contrasted with an emphasis on the contribution of each to an emergent synthetic theory of culture. Three periods per week . Prerequisite : eight hours of anthropology or consent of instructor.
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4.00 Credits
not offered 2008-09 A comparative examination of the role of mythology, ritual, and belief in socio-cultural systems. The primary emphasis is on belief and religious systems other than the major organized religions. Three periods per week.
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3.00 Credits
A seminar exploring and attempting to reconcile the differences between symbolic anthropological and historical approaches to the study of events. Readings by Radcliffe-Brown, Cohn, Sahlins, Comaroffs, Ladurie, Burke, Dening, Furet, Braudel, and other anthropological historians and historical anthropologists. Open to all students, but intended especially for upper-level anthropology and history majors. Enrollment will be limited to 12 students.
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3.00 - 4.00 Credits
Medical anthropology looks at the interface between culture and health in all its forms across the spectrum of societies and cultures. A starting point for this course will be distinguishing physical "disease" from cultural understandings of "illness." We will then explore the ways worldviews, beliefs, and practices shape both the incidence of disease and the experience of illness. Topics may include: the relationship between biology, ecological processes and culture, ethnomedicine, trance and healing, political economic determinants of sickness, cultural assumptions of biomedicine, cross-cultural mental disorders, "culture bound illnesses," gender and health, and cultural conceptions of the body. Throughoutcourse, special attention is paid to the possibilities of ethnographic fieldwork for the critical study of health. In the Fall 2008 version of this course, because it coincides with an election year focusing strongly on issues of universal health care, students will carry out assignments aimed at developing an "ethnography of the uninsured" in the Walla Walla Valley.
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