Introduction to Anthropology
Prof. Gerald F. Murray
Visiting Faculty Member, Shanghai Normal University (Fall 2017)
Website: web.clas.ufl.edu/users/murray
Email: WeChat murranth
Course Objectives.
The course is designed to
- Familiarize students with the methods, theories, and findings of of cultural anthropology as it has developed in the West, focusing on its linkages to the four-field approach of American anthropology.
- Give students the opportunity to do simple anthropological fieldwork assignments based on observations and interviews on assigned topics.
- Give students the opportunity to practice making organized classrooms presentations in academic English using Power Point technologies now common in academic conferences
Course content.
This course will provide an overview of the field of Cultural Anthropology. We will begin with a discussion of the phenomena of language and “culture”, which distinguish humans from other animals. In this light we will examinecurrent knowledge of human origins and will discuss the major stages of subsequent human cultural evolution from earliest hunting and gathering adaptations through the later development of states and civilizations. We will then examine the universal systems found around the world and through time in human cultures:
language systems (whth phonological, morphological, and syntactic subsystems),
economic systems (production and exchange),
family systems ( kinship, courtship, marriage, childbirth practices)
political systems (including pre-state, state and supra-state systems) ),
medical systems (arrangements for diagnosing and healing illess) ,
racial and ethnic classification systems,
culturally specific gender role assignments, and the worldwide changes occurring in male and female roles and expectations..
religious systems (interaction with the world of invisible spirits).
We will also discuss “applied anthropology:, that is, the use of anthropology as an applied problem-solving science.
As we examine each topic, we examine how the topic manifests itself in China.
- For example, in examining accounts of human origins, we will contrast the scientific theory of evolution with Chinese origin accounts of Pangu and Nuwa and with the Genesis account that is dominant among religious believers in the West.
- In discussing economic systems, we will examine how Chinese farming has passed from a feudal landlord system, to a brief period of collectivized communal farming, to the current system based on profit-motivated family farms.
- In discussing medical systems, we will also look at the special features of Chinese Traditional Medicine and village shamanism.
- As we discuss human family systems, students will be asked to speak with their grandparents and parents to identify how kinship and marriage and child rearing are different today from in the past.
- As we discuss religious systems, we will focus on different variant of Buddhism and Daoism in China as well as the traditional religious beliefs and practices of ethnic minorities in China.
Course format
Classes will meet, during sixteen weeks, once a week (Wednesday mornings) for three class periods. There will be one 15 minute break halfway through each weekly session. The first part of each session will consist of a lecture by the instructor. The second part of each session will consist of formal student presentations, discussions of the results of field observations, and discussion of the readings.
Requirements.
Students will weekly assigned readings and be prepared to discuss them in class.
Students will have brief weekly or bi-weekly writing assignments to be done in English.
Students will be given simple “fieldwork” assignments in which they will make specific types of observations, write them up, and discuss them in class.
Students will make at least two formal classroom presentations in English.
Students will write a final paper in Mandarin (required by the university), whose content will be discussed in class.
The weekly topics and readings will be posted online.