Cultural Anthropology Instructor: Jim Snoke

Spring Semester, 2007

Reading Assignments – Cultural Anthropology, by Marvin Harris and Orna Johnson

1. Week 1 -- Introduction to concepts and subdivisions of the field. Reading: Chapter 1. Write answers to the 3 questions at the end of the chapter.
2. Week 2 – Chapter 2 – The Nature of Culture. Definitions of culture, theories of culture, societies and their structures, subcultures, concepts of enculturation, cultural relativism, and diffusion. Write answers to the 6 questions at the end of the chapter.
3. Week 3 – Chapter 3 – The Evolution of the Capacity for Culture. Concepts of natural selection, examples from non-human primate cultures, language and its importance among non-human primates, origins and development of cooperative social behavior. Write answers to the 4 questions at the end of the chapter.
4. Week 4 – Chapter 4 – Language and Culture. Introductory concepts and terminology associated with language and linguistics: phonetics, phonemics, morphemes, syntax, grammar, semantic universality, gender and language, coevolution of language and the brain, categories of color and color naming, social class and language, ethnicity and language, code switching, and linguistic change in culture. Write answers to the 5 questions at the end of the chapter.
5. Week 5 – Chapter 5 – Production. Subsistence types around the world and their caloric intake and expenditure. Cultural responses to the evolution of energy production, the carrying capacity of the environment. Write answers to the 7 questions at the end of the chapter.
6. Week 6 – Reproduction – The relationship between production and reproduction in culture, population pressure versus population growth, preindustrial reproductive practices, cost/benefits of raising children, contraception, abortion, and infanticide. Write answers to the 6 questions at the end of the chapter.
7. Week 7 – Economic Organization. Definitions of economy, reciprocal exchange, trade, redistributive exchange, differences between reciprocity and redistribution and the infrastructural bases of each, stratified redistribution, and price market exchange. Write answers to the 4 questions at the end of the chapter.
8. Week 8 – Domestic Life – The nuclear family around the world, polygyny and polyandry, one-parent domestic groups, marriage, the economic aspects of marriage, domestic groups and the avoidance of incest. Write answers to the 6 questions at the end of the chapter.
9. Week 9 – Midterm – Examination involves take-home questions for review of the course to date.
10. Week 10 – Chapter 9 – Descent, Locality, and Kinship. Kinship and Social Organization around the world, patterns of descent and terminology, descent rules, locality patterns, the changing and flexible nature of kinship terms. Write answers to the 4 questions at the end of the chapter.
11. Week 11 – Chapter 10 – Law, Order, and War in Nonstate Societies. Band and village law and order, the subsistence economy versus the political economy, mobilizing public opinion, shamans and their role in politics, headmanship, nonkin associations, warfare among hunters and gatherers, warfare among sedentary village societies, the Big Man, war and female infanticide, war and type of descent pattern. Write answers to the 5 questions at the end of the chapter.
12. Week 12 – Chapter 11 -- Origins of Chiefdoms and the State. The evolution of political systems, from Big Men to Chiefdoms, Infrastructural and Structural aspects of political control, the origins of states, ideology as a source of power, and the state and physical coercion. Write answers to the 5 questions at the end of the chapter.
13. Week 13 – Chapter 12 – Class and Caste. Class and power, the emics and etics of class consciousness, class and lifestyle, peasant classes, the image of limited good, poverty, castes in India. Write answers to the 7 questions at the end of the chapter.
14. Week 14 – Chapter 13 – Ethnicity, race, and racism. Ethnic empowerment, ethnocentrism, biological race and culture, ethnic chauvinism, racism, multi-ethnicity in the United States, race – poverty – crime – drugs – and welfare. Write answers to the 6 questions at the end of the chapter.
15. Week 15 – Chapter 14 – Sexuality and Gender Hierarchies. Male and female sexual strategies, restrictive versus permissive cultures, male and female homosexuality, gender hierarchies, gender and exploitation. Write answers to the 11 questions at the end of the chapter.
16. Week 16 – Chapter 15 – Psychological Anthropology. Culture and personality, national character, male initiation rites, early childhood training, adult personality and subsistence, culture and mental illness. Write answers to the 7 questions at the end of the chapter.
17. Week 17 – Religion, Art, and Globalization. Religion and economics, magic, organization of religious beliefs and practices, religion and the political economy, revitalization movements. Read chapters 16 and 17. Write answers to the questions at the end of each chapter.
18. Week 18 – Applied Anthropology. Political, social, and economic issues world-wide. Read chapter 18 and answer the questions at the end.
19. Week 18 – continued. Final Examination Review.