Course Syllabus: ANTH310 –
Cultural Anthropology
Professor Jim Snoke
Class
Meeting: Tuesday Evening:
Spring
Semester, 2007 – 18 week format
Classroom: D202
Office
Hours: Tues –
Office
Location: Liberal Arts 133 (
Office
Phone: 484-8213
Campus
Email: snokej@arc.losrios.edu
Blackboard
Course Support: http://blackboard.losrios.edu
Instructor
Web Site: http://www.southwestpotters.com
Required
Text: Cultural Anthropology – 7th
Edition, by Marvin Harris and Orna Johnson, Allyn and Bacon, 2006. ISBN: 0-205-36718-6. Sixth or Fifth editions are acceptable – used
copies may be available in our bookstore or online.
Course
Numbers: 11367, 12337
Course
Description:
This course is an introduction to the varieties of customs, traditions
and forms of social organizations in both western and non-western societies.
The main focus of the course is to examine non-western cultures and the social
experiences of development. This course provides valuable background to
students interested in multicultural perspectives and/or anticipating
involvement in global business opportunities or travel. (CAN ANTH 4) AA/AS area C2 & F; CSU area D3; I
Course Objectives: Upon
completion of this course, students will be able to:
Course Reading Assignments:
Students are required to complete the chapters in the text,
and are responsible for any additional reading assignments specifically listed
in the Course Reading Assignments document for each chapter.
Writing Assignments:
Each chapter in the text has a small set of review questions
that appear at the end of the chapter.
Each student is required to type a short-answer essay response to each
of the questions. You must use a word
processor of some kind, and your name and student id number must be included
electronically. These answers are due
each Friday by class time, and may be submitted electronically. I will explain the process during the first
class meeting.
Course Project:
There is a small database project that each of you will
participate in, and it may be done in groups.
Each of you will be responsible for 10 societies taken from a
scaled-down version of Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas. I have extracted data from
Media Access Files:
Each weekly lecture topic and chapter in the text will be
supplemented by an audio file that will explore the topic in further
detail. These audio files will be
available to you on the Blackboard.com course site as well as my own Web
site: www.southwestpotters.com. These files will be stored there as .wav
files and can be played directly from the site without the need to download the
file to your computer. It is essential
that you listen to these files because they will not only supplement the
lectures and reading for each week, but they will also be sources from which
questions will be derived when midterm and final examinations are due. As you listen to the files, take notes just
as if you were in class, and then ask questions about the discussion during
actual class time.
Attendance:
I expect students to come to class prepared to learn. This means that you must attend regularly,
and that you will have read the material for the week prior to the lectures for
that week. I will test on the lectures I
give, and the material that I bring to the lectures is in addition to that
material in the text. I will provide you
with lecture outlines for each of the topics and detail associated with each of
the chapters. These outlines can be used
to organize your lecture notes, and additionally give you the ability to
understand what is missed should any of you be absent during a class meeting. I also expect that you will take notes on the
lectures I present each class meeting.
Testing:
Quizzes will be given regularly on the terms and concepts
associated with each of the chapters.
The format for these is multiple choice, and
each of you will be able to take the quizzes online.
Each of the chapter quizzes will be worth 20 points. There are 19 chapters in the book, and if we
complete the book during the semester, there will be a total of 380 points
possible from the quizzes. The Midterm
and the Final examination are worth 100 points each, and the cultural database
project is worth 50 points. The total
number of points possible upon completion of the course is 630. Extra credit is available over and above the
points just explained. Ask me about
this.
A = 560 –
630
B = 520 –
559
C = 480 –
519
D = 440 –
479
F = Below
440
The above point ranges break out something like this: Hypothetically, if you earned 17 points
(average) per quiz, earned 89 on the Midterm and 89 on the Final,
and a 44 on the database project, your total score would be: 560.
The point ranges for each grade category are more than fair, and each of
you should be able to earn an ‘A’ in the class by studying and keeping up with
the material in the course.
Make-up Exams:
If you miss a quiz, you must make it up. Without a score on each of the assignments,
your point totals will be too low. There
will be no extra credit unless all assignments – including examinations – are
completed. Any make-up test must be
taken within one week of the date missed.
Classroom Behavior:
Students are expected to attend class regularly and to come
prepared to learn. I do not allow cell
phones or pagers in the classroom, and I do not tolerate rudeness of any kind –
either directed at me or at your fellow students. I encourage you to ask questions as long as
they are directly related to the topics covered in the text and lectures. I strongly suggest that you take notes during
class, and that you review and revise your notes
outside of class.
When discussions take place, I insist on following the “Law
of Rationality” or the “Law of Argument”, which requires that unsupported
opinion has no place in an academic environment where data-driven, scientific
study and discourse are taking place. Students
have the right to attend class and to be graded fairly. My charge as a teacher is to provide an
academic environment within which students can learn. You may feel that your rights extend to
unsubstantiated forms of “self-expression” but they do not. I will be happy to discuss your opinions
outside of class, but not in the classroom.
You may hear statements that you do not agree with, but this course is
not a “debate ground” nor is it your responsibility to disagree in the absence
of reading that which you have been assigned.
Your own “sacred cows” can be held sacred if you insist, but you will
read the assignments and at least act as if you understand and appreciate the
magnitude of the issue. If you cannot
or will not come to class interested in the material and willing to learn, you
may find yourself being asked to leave the room. If you need to talk to each other during
class time, leave the room until you are finished with whatever is more
important than my class.
Teaching Philosophy:
Finally, I do not expect students here in my classes to
become anthropology majors. I am
realistic enough to know that by the time you reach the age at which a
collegiate education is in progress, you have already been lulled into thinking
that traditional modes of thought and behavior presented in classes such as
history, government, civics, philosophy, and psychology present acceptable
explanations of “human” behavior. And
worse, you have already accepted notions such as: “
In order to be useful to us, any discipline must attempt to
draw nomothetic conclusions. History,
for example, is almost entirely idiographic, and, in this country at least, falls
into the Carlylean trap that suggests that “great people” make “great
contributions” to the movement of culture through time. In this course we will talk about these
interpretive problems and others. I
believe that if you can begin to see some of the contradictions you have been
given in the past, you will be able to think and write more critically, and
will be less inclined to accept theories and conclusions that are ill-formed.
My task as an anthropologist is to get you to see a different way of looking at the world of human behavior. Anthropology is the original “multicultural” field of study, and its concepts and perspectives are more a way of life for those of us who adopt its mantel. Other disciplines pay lip service to an understanding of human behavior, but each of them falls far short of the mark because they focus too intently on either singular aspects of human behavior, or they put the “causal arrows” exactly backwards in attempting to explain behavioral cause and effect. Any discipline, further, that seeks to explain human behavior by relying on European data (and their world-wide descendants) has missed the mark completely.
I must also tell you that this course is taught from the
perspective of Cultural Materialism, and within that, Applied
Anthropology. My entire career as an
educator has been based on the firm belief that teaching is advocacy. In the words of the great historian, Howard
Zinn: “You can’t be neutral on a moving
train”, and this course and my approach to it are anything but neutral. The real reason to study the past, including cultures
of the past, is not to see what life was like in an earlier time and marvel at
how different, simple, rudimentary, or “primitive” they are, but rather, to
study them to see – as much as is possible – exactly where we, in the modern
world went wrong. Modern cultures are
not “improvements” of past cultures – they are corruptions of them. You have grown up in an age when modern
technologies are already established, and where each new “innovation” is
eagerly awaited. Each of those
innovations, however, come with a terrible price, and
one that the so-called “primitive” peoples of the world did not have to pay –
at least those who were pre-agricultural.
Once agriculture began, and with it settled life, humans exacted a
monumental tribute from the environment as well as from each other. So that you can “catch up” with the changes
and their effects on life world-wide, I have digitalized some excerpts from
several books and articles that I will require that you read.
So – welcome to “Cultural Anthropology: A first look at culture and behavior
holistically”. We don’t purport to have
answers to every question, but we do have data to support our hypotheses and we
are willing to modify those hypotheses when new data require that we do
so. I want you to make use of that data
as well. Most subjects are taught using
the “generalization/data method”. I want
you to be able to make use of data to draw your own conclusions -- the
“data/generalization method”, and I want you to learn to write using the
concepts and data taken from your reading so that you are able to demonstrate
that your thinking follows etic mental and behavioral cause and effect, not
emic mental and behavioral supposition.
When you read this on the first day of class, ask me how you can begin
to do it and what the terms “etic” and “emic” mean. Harris will introduce them, but my task is to
explain them in such a way that they become part of your thought process
throughout your college education and beyond.
Having said all this, I believe that this course and the subject matter
it embraces is one of the most interesting I have encountered in my college
career. Learning is fun, and this class
has always been a great deal of fun – and it is my hope that we can all enjoy
the next 18 weeks together.
Jim Snoke