The ways in which people order their lives and understand themselves
as individuals who belong to communities is at the heart of social and
cultural anthropology.  As social beings, all peoples have to
confront and resolve similar challenges: survival and well-being;
balancing the needs and desires of individuals with those of society;
establishing relationships, defining marriage and kinship; resolving
conflict; finding a satisfying identity; reproduction of people and
society; explaining one's place in the world and interpreting the
events of life.  We will explore the ways different societies deal
with these and other issues.

We will also examine the ways in which social and cultural
anthropologists understand people and their lives.  As
anthropologists, we spend extended periods of time with those peoples
whose lives we hope to understand, at a minimum one year and for many,
a lifetime.  The results of such empirical field research
are ethnographic texts that tell the stories of people's lives.  Such
ethnographies provide the reading for this course.

As we read about and work through the different topics, two kinds of
questions will guide our understanding: the first examines how
individuals shape their lives within specific cultures; the second
examines the processes by which anthropologists understand the
cultures in which they work.

Texts for the course:

Faces of Anthropology
Farrer, Claire.  Thunder Rides a Black Horse
Piot, Charles.  Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa.
One other ethnographic text and a few readings on e reserve.

Requirements:

Reading is to be done on the first day of the time period for a
particular topic.
Two mini-field projects
One journal article
Class Participation and short assignments Midterm, Quizzes, and Final