ANTH 101
How To Be Human Fall 2022 (also offered Spring 2023)
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
This is not the current course catalog

Is there such a thing as ‘human nature’? This course is an introduction to cultural anthropology (also known as social or socio-cultural anthropology), the study of human society in all its profound variety. Through deep, sustained, systematic participation in and observation of a particular social context, anthropologists seek to comprehend and illuminate the human condition. Anthropologists’ insights into the ways in which human institutions – language, economy, religion, social stratification, law, sexuality, art, the state, and many more – are culturally constructed and reproduced have transformed the way the world is understood. Puncturing ethnocentrism, anthropology’s attentiveness to the ideas and practices of cultures in every part of the globe vastly enriches the archive of human answers to human problems. The distinctive methods of the discipline enable anthropologists to discover patterns and phenomena not discernible in other modes of enquiry. With such findings anthropologists are able to make critical interventions in public discourse and to demonstrate how deeply we are all shaped by cultural forces.