Syllabus
Issues are divided into three thematic parts:
A) Nature vs nurture / Genes vs culture
A1) Is It Natural for Adopted Children to Want to Find Out About Their Birth Parents?
A2) Are Yanomami Violence and Warfare Natural Human Efforts to Maximize Reproductive Fitness?
A3) Is Ethnic Conflict Inevitable?
B) Ethics and methods
B1) Was Margaret Mead’s Fieldwork on Samoan Adolescents Fundamentally Flawed?
B2) Did Napoleon Chagnon’s Research Methods Harm the Yanomami Indians of Venezuela?
B3) Should Anthropologists Work to Eliminate the Practice of Female Circumcision?
B4) Should Anthropologist Refrain to Collaborate with Military?
C) Epistemological and Ontological Questions
C1) Do Native Peoples Today Invent Their Traditions?
C2) Should Cultural Anthropology Stop Trying to Model Itself as a Science?
C3) Does Human Nature Lie in Cultural Universals?
For more details see: http://moodle.fhs.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=909.
Annotation
The course will introduce students to selected issues in sociocultural anthropology through the means of reading and interpretation of anthropological papers. It aims to develop critical anthropological thinking and interpretive skills. Each class will deal with one controversial issue in anthropology which remains unresolved.
Each issue will be presented through two papers holding antagonist positions.
Students will be expected to read both papers designated for each week in advance, before each class, and comprehend them to that extent to be able to discuss them in class.