Results for ANTHRO

This course introduces basic anthropological concepts and presents the discipline¿s distinctive perspective on society and culture. The power of this perspective is illustrated by exploring vividly-written ethnographic cases that show how anthropological approaches illuminate contemporary social and political issues in a range of different cultural sites.

What does it mean to be a Native American in the 21st century? Beyond traditional portrayals of military conquests, cultural collapse, and assimilation, the relationships between Native Americans and American society. Focus is on three themes leading to in-class moot court trials: colonial encounters and colonizing discourses; frontiers and boundaries; and sovereignty of self and nation. Topics include gender in native communities, American Indian law, readings by native authors, and Indians in film and popular culture.

Practical training in the collection and analysis of linguistic data from native speakers of a language largely unknown to the investigator. Documentation of endangered languages. Research goals, field trip preparation, ethics (including human subjects, cooperation with local investigators, and governmental permits), working in the community, technical equipment, and analytical strategies. Emphasis is on the use of recording devices and computers in collection and analysis. Students are strongly encouraged to make a commitment to both 274A and 274B in the same year. Prerequisites: One course in phonetics or phonology and syntax, or permission of the instructor. Open to undergraduates with permission of instructor only.

In recent decades genes have increasingly become endowed with the cultural power to explain many aspects of human life: physical traits, diseases, behaviors, ancestral histories, and identity. In this course we will explore a deepening societal intrigue with genetic accounts of personal identity and political meaning. Students will engage with varied interdisciplinary sources that range from legal cases to scientific articles, medical ethics guidelines, films, and anthropological works (ethnographies). We will explore several case studies where the use of DNA markers (as proof of heritage, disease risk, or legal standing) has spawned cultural movements that are biosocial in nature. Throughout we will look at how new social movements are organized around gene-based definitions of personhood, health, and legal truth. Several examples include political analyses of citizenship and belonging. On this count we will discuss issues of African ancestry testing as evidence in slavery reparations cases, revisit debates on whether Black Freedman should be allowed into the Cherokee and Seminole Nations, and hear arguments on whether people with genetic links to Jewish groups should have a right of return to Israel. We will also examine the ways genetic knowledge may shape different health politics at the individual and societal level. On this count we will do close readings of how personal genomics testing companies operate, we will investigate how health disparities funding as well as orphan disease research take on new valences when re-framed in genetic terms, and we will see how new articulations of global health priorities are emerging through genetic research in places like Africa. Finally we will explore social implications of forensic uses of DNA. Here we will examine civil liberties concerns about genetic familial searching in forensic databases that disproportionately target specific minority groups as criminal suspects, and inquire into the use of DNA to generate digital mugshots of suspects that re-introduce genetic concepts of race.

This course will examine the impact of colonial policies and post-colonial development on patterns of sickness, wellness and health care in twentieth century sub-Saharan Africa. Some topics will include: the role of colonial science in the formulation of ideas about race, colonial epidemics, labor migration and disease, urban health, encounters between African healers and biomedicine, histories of HIV/AIDS, the impact of debt and Structural Adjustment Programs on public health, and the politics of humanitarian interventions in African health. Priority given to history majors and minors.

Emphasis is on how health, illness, and healing are understood, experienced, and constructed in social, cultural, and historical contexts. Topics: biopower and body politics, gender and reproductive technologies, illness experiences, medical diversity and social suffering, and the interface between medicine and science.

Preference to Anthropology majors. Anthropological interpretations of other societies contain assumptions about Western societies. How underlying assumptions and implicit categories have influenced the presentation of data in major anthropological monographs. Emphasis is on Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and anthropological analyses of non-Western societies.

Dynamics of culturally inherited human behavior and its relationship to social and physical environments. Topics include a history of ecological approaches in anthropology, subsistence ecology, sharing, risk management, territoriality, warfare, and resource conservation and management. Case studies from Australia, Melanesia, Africa, and S. America.

This course provides a broad introduction to various ways of designing anthropological questions and associated methods for collecting evidence and supporting arguments. We review the inherent links between how a question is framed, the types of evidence that can address the question, and way that data are collected. Research activities such as interviewing, participant observation, quantitative observation, archival investigation, ecological survey, linguistic methodology, tracking extended cases, and demographic methods are reviewed. Various faculty and specialists will be brought in to discuss how they use different types of evidence and methods for supporting arguments in anthropology.

Practicum. Students develop independent research projects and write research proposals. How to formulate a research question; how to integrate theory and field site; and step-by-step proposal writing.

Independent research conducted under faculty supervision, normally taken junior or senior year in pursuit of a senior paper or an honors project. May be repeated for credit.

Taken in the final quarter before graduation. Independent study and work on senior paper for students admitted to the program. Prerequisite: consent of program adviser and instructor.

Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Opportunity for students to pursue their specialization in an institutional setting such as a laboratory, clinic, research institute, or government agency. May be repeated for credit. Service Learning Course (certified by Haas Center).

The course examines the impact of new research in epigenetics on our understanding of long-term cultural change. The course examines the various attempts that have been made over recent decades to find a synthesis between cultural and biological evolution. These approaches, often termed neo-Darwinian, include memes, dual inheritance theory, theories of cultural selection and transmission, niche construction theory and macro-evolutionary approaches. Research in all these areas will be examined, with particular reference to explanations for the origins of agriculture, but also including other transformations, and critiqued. New research in epigenetics offers an alternative non-Darwinian evolutionary perspective that avoids many of the problems and pitfalls in the neo-Darwinian approaches. Cultural evolution comes to be viewed as cumulative, directional and Lamarckian, since heritable epigenetic variation can underlie evolutionary change. Epigenetics opens the way for human cultural entanglements to become the drivers for evolutionary change, thus allowing the full range of social processes studied in the social and cultural sciences to take their place in the study and analysis of long-term change.

According to Hawkes (1954), religion or ideology is the most difficult part of social life to access archaeologically. Luckily, not all scholars agree; according to Fogelin (2008) 'religion is not something people think about, but something people do¿. Thus, archaeology, an inherently multidisciplinary subject that studies material culture, is well suited to delve into religion and its underpinnings.nThis course will explore religious practices, as they can be defined and interpreted from archaeological contexts spanning the Paleolithic to historic periods. Definitions of religion differ from author to author but they mostly agree that religion is a fully integrated and thus integral part of human social life. Politics, economics, identity and social class influence religion, and religion influences how these forces play out in society. Thus, the course will also examine the significance of ritual and religion in a variety of social contexts.

This seminar will survey the archaeology of South Asia, beginning with animal and plant domestication in the early Holocene and ending with the late Medieval Period. Given its chronological breadth and spatial scope, the class will interrogate a variety of social and historical contexts that contribute to a broad range of anthropological research concerns¿including the intersections of authority, ritual, alterity and landscape¿and at the same time critically consider the epistemological bases for their analyses through archaeological remains.

What does it mean to be a Native American in the 21st century? Beyond traditional portrayals of military conquests, cultural collapse, and assimilation, the relationships between Native Americans and American society. Focus is on three themes leading to in-class moot court trials: colonial encounters and colonizing discourses; frontiers and boundaries; and sovereignty of self and nation. Topics include gender in native communities, American Indian law, readings by native authors, and Indians in film and popular culture.

Language classification and its implications for human prehistory. The role of linguistic data in analyzing prehistoric populations, cultures, contact, and migrations. Comparison of linguistic and biological classifications. Reconstruction, proto-vocabularies, and culture. Archaeological decipherment and the origins and evolution of writing. Archaeological and genetic evidence for human migrations. (DA-A; HEF II,III)

Heritage is always political, it is typically said. Such a statement might refer to the everyday politics of local stakeholder interests on one end of the spectrum, or the volatile politics of destruction and erasure of heritage during conflict, on the other. If heritage is always political then one might expect that the workings of World Heritage might be especially fraught given the international dimension. In particular, the intergovernmental system of UNESCO World Heritage must navigate the inherent tension between state sovereignty and nationalist interests and the wider concerns of a universal regime. The World Heritage List has over 1000 properties has many such contentious examples, including sites in Iraq, Mali, Syria, Crimea, Palestine and Cambodia. As an organization UNESCO was born of war with an explicit mission to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally, but has found it¿s own history increasingly entwined with that of international politics and violence.

¿Social network¿ may now be a household term but network concepts long predate the internet age. In fact, networks are an important part of some of the earliest (and most enduring) theoretical ideas in anthropology and sociology. Starting from the premise that relationships between individuals provide the raw material for the emergence of social structure, this course focuses on how network analysis can be used to examine and explain both system-level patterning and outcomes for individuals. In addition to the theoretical foundations of social network analysis, students will learn basic techniques for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing network data, through workshops in class and hands-on assignments. We will also explore contemporary applications of network analysis in economic anthropology, kinship studies, human evolutionary studies, and epidemiology, among other topics. Prerequisite: None. Students will be expected to learn some mathematical concepts.

This course explores new modes of writing and researching in anthropology. Multispecies ethnography considers nonhuman life as objects of analysis¿animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses¿as having political lives and import. By studying how these nonhuman entities, including metals, interact with and shape human existence, multispecies ethnographers who study ¿life¿ ¿ from the human down to the microbe, must engage in multiple worlds: from the jungle to the laboratory, from the field to the desk. This course will incorporate readings on ¿zoe¿ and ¿bios¿, the making of species categories, relationships between the human and nonhuman, current debates on breaking with the species concept and ¿the rights of mother earth.¿ We will read the conceptual works in conjunction with current multispecies ethnographies to give grounding to the theory.

Study of the human skeleton (a. k. a. human osteology), as it bears on other disciplines, including medicine, forensics, archaeology, and paleoanthropology (human evolution). Basic bone biology, anatomy, and development, emphasizing hands-on examination and identification of human skeletal parts, their implications for determining an individual¿s age, sex, geographic origin, and health status, and for the evolutionary history of our species. Three hours of lecture and at least three hours of supervised and independent study in the lab each week.

This workshop aims to bring together scholars from the social sciences, humanities, medicine and bio-science and technology to explore the ways that health and illness are made through complex social forces. We aim for informal, interactive sessions, full of debate and good will. Dates of meetings will be listed in the notes section in the time schedule.

A few years ago, health experts began calling out tobacco as engendering a global health crisis, categorizing the cigarette as the world's greatest weapon of mass destruction. A "global health crisis"? What merits that title if not tobacco use? A hundred million people were killed by tobacco in the 20th century, and ten times that number ¿ a billion people ¿ are predicted to die prematurely from exposure to cigarette smoke over the next hundred years. How has tobacconcome to be labeled a global health crisis over the last decade and what has been the political response? From whence does activism and ongoing complacency regarding tobacco arise? How are they created in different cultural contexts?nnThis course aims to provide students conceptual tools to tackle two specific thought projects: (1) to understand how institutional actors compete to define a situation in the world today as a problem of global health, and (2) to understand the sociocultural means by which something highly dangerous to health such as the cigarette is made both politically contentious and inert. On both fronts, special attention will be given to the ways global health activism and complacency unfold in the U.S. and China.

Mobility, whether in the form of seasonal or permanent migration, is an ancient practice necessary for many subsistence strategies, including hunting-and-gathering and pastoralism. Many new forms of mobility have emerged and now it is nearly impossible to consider a patch of human society that is not engaged in or directly impacted by habitual, patterned geographic mobility. Today, almost everywhere in the world, people can get farther, faster; urbanization, environmental degradation, and civil unrest are driving groups of people who do not have a cultural tradition of nomadic migration to adopt a mobile lifestyle¿sometimes permanently, sometimes temporarily¿in search of new economic or resource opportunities. In this seminar course, we will explore modern patterns of human mobility and migration as adaptive strategies for predictably and unpredictably changing environments. Using a framework of biological and cultural adaptation, we will discuss the major types of current human mobility (e.g. nomadism, immigration, migrant labor, displacement) and how they influence and are influenced by social systems, resource access, and health.

Techniques of interpreting data, organizing bibliographic materials, writing, editing and revising. Preparation of papers for conferences and publications in anthropology. Seniors register for 199; master's students register for 299.

This course introduces basic anthropological concepts and presents the discipline¿s distinctive perspective on society and culture. The power of this perspective is illustrated by exploring vividly-written ethnographic cases that show how anthropological approaches illuminate contemporary social and political issues in a range of different cultural sites.

The course examines the impact of new research in epigenetics on our understanding of long-term cultural change. The course examines the various attempts that have been made over recent decades to find a synthesis between cultural and biological evolution. These approaches, often termed neo-Darwinian, include memes, dual inheritance theory, theories of cultural selection and transmission, niche construction theory and macro-evolutionary approaches. Research in all these areas will be examined, with particular reference to explanations for the origins of agriculture, but also including other transformations, and critiqued. New research in epigenetics offers an alternative non-Darwinian evolutionary perspective that avoids many of the problems and pitfalls in the neo-Darwinian approaches. Cultural evolution comes to be viewed as cumulative, directional and Lamarckian, since heritable epigenetic variation can underlie evolutionary change. Epigenetics opens the way for human cultural entanglements to become the drivers for evolutionary change, thus allowing the full range of social processes studied in the social and cultural sciences to take their place in the study and analysis of long-term change.

According to Hawkes (1954), religion or ideology is the most difficult part of social life to access archaeologically. Luckily, not all scholars agree; according to Fogelin (2008) 'religion is not something people think about, but something people do¿. Thus, archaeology, an inherently multidisciplinary subject that studies material culture, is well suited to delve into religion and its underpinnings.nThis course will explore religious practices, as they can be defined and interpreted from archaeological contexts spanning the Paleolithic to historic periods. Definitions of religion differ from author to author but they mostly agree that religion is a fully integrated and thus integral part of human social life. Politics, economics, identity and social class influence religion, and religion influences how these forces play out in society. Thus, the course will also examine the significance of ritual and religion in a variety of social contexts.

This seminar will survey the archaeology of South Asia, beginning with animal and plant domestication in the early Holocene and ending with the late Medieval Period. Given its chronological breadth and spatial scope, the class will interrogate a variety of social and historical contexts that contribute to a broad range of anthropological research concerns¿including the intersections of authority, ritual, alterity and landscape¿and at the same time critically consider the epistemological bases for their analyses through archaeological remains.

Language classification and its implications for human prehistory. The role of linguistic data in analyzing prehistoric populations, cultures, contact, and migrations. Comparison of linguistic and biological classifications. Reconstruction, proto-vocabularies, and culture. Archaeological decipherment and the origins and evolution of writing. Archaeological and genetic evidence for human migrations. (DA-A; HEF II,III)

Heritage is always political, it is typically said. Such a statement might refer to the everyday politics of local stakeholder interests on one end of the spectrum, or the volatile politics of destruction and erasure of heritage during conflict, on the other. If heritage is always political then one might expect that the workings of World Heritage might be especially fraught given the international dimension. In particular, the intergovernmental system of UNESCO World Heritage must navigate the inherent tension between state sovereignty and nationalist interests and the wider concerns of a universal regime. The World Heritage List has over 1000 properties has many such contentious examples, including sites in Iraq, Mali, Syria, Crimea, Palestine and Cambodia. As an organization UNESCO was born of war with an explicit mission to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally, but has found it¿s own history increasingly entwined with that of international politics and violence.

This course explores new modes of writing and researching in anthropology. Multispecies ethnography considers nonhuman life as objects of analysis¿animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses¿as having political lives and import. By studying how these nonhuman entities, including metals, interact with and shape human existence, multispecies ethnographers who study ¿life¿ ¿ from the human down to the microbe, must engage in multiple worlds: from the jungle to the laboratory, from the field to the desk. This course will incorporate readings on ¿zoe¿ and ¿bios¿, the making of species categories, relationships between the human and nonhuman, current debates on breaking with the species concept and ¿the rights of mother earth.¿ We will read the conceptual works in conjunction with current multispecies ethnographies to give grounding to the theory.

Study of the human skeleton (a. k. a. human osteology), as it bears on other disciplines, including medicine, forensics, archaeology, and paleoanthropology (human evolution). Basic bone biology, anatomy, and development, emphasizing hands-on examination and identification of human skeletal parts, their implications for determining an individual¿s age, sex, geographic origin, and health status, and for the evolutionary history of our species. Three hours of lecture and at least three hours of supervised and independent study in the lab each week.

This workshop aims to bring together scholars from the social sciences, humanities, medicine and bio-science and technology to explore the ways that health and illness are made through complex social forces. We aim for informal, interactive sessions, full of debate and good will. Dates of meetings will be listed in the notes section in the time schedule.

Emphasis is on how health, illness, and healing are understood, experienced, and constructed in social, cultural, and historical contexts. Topics: biopower and body politics, gender and reproductive technologies, illness experiences, medical diversity and social suffering, and the interface between medicine and science.

Mobility, whether in the form of seasonal or permanent migration, is an ancient practice necessary for many subsistence strategies, including hunting-and-gathering and pastoralism. Many new forms of mobility have emerged and now it is nearly impossible to consider a patch of human society that is not engaged in or directly impacted by habitual, patterned geographic mobility. Today, almost everywhere in the world, people can get farther, faster; urbanization, environmental degradation, and civil unrest are driving groups of people who do not have a cultural tradition of nomadic migration to adopt a mobile lifestyle¿sometimes permanently, sometimes temporarily¿in search of new economic or resource opportunities. In this seminar course, we will explore modern patterns of human mobility and migration as adaptive strategies for predictably and unpredictably changing environments. Using a framework of biological and cultural adaptation, we will discuss the major types of current human mobility (e.g. nomadism, immigration, migrant labor, displacement) and how they influence and are influenced by social systems, resource access, and health.

May be repeated for credit.

Techniques of interpreting data, organizing bibliographic materials, writing, editing and revising. Preparation of papers for conferences and publications in anthropology. Seniors register for 199; master's students register for 299.

The purpose of this course is to introduce key themes in social theory - the social, the modern subject, reason, autonomy, civility, interests, exchange, morality, life, the senses - through a reading of classic texts from Descartes up to psychoanalysis and phenomenology. nnEach section has original texts, commentaries, and background readings that place these texts in their deeper historical setting. Many of these commentaries trace how practical theories of 'lower' or minor selves - the subject people of the colonies, slaves, and other - were integral to the very development of ideas of the modern, autonomous and reasonable self in the western world. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

The history of archaeological thought emphasizing recent debates. Evolutionary theories, behavioral archaeology, processual and cognitive archaeology, and approaches termed feminist and post-processual archaeology in the context of wider debate in adjacent disciplines. The application and integration of theory on archaeological problems and issues. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Required graduate seminar for CS track. The history of anthropological theory and key theoretical and methodological issues in cultural anthropology. Prerequistes: this course is open only to Ph.D. students in anthropology or by permission of the instructor.

This seminar explores the linguistic construction of race and ethnicity across a wide variety of contexts and communities. Throughout the course, we will take a comparative perspective and highlight how different racial/ethnic formations participate in similar, yet different, ways of "doing race" though language, interaction and culture. Readings draw heavily from perspectives in (linguistic) anthropology and sociolinguistics. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

What does it mean to want to help, to organize humanitarian aid, in times of crisis? At first glance, the impulse to help issui generis a good one. Helping is surely preferable to indifference and inaction. This does not mean that humanitarian interventions entail no ethical or political stakes or that they are beyond engaged critique. We need to critique precisely that which we value, and to ask some hard questions, among them these: What are the differences among humanitarianism, charity, and philanthropy? What of social obligations and solidarities? How does the neoliberal world order currently create structural inequalities that ensure the reproduction of poverty and violence? How does the current order of things resemble or differ from the colonial world order? This course examines the history of humanitarian sensibilities and the emergence of organized action in the cause of humanity. In the early years of humanitarian intervention, political neutrality was a key principle; it has now come under ever greater analytical and political scrutiny. We will examine the reasons for the politicization and militarization of aid -- be it humanitarian aid in natural disasters or political crises; development programs in the impoverished south (¿the Third World¿), or peace-keeping. We will end with a critical exploration of the concept of human rights, humanity, and personhood. The overall methodological aim of the course is to demonstrate what insights an ethnographic approach to the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of humanitarianism can offer. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

This is a graduate level course (open to undergraduates with permission) in archaeological field methods at several archaeological and cultural sites in the San Francisco Bay area. This is a practical course designed to help students identify potential archaeological sites (using GIS) historical maps, historical archives and extant site reports. Students will gain hands-on experience with mapping, field survey and strategies and methods of field excavation. Study of local artifact types and lab techniques for artifact cleaning and identification and written analysis. The course emphasizes a community based model of archaeology, working with members of local indigenous cultures. The seminar will begin with readings and classroom instruction and proceed to the field. Students will be required to hike to field sites and conduct experiments using a variety of equipment, recording devices and strategies. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

Reading seminar; restricted to Anthropology graduate students. The anthropology of language and semiotics. Focus is on the limits of textualism, and alternative semiotic and epistemic bases for theorizing language and representation. No linguistic anthropology course work required. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

This seminar will focus on the emerging body of literature on the materiality of the production, circulation, and mediation of paperwork as constituitive of modern forms of governance. We will discuss specific genres of paperworks - notes, memos, files, documents, as well as archives and other mnemonic technologies - both as cultural practices and reflexive objects, and examine how they produce modern social epistemologies of accountability, evidence, the fact, and truth in the fields of law, business, and public administration, as well as in civil society generally. Readings will include works by Max Weber, Bruno Latour, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Cornelia Vismann, Ann Stoler, and others. Prerequisite: graduate standing or consent of instructor.

Science and technology are important cultural products that often dramatically reorganize various aspects of human life. In this course we will explore how recent innovations in the life sciences and biomedicine may reconfigure crucial elements of social institutions, lend new structures to identity politics, and often change the way we interact with and conceive of nature. We will examine these issues in various global settings to explore how everyday politics shape politics of life in different locales. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

The relationships between people and things. The world of objects plays a major role in materialism and the anthropology of material culture. Approaches that break down subject-object opposition. New social and psychological approaches that explore the mutual constitution of people and things, and object and subject. Approaches in which objects are seen to have agency, and people are seen as entangled in object worlds. Authors include Hegel, Marx, Benjamin, Miller, Gell, and Latour. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

This interdisciplinary arts/anthropology lab class will study and practice methods from performing arts to expand our understandings of cultural contact and develop methods of thinking more expansively about the creative elements and possibilities for ethnographic fieldwork and critical cultural studies. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

Introduction to psychological anthropology as a subfield. We read through ethnographies on the anthropology of childhood, of emotion, of human relationship and of cognition, drawing analytic tools not only from anthropology but also from psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, and cognitive science. We will read some earlier classic work but focus on more contemporary theory. Prerequisite, by instructor consent.

Required of fifth-year Ph.D. students returning from dissertation field research and in the process of writing dissertations and preparing for professional employment. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Required of second- and third-year Ph.D. students writing the qualifying paper or the qualifying written examination. May be repeat for credit.

Required of second- and third-year Ph.D. students writing the qualifying paper or the qualifying written examination. May be repeated for credit one time.

Supervised experience as assistant in one undergraduate course.

Supervised work for terminal and coterminal master's students writing the master's project in the final quarter of the degree program.

Graduate student reading group on a thematic topic of interest.nIntended for first or second-year cohort PhD students.nSections: Liisa Malkki, Sylvia Yanagisako, Thomas Hansen, Paulla Ebron, andnMiyako Inoue

Department Colloquia Lecture Series. Lectures presented on a variety of anthropological topics. Colloquium is intended for the Department of Anthropology's under graduate majors and graduate students. May be repeated for credit.

Current topics and trends in cultural/social anthropology, archaeology, and environmental and ecological anthropology. Enrollment in this noon-time series is restricted to the Department of Anthropology Masters students and First and Second-year PhD students.

Supervised work on a research project with an individual faculty member. May be repeated for credit.

Supervised work for a qualifying paper, examination, or project with an individual faculty member.

Provides graduate students with the opportunity to pursue their area of specialization in an institutional setting such as a laboratory, clinic, research institute, or government agency.