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SOCL134 SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Course Objectives

At the end of the course students will

• Learn central concepts, ideas and discussions of Social and Cultural Anthropology 
• Become familiar with varying cultural beliefs and practices as well as social organizations in various contexts
• Learn to promote a cultural relativist perspective in approaching to diverse beliefs and practices of human groups.
• Utilize anthropological perspectives, ideas and discussions in making sense of the developments in their immediate surroundings
• Learn the basic principles of ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation methods and experiment these methods.

Course Content

The study of human beings in different cultural contexts. Theories of culture and social structure. An examination of major human institutions (kinship, economic, political and religious) in cross-cultural perspective

Course Learning Outcomes

.At the end of the course students will

• Know basic philosophical premises of Socio-Cultural Anthropology such as holism, cross-cultural comparison, cross-historical comparison, cultural relativism, intercultural translation and representation.
• Know ethnographic fieldwork as a central methodology and participant observation and semi-structured interviews as central methods of Social Anthropology and related ethical issues.  
• Know diverse approaches to culture and cultural forms such as language, religion.
• Learn various forms in which kinship relations based on descent and marriage influences the social, political and economic organization in various groups. 
• Know various forms of social stratification along with caste, class, age and gender.
• Learn subsistance patterns, economic systems and political systems in various cultural contexts.