ANTH 260 - Current Themes in Anthropological Theory and Method

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.

Topic for 2015/16a:  Anthropology of Water.  Many anthropologists study water as a focus of political contention and environmental impetus to action. But cultural anthropology’s special contribution to water studies may be its insights into how water is valued, socially and affectively, in culturally and historically different ways. Focusing on the relation between drinking water and wider cultural systems, the course introduces three approaches to drinking water: (1) Water as Global Commodity considers water in the context of the anthropology of gifts and commodities. (2) Semiotics of Bottled Water includes readings from the anthropology of food, consumer culture, and meaning-making in everyday life. (3) Water Projects considers state, corporate, and activist discourses about water with attention to anthropological studies of social and environmental impacts. The course includes group projects on drinking water in local cultural contexts.  Ms. Kaplan.

Topic for 2015/16b: Medical Anthropology. This class offers an advanced introduction to the field of medical anthropology. We will focus especially on methodological and theoretical questions of how one can approach “illness,” “healing,” the “body,” and “medicine” as objects of anthropological and ethnographic study. After an overview of basic theory in medical anthropology, the remainder of the course will examine topics such as medicalization, knowledge, and biomedical authority; the specificity of local medical cultures and theories of disease causation; global inequities, global health, and the political economic shaping of illness; and kinds of communicative practices, graphic artifacts, and technologies that constitute biomedical practice. Mr. Smith.

Two 75-minute periods.