Department of Anthropology & Archaeology
Anthropology 1593 The science of mankind in the widest sense, coined from Greek: anthropos “human being” + –logos “study of.”
ANTH205 is an introduction to contemporary cultures in the Pacific region. It is particularly concerned with how these cultures construct and live with difference, inequalities and change in both their cultural and material environments. It also explores the changing nature of Pacific cultural identities – from the ‘messy entanglements’ of the past and the present, tradition and modernity, the local and global, the indigenous and the exotic and the material and cultural. Specific case studies may cover topics such as representation, colonisation, gender, ethnicity, environmental exploitation, ‘resource wars’, governance, poverty, political movements and resistance.
| Timetable/Fees | ANTH205 |
| EFTS | 0.15 EFTS |
| Points | 18 points |
| Teaching Period(s) | First Semester |
| Lecturers | Assoc Prof Jacqui Leckie |
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This course explores the complex cultural, political and economic dynamics of globalisation. It takes a person-centred and ‘ground-up’ cross-cultural perspective on globalisation. Globalisation involves the reconfiguration of time and space generating increased flows of goods, services, money, people and images across borders resulting in demands for both the liberalisation and regulation of economies and societies, resulting in ‘hybrid’ cultural values and practices. In this course, we will take care always to ground our analyses of global processes in real life situations and from these identify some of the key problems that have emerged as a consequence of globalisation and consider possible solutions to these issues. Themes and issues to be covered include: definitions, analyses and critiques of globalisation; production, consumption and distribution circuits (post-fordism); embodiment and consumption; localisation and hybridity; the global corporation; the state, elites, class and gender; ethnicity and identity politics; new ‘culture areas’ and new social movements; and financial collapses, money laundering and terrorist financing.
| Timetable/Fees | ANTH206 |
| EFTS | 0.15 EFTS |
| Points | 18 points |
| Teaching Period(s) | Second Semester |
| Lecturers | Dr Greg Rawlings |
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This course uses a guided reading of several well known ethnographic texts (both written and visual) to introduce students to some key elements of anthropological theory, philosophy and epistemology.
Using a critical analysis of a chosen text, students will be encouraged to develop their own critical thinking skills further by examining the ways in which the author constructs a sense of reliability and authority within their account of fieldwork, the manner in which the author introduces the concept of culture within the text, the manner in which the political and ethnical aspects of representation (both for the author and the community being studied) are handled, the impact of wider theoretical debates within anthropology upon the construction of the text, the difficulties of translation in discussing emic/etic understandings of the material world and the embodied world of the senses.
Visit ANTH210's YouTube Channel, OTAGOANTH
| Timetable/Fees | ANTH210 |
| EFTS | 0.15 EFTS |
| Points | 18 points |
| Teaching Period(s) | First Semester |
| Lecturers | Dr Cyril Schäfer |
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