ANTH 1105 - Intro to Social Anthropology: Identity & Difference

This course is an introduction to the discipline of anthropology as the study of everyday social life in a variety of cultural worlds, including our own. The course engages the major themes of anthropology: the concept of culture, how we get along with other people, and the ways in which our everyday lives are made meaningful. These themes are presented through case studies of everyday actions and social relations. Drawing from fieldwork, the main topics include anthropological perspectives on social distinctions, difference and race, everyday resistance, purity and pollution, the production of appetites, the performance of sexuality, embodied experience and inter-subjectivity and presentations of the self both online and offline. The case studies draw from a range of cultural and geographic examples in Australia, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand and the United States of America.