This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

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Lecture Notes

The lecture notes for sessions 1 and 2 were written by Professor Howe. The lecture notes for sessions 9 and 14 were written by Anne Pollock, the Teaching Associate for the course. The lecture notes for sessions 6-12, 15-16, 19 and 21-24 were taken during class by Emily Kagan for OCW.

SES # TOPICS
1 Introduction: Anthropology and Its Divisions (PDF)
2 Being Cultural (PDF)
3 Evolution and Adaptation
4 Film: Number Our Days
5 Doing Fieldwork
6 Ethnography (PDF)
7 Writing and Pain (PDF)
8 Uniqueness and Cultural Difference (PDF)
9 Race and Biological Difference (PDF)
10 Giving and Receiving (PDF)
11 Potlatch and Kula (PDF)
12 Morality and Cultural Relativism (PDF)
13 Film on Exchange, with Discussion
14 Anthropological Studies of Science (PDF)
15 Thinking Symbolically (PDF)
16 Kinship and Marriage (PDF)
17 TBA
18 Film: The Nuer
19 The Nuer of the Sudan (PDF)
20 Film: Strange Practices
21 Making Sense of the Nuer (PDF)
22 Making More Sense of the Nuer (PDF)
23 Problems with Culture (PDF)
24 More Problems with Culture (PDF)
25 Wrap-up