Co-Instructors: Krista S. Eliot and Kyleb Wild
Instructor Email: keliot@ucsd.edu; kwild@ucsd.edu
Prerequisites: None

Course Description: The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the discipline of Anthropology, including a survey of the four subfields: Biological, Archaeological, Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology. Students will learn the basics of human evolution, as well as studying examples of societies ranging from small-scale nomadic and agricultural societies to empires and modern states. Emphasis will be placed on a non-linear approach to understanding the emergence of complex societies in different times and places across the globe, and a critique of the Enlightenment notion of a single path to social development based on Western notions of progress. The final week of the course will focus on issues of doing ethnographic anthropological research in an age of globalization. Lectures will be supplemented with field trips, films, and class discussions.

Course Outline:

Week One: Human Origins

This week the focus of lectures and activities will be on understanding how biological anthropologists reconstruct human evolution through the fossil record and study of living primates.

Field trips: Museum of Man in Balboa Park, San Diego Zoo, tour of Geisel Library to become familiar with library resources and select an article for the critical analysis project.

Week Two: From Nomads to Bureaucrats: The evolution of large-scale societies

This week we will look at several case studies of societies which demonstrate different levels of social complexity/scale. This will include a hunter-gatherer group, a small-scale agricultural society, and an empire. An emphasis in lecture this week will be that societies of different degrees of complexity have emerged at different times and places throughout world history; the history of our species is not a linear progression toward increasing degrees of "civilization" or "modernity".

Field Trip: visit to archaeological dig or archaeology lab on UCSD campus

Films: "First Contact", second film TBA

Week Three: Culture and Globalization: Doing ethnographic research in a multicultural world

During the final week of the course, we will look at several examples of ethnographic research being done today in different places around the globe. We will see how the ethnographic method, originally developed to study so-called "primitive" societies, can help us understand the complexities of the world around us. Special attention will be given to issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and post-colonialism.

Field Trip: visit to linguistic anthropology and/or brain lab on UCSD campus

Films: "Preschool in Three Cultures", "Couple in a Cage"