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ANTHRO 211-0 : Culture and Society

Description

This class is an introduction to cultural anthropology - the study of cultural variation from a global perspective. Readings, lectures, and films explore this diversity through the lens of childhood and adolescence, drawing from the fieldwork of anthropologists and ethnographic research.

These cross-cultural studies examine the ways children are socialized, including how childhood and adolescence are conceptualized, embodied, and experienced in different local settings. From Zambian youth delivering in-home healthcare, Senegalese youth practices on social media, to experiences of race, ethnicity, and nationality for Latinx youth in Chicago, all of these examples consider the interrelated factors - social, economic, demographic, and symbolic - that determine the organization of the family, the value and meaning of children, and the place of youth in communities, schools, and the marketplace. As much as people share beliefs and practices in common, historical and cultural constructions, like that of the life stage known as “childhood,” influence domains as varied as morality, intelligence, sexuality, and identity.

In order to appreciate how qualitative research can expand understandings on these topics, course activities provide experiential learning opportunities to engage with ethnographic research methods like participant-observation and interviewing, in order to understand how fieldwork observations and interpretive analysis are context dependent.