Outline

Overview

As humans, culture completes us, but we also create culture through our words and deeds. Social and cultural anthropologists are engaged in both cultural description and cultural criticism: their work contributes to understanding the world and changing it. Anthropologists challenge many dominant beliefs about how the world works. In this class, you will be introduced to the unique perspective of cultural anthropology on human experience through a study of how anthropologists have contributed to debates on contemporary issues of global importance. You will learn how anthropological understandings of culture and society help us to rethink the way we live and the world we inhabit.

Unit details and rules

Academic unit	Anthropology
Credit points	6
Prerequisites ?	None
Corequisites ?	None
Prohibitions ?	ANTH1004
Assumed knowledge ?	None
Available to study abroad and exchange students	Yes

Teaching staff

Coordinator	Ryan Schram, ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au
Lecturer(s)	Ryan Schram, ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au

Type	Description	Weight	Due	Length
Online task	Module 1 quiz An open-book, multiple-choice test on important facts and key ideas.	10%	Week 03 Due date: 19 Aug 2022 at 18:00	300 words equiv.
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Module 2 assignment: Care across cultures An essay on an open question drawing on module readings.	25%	Week 07 Due date: 16 Sep 2022 at 18:00	1000 words
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Module 3 assignment: Comparing systems of ethnic identity An essay on an open question drawing on module readings.	25%	Week 10 Due date: 14 Oct 2022 at 18:00	1000 words
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Module 4 assignment: Decolonizing museums An essay on an open question drawing on module readings.	25%	Week 13 Due date: 04 Nov 2022 at 18:00	1000 words
Outcomes assessed:
Online task	Weekly writing assignments Short, ungraded reflections on open questions.	15%	Weekly	12 x 100 ea.
Outcomes assessed:

Assessment summary

See the class Canvas site for the full details of and guidance on each of the assignments.

Assessment criteria

The University awards common result grades, set out in the Coursework Policy 2014 (Schedule 1).

As a general guide, a High distinction indicates work of an exceptional standard, a Distinction a very high standard, a credit a good standard, and a pass an acceptable standard.

Result name	Mark range	Description
High distinction	85 - 100
Distinction	75 - 84
Credit	65 - 74
Pass	50 - 64
Fail	0 - 49	When you don’t meet the learning outcomes of the unit to a satisfactory standard.

sydney.edu.au/students/guide-to-grade

For more information see guide to grades.

Late submission

In accordance with University policy, these penalties apply when written work is submitted after 11:59pm on the due date:

Deduction of 5% of the maximum mark for each calendar day after the due date.
After ten calendar days late, a mark of zero will be awarded.

This unit has an exception to the standard University policy or supplementary information has been provided by the unit coordinator. This information is displayed below:

Stay in touch with your tutor and the unit instructors throughout the semester, especially if you get behind. You can always catch up and we want give students an opportunity to do their best work. Late penalties are per FASS policy, and discretion can be applied.

Academic integrity

The Current Student website provides information on academic integrity and the resources available to all students. The University expects students and staff to act ethically and honestly and will treat all allegations of academic integrity breaches seriously.

We use similarity detection software to detect potential instances of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breach. If such matches indicate evidence of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breaches, your teacher is required to report your work for further investigation.

Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and automated writing tools

You may only use generative AI and automated writing tools in assessment tasks if you are permitted to by your unit coordinator. If you do use these tools, you must acknowledge this in your work, either in a footnote or an acknowledgement section. The assessment instructions or unit outline will give guidance of the types of tools that are permitted and how the tools should be used.

Your final submitted work must be your own, original work. You must acknowledge any use of generative AI tools that have been used in the assessment, and any material that forms part of your submission must be appropriately referenced. For guidance on how to acknowledge the use of AI, please refer to the AI in Education Canvas site.

The unapproved use of these tools or unacknowledged use will be considered a breach of the Academic Integrity Policy and penalties may apply.

Studiosity is permitted unless otherwise indicated by the unit coordinator. The use of this service must be acknowledged in your submission as detailed on the Learning Hub’s Canvas page.

Outside assessment tasks, generative AI tools may be used to support your learning. The AI in Education Canvas site contains a number of productive ways that students are using AI to improve their learning.

Learning support

Simple extensions

If you encounter a problem submitting your work on time, you may be able to apply for an extension of five calendar days through a simple extension.  The application process will be different depending on the type of assessment and extensions cannot be granted for some assessment types like exams.

Special consideration

If exceptional circumstances mean you can’t complete an assessment, you need consideration for a longer period of time, or if you have essential commitments which impact your performance in an assessment, you may be eligible for special consideration or special arrangements.

Special consideration applications will not be affected by a simple extension application.

Using AI responsibly

Co-created with students, AI in Education includes lots of helpful examples of how students use generative AI tools to support their learning. It explains how generative AI works, the different tools available and how to use them responsibly and productively.

Weekly schedule

WK	Topic	Learning activity
Week 01	Anthropology as “ruthless criticism.” Main reading: Marx ([1843] 1978).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 02	Society as a system of total services. Main reading: Eriksen (2015b); Other reading: Mauss ([1925] 1990).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 03	A world of commodities. Main reading: West (2012); Other reading: Marx ([1867] 1972).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 04	Spheres of exchange & The efflorescence of exchange. Main reading: Sharp (2013); Other reading: Bohannan (1959); Bohannan (1955); Sahlins (1992).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 05	Family matters. Main reading: Eriksen (2015c); Other reading: Carsten (1995).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 06	Global gifts and body shopping. Main reading: Zharkevich (2019); Other reading: Krause and Bressan (2018); Leinaweaver (2010); Vora (2009).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 07	Care as capital after the Fordist social contract. Main reading: Mazelis (2015); Nelson (2000)	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 08	Ethnicity and cultural diversity. Main reading: Eriksen (2015a); Other reading: Couacaud (2016).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 09	Managing diversity in plural societies. Main reading: Gowricharn (2015); Eriksen (1997); Other reading: Eriksen (1994).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 10	Migration and multiculturalism in Western societies. Main reading: Vertovec (2007); Other reading: Rex (1996); Taussig (1991).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 11	Indigenous creations in cultural institutions. Main reading: Clifford (1988); Other reading: Thomas (1991); Morphy (2001); Rubin (1984).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 12	Decolonising cultural institutions. Main reading: Andrews (2021); Other reading: Riley (2021); Eldridge (1996); Jones and Birdsall-Jones (2014); Leatherdale (2022).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)
Week 13	Community collections. Main reading: Massola (n.d.); Other reading: Berk (2022); University of Sydney Library and Sentance (2021).	Lecture and tutorial (3 hr)

Attendance and class requirements

Attendance: According to Faculty Board Resolutions, students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences are expected to attend 90% of their classes. If you attend less than 50% of classes, regardless of the reasons, you may be referred to the Examiner’s Board. The Examiner’s Board will decide whether you should pass or fail the unit of study if your attendance falls below this threshold.
Lecture recording: Most lectures (in recording-equipped venues) will be recorded and may be made available to students on the LMS. However, you should not rely on lecture recording to substitute your classroom learning experience.
Preparation: Students should commit to spend approximately three hours’ preparation time (reading, studying, homework, essays, etc.) for every hour of scheduled instruction.

Study commitment

Typically, there is a minimum expectation of 1.5-2 hours of student effort per week per credit point for units of study offered over a full semester. For a 6 credit point unit, this equates to roughly 120-150 hours of student effort in total.

Required readings

Recommended and required readings as well as other supplementary resources are available through the Library. They can be found in the Library catalogue and through the Leganto interface (“Reading List”) to the catalogue on the class Canvas site. See each week’s notes page for details on the topics and readings we cover in class.

References and further reading

Andrews, Jilda. 2021. “Value Creation and Museums from an Indigenous Perspective.” In Museums, Societies and the Creation of Value, edited by Howard Morphy and Robyn McKenzie, 1st ed., 225–39. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003139324-17.

Berk, Christopher D. 2022. “Tasmanian Aboriginal Material Culture, Compensation, Belonging.” Museum Anthropology 45 (1): 15–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/muan.12235.

Bohannan, Paul. 1955. “Some Principles of Exchange and Investment Among the Tiv.” American Anthropologist, New Series, 57 (1): 60–70. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1955.57.1.02a00080.

———. 1959. “The Impact of Money on an African Subsistence Economy.” The Journal of Economic History 19 (4): 491–503. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050700085946.

Carsten, Janet. 1995. “The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood, and Relatedness Among Malays in Pulau Langkawi.” American Ethnologist 22 (2): 223–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/646700.

Clifford, James. 1988. “On Collecting Art and Culture.” In The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, 215–51. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Couacaud, Leo. 2016. “Does Holiness Have a Color? The Religious, Ethnic, and Political Semiotics of Colors in Mauritius.” Signs and Society 4 (2): 176–214. https://doi.org/10.1086/688513.

Eldridge, Deborah. 1996. “Aboriginal people need to control their own culture.” In Curatorship: Indigenous perspectives in post-colonial societies—Proceedings, 18–22. Ottawa: Published by the Canadian Museum of Civilization with the Commonwealth Association of Museums and the University of Victoria.

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 1994. “Nationalism, Mauritian Style: Cultural Unity and Ethnic Diversity.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36 (3): 549–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/S001041750001923X.

———. 1997. “Multiculturalism, Individualism and Human Rights: Romanticism, the Enlightenment and Lessons from Mauritius.” In Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Richard Wilson, 49–69.

———. 2015a. “Ethnicity.” In Small Places, Large Issues, 4th ed., 329–44. An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (Fourth Edition). London: Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183p184.21.

———. 2015b. “Exchange and Consumption.” In Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology, 4th ed., 217–40. London: Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183p184.16.

———. 2015c. “Kinship as Descent.” In Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology, 4th ed., 117–35. London: Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183p184.11.

Gowricharn, Ruben. 2015. “Creole Hegemony in Caribbean Societies: The Case of Suriname: Creole Hegemony in Caribbean Societies: The Case of Suriname.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 15 (2): 272–91. https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12147.

Jones, Tod, and Christina Birdsall-Jones. 2014. “Meeting Places: Drivers of Change in Australian Aboriginal Cultural Institutions.” International Journal of Cultural Policy 20 (3): 296–317. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2013.786059.

Krause, Elizabeth L., and Massimo Bressan. 2018. “Circulating Children, Underwriting Capitalism: Chinese Global Households and Fast Fashion in Italy.” Current Anthropology 59 (5): 572–95. https://doi.org/10.1086/699826.

Leatherdale, Verity. 2022. “Indigenous Heritage Curator Appointed to Chau Chak Wing Museum.” The University of Sydney (blog). March 2, 2022. https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/03/02/indigenous-heritage-curator-appointed-to-chau-chak-wing-museum-.html.

Leinaweaver, Jessaca B. 2010. “Outsourcing Care: How Peruvian Migrants Meet Transnational Family Obligations.” Latin American Perspectives 37 (5): 67–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X10380222.

Marx, Karl. (1867) 1972. “Capital, Vol. 1 [Selections].” In The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 309–43. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

———. (1843) 1978. “For a ruthless criticism of everything existing.” In The Marx-Engels reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 12–15. New York: Norton. http://archive.org/details/marxengelsreader00tuck.

Massola, Catherine. n.d. “Community Collections: Returning to an (Un) Imagined Future.” Museum Anthropology.

Mauss, Marcel. (1925) 1990. “Selections from introduction, chapters 1-2, and conclusion.” In The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, translated by W. D. Halls, 1–14, 39–46, 78–83. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Mazelis, Joan Maya. 2015. “‘I Got to Try to Give Back’: How Reciprocity Norms in a Poor People’s Organization Influence Members’ Social Capital.” Journal of Poverty 19 (1): 109–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2014.979458.

Morphy, Howard. 2001. “Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery.” Humanities Research 8 (1): 37–50. https://doi.org/10.3316/ielapa.200200366.

Nelson, Margaret K. 2000. “Single Mothers and Social Support: The Commitment to, and Retreat from, Reciprocity.” Qualitative Sociology 23 (3): 291–317. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005567910606.

Rex, John. 1996. “The Political Sociology of a Multicultural Society.” In Ethnic Minorities in the Modern Nation State: Working Papers in the Theory of Multiculturalism and Political Integration, edited by John Rex, 30–48. Migration, Minorities and Citizenship. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375604_3.

Riley, Lynette. 2021. “The Use of Aboriginal Cultural Traditions in Art.” Curriculum Perspectives 41 (1): 85–92. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-020-00124-2.

Rubin, William. 1984. “Modernist primitivism: An introduction.” In “Primitivism” in 20th century art: Affinity of the tribal and the modern, 1–15. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Sahlins, Marshall. 1992. “The Economics of Develop-Man in the Paciﬁc.” Res 21: 13–25.

Sharp, Timothy L. 2013. “Baias, Bisnis, and Betel Nut: The Place of Traders in the Making of a Melanesian Market.” In Engaging with Capitalism: Cases from Oceania, edited by Kate Barclay and Fiona McCormack, 227–56. Research in Economic Anthropology 33. Bingley, Eng., UK: Emerald Group Publishing.

Taussig, Michael T. 1991. “An Australian Hero.” In The Nervous System, 53–77. London: Routledge.

Thomas, Nicholas. 1991. “The European Appropriation of Indigenous Things.” In Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, 125–84. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

University of Sydney Library, and Nathan Sentance. 2021. “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Protocols.” https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/24602.

Vertovec, Steven. 2007. “Super-Diversity and Its Implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1024–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870701599465.

Vora, Kalindi. 2009. “Indian Transnational Surrogacy and the Commodification of Vital Energy.” Subjectivity 28 (1): 266–78. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2009.14.

West, Paige. 2012. “Village Coffee.” In From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea, 101–29. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Zharkevich, Ina. 2019. “Money and Blood: Remittances as a Substance of Relatedness in Transnational Families in Nepal.” American Anthropologist 121 (4): 884–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13316.

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are what students know, understand and are able to do on completion of a unit of study. They are aligned with the University's graduate qualities and are assessed as part of the curriculum.

Outcomes
Graduate qualities

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

LO1. gain an introductory level of knowledge about key concepts in anthropology
LO2. gain familiarity with ethnographic writing and argumentation
LO3. aquire skills in cross-cultural comparison
LO4. develop written communication skills
LO5. apply key anthropological and ethnographic insights in reflexive analysis
LO6. develop critical thinking

Graduate qualities

The graduate qualities are the qualities and skills that all University of Sydney graduates must demonstrate on successful completion of an award course. As a future Sydney graduate, the set of qualities have been designed to equip you for the contemporary world.

GQ1	Depth of disciplinary expertise Deep disciplinary expertise is the ability to integrate and rigorously apply knowledge, understanding and skills of a recognised discipline defined by scholarly activity, as well as familiarity with evolving practice of the discipline.
GQ2	Critical thinking and problem solving Critical thinking and problem solving are the questioning of ideas, evidence and assumptions in order to propose and evaluate hypotheses or alternative arguments before formulating a conclusion or a solution to an identified problem.
GQ3	Oral and written communication Effective communication, in both oral and written form, is the clear exchange of meaning in a manner that is appropriate to audience and context.
GQ4	Information and digital literacy Information and digital literacy is the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, manage, adapt, integrate, create and convey information using appropriate resources, tools and strategies.
GQ5	Inventiveness Generating novel ideas and solutions.
GQ6	Cultural competence Cultural Competence is the ability to actively, ethically, respectfully, and successfully engage across and between cultures. In the Australian context, this includes and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, knowledge systems, and a mature understanding of contemporary issues.
GQ7	Interdisciplinary effectiveness Interdisciplinary effectiveness is the integration and synthesis of multiple viewpoints and practices, working effectively across disciplinary boundaries.
GQ8	Integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity An integrated professional, ethical and personal identity is understanding the interaction between one’s personal and professional selves in an ethical context.
GQ9	Influence Engaging others in a process, idea or vision.

Outcome map

Learning outcomes	Graduate qualities
Learning outcomes

Responding to student feedback

This section outlines changes made to this unit following staff and student reviews.

This class has been redesigned to accommodate disruptions and draw on the experiences we have gained from responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

Additional information