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Unit of study_
ANTH3603: Melanesian Worlds: Old and New
2021 unit information
Melanesia is both a distinctive culture area and, with over 1000 different languages, a site of intense and highly localised cultural variation. This unit will explore the nature of that variation around themes of power, status, gender, secrecy, cosmology and local organization. The unit also examines the impact of this diversity on modern projects of Christianity, state formation and the market economy and the influence this has had on the wider anthropological literature on modernity.
Unit details and rules
Managing faculty or University school:
Arts and Social Sciences
| Study level | Undergraduate |
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| Academic unit | Anthropology |
| Credit points | 6 |
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Prerequisites:
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12 credit points at 2000 level in the Anthropology major |
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Corequisites:
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None |
| Prohibitions:
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ANTH2603 |
| Assumed knowledge:
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None |
At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:
- LO1. understand why Melanesia is treated as a geographic subfield within anthropology including both the strengths and the limitations of regional specialisation
- LO2. identify a scholar's claims with respect to the body of ethnographic and other scholarly literature on this region
- LO3. apply general theories of culture, society and historical formation of social systems to particular problems of interpretation that emerge within a specific geographic setting and among a group of cultures related by common history and environmental factors
- LO4. undertake independent library research to make use of the concepts and the research findings of scholars to support and develop their own ideas
- LO5. explain anthropological ideas and knowledge to many different audiences and for many different purposes in the context of an argument for a particular viewpoint
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