教學大綱 Syllabus

科目名稱：人性與存有：民族誌與人類學觀點

Course Name: Being Human: Ethnography and Anthropological Perspective
  • 學年學期：111-1 Fall Semester, 2022
  • 科目代碼：926849001 Course No.926849001

修別：選

Type of Credit: Elective

3.0

學分數

Credit(s)

2

預收人數

Number of Students

課程資料Course Details
  • 開課單位：亞太碩一、亞太碩二 Course Department:International Master's Program in Asia-Pacific Studies/M/1&2
  • 授課老師：何浩慈 Instructor:
  • 先修科目：無Prerequisite(N/A)
  • 上課時間：三567 Session: wed14-17

課程簡介Course Description

Based on anthropological theory, ethnography, and cross-cultural comparison, this course introduces the formation of human society, life stages, and the phenomenology of ‘being human’. In the past ten years, there has been a trend of thought in the humanities and social sciences, debating the social and personal aspects of the positive sides of social life, such as expectations, dignity, values, ethics, empathy, care, freedom, and hope. This course will examine the subjective and objective conditions of well-being, reflecting on how well-being is perceived, defined, and created. Through lectures, class discussions, student presentations on the required readings, and documentaries/guest speeches, this course attempts to cultivate students’ ability to care for society and themselves.

 

This course begins with introducing basic concepts and epistemology of anthropological theory and ethnography. We will unpack what anthropologists have called ‘culture’ and ‘society’ and consider how themes of this kind lead to a reconsideration of how anthropological theory and ethnographies might be useful for comprehending the development of humanity. After providing an overview, each week’s topic will focus on key issues discussed in the sub-fields of Cognitive and Psychological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Religious Anthropology, Environmental Anthropology, and Positive Anthropology. Throughout, this course will focus on the relationship between self and society and that between mind, body, and the more intangible aspects such as emotion and spirit. We will look at how universal human capabilities develop and are used during different stages of life to create unique cultural understandings and practices.

核心能力分析圖 Core Competence Analysis Chart

能力項目說明

    課程目標與學習成效Course Objectives & Learning Outcomes

    This course contains lectures, student presentations, in-class discussions, and a documentary forum/guest speech. These activities are based on reading materials and the instructor's lecture slides. Apart from lectures, students are expected to summarise reading materials on the topic(s) they sign-up for at the beginning of the term and present their thoughts in the class (at least 1 presentation, depending on the class size). Students are encouraged to read before classes and to bring their reflections and questions to in-class discussions. In addition to presentations for the required readings, students are expected to do briefings and write notes on ethnographies they read. Students are also asked to write feedback for the guest lecture/documentary. Finally, this course aims to help students think clearly and express their ideas in the term paper, which needs to be submitted to Moodle by the end (Sunday midnight) of week 18. This course will emphasise analytical perspectives and critical thinking.

    每周課程進度與作業要求 Course Schedule & Requirements

    Week 1 Introduction & Logistics

     

    Week 2 Ethnographic Approach, Anthropological Perspective, and Cross-cultural Comparison

    Required Readings

    1. Kuper, A. 1983 Anthropology and Anthropologists: the Modern British School. London: Routledge.
    2. Moore, H.L. & T. Sanders (eds.) 2006 Anthropology in Theory: Issues in Epistemology.
    3. M. Bloch, How We Think They Think (1998).
    4. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chapter 12, 277-346: Identity in Mashpee.
    5. Holland, Dorothy, and Kevin Leander. 2004. Ethnographic Studies of Positioning and Subjectivity: An Introduction. Ethos 32(2): 127-139.
    6. Leach, E 1966 “Chapter 1” of Rethinking Anthropology, London, Berg.

     

     

    Week 3 Phenomenology of Humanity: Death and Living

    Required Readings

    1. Astuti, R. (2008) What happens after death? In Astuti, R., Parry, J. & Stafford, C. (eds) Questions of anthropology, pp. 227-247. Berg.
    2. Engelke, Matthew. 2019. The Anthropology of Death Revisited. Annual Review of Anthropology 2019 48:1, 29-44.
    3. Kaufman, Sharon R., and Lynn M. Morgan. 2005. The Anthropology of the Beginnings and Ends of Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 34:317–341.

     

     

    Week 4             Self and Society: Mutual Subjectivity  

    Required Readings

    1. Spiro, M. E. (1993). Is the Western conception of the self ‘peculiar’ within the context of the world cultures? Ethos 21(2): 107-153. [electronic journals]
    2. Ewing, Katherine P. 1990. The Illusion of Wholeness: Culture, Self, and the Experience of Inconsistency. Ethos 18(3): 251-278.
    3. Luhrmann, T. M. 2006. Subjectivity. Anthropological Theory 6: 345-361.
    4. Ochs, Elinor, and Lisa Capps. 1996. Narrating the Self. Annual Review of Anthropology. 25: 19-43.

     

    Week 5             Relationships, Relatedness, and Attachment    

    Required Readings

    1. Miller, Peggy j., Heidi Fung, and Judith Mintz. 1996. Self-Construction Through Narrative Practices: A Chinese and American Comparison of Early Socilization. Psychological Anthropology 24(2): 237-280.
    2. Marga Vicedo (2017) Putting attachment in its place: Disciplinary and cultural contexts, European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 14:6, 684-699.
    3. Quinn, N., Mageo, J.M. (2013). Attachment and Culture: An Introduction. In: Quinn, N., Mageo, J.M. (eds) Attachment Reconsidered. Culture, Mind, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
    4. Morelli, G. (2015). The evolution of attachment theory and cultures of human attachment in infancy and early childhood. In L. A. Jensen (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of human development and culture: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 149–164).

     

    Week 6 Religion and Spirituality

    Required Readings

    1. Boyer, P (2000) Functional origins of religious concepts: ontological and strategic selection in evolved minds. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 6: 195-214 [electronic journals].
    2. Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4: 29-34 [electronic journals]
    3. Cassaniti, J. L., & Luhrmann, T. M. (2014). The Cultural Kindling of Spiritual Experiences. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S333–S343.

     

    Week 7  Emotion

    Required Readings

    1. Marcus, Hazel R., and Shinobu Kitayama. 1991. Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation. Psychological Review 98(2): 224-253.
    2. Gila S. Silverman, Aurélien Baroiller & Susan R. Hemer (2021) Culture and grief: Ethnographic perspectives on ritual, relationships and remembering, Death Studies, 45:1, 1-8.
    3. Beatty, A. (2005). Emotions in the Field: What Are We Talking About? The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 11(1), 17–37.

     

    Week 8 Affect

    Required Readings

    1. Danilyn Rutherford. 2016. Affect Theory and the Empirical. Annual Review of Anthropology 45:1, 285-300.
    2. Skoggard, I. and Waterston, A. (2015), Introduction: Toward an Anthropology of Affect and Evocative Ethnography. Anthropology of Conscious, 26: 109-120.
    3. Martin, E. (2013). The Potentiality of Ethnography and the Limits of Affect Theory. Current Anthropology, 54(S7), S149–S158.

     

    Week 9 Documentary Screening & Forum

     

    Week 10           Memory, Trauma, and Psychoanalysis  

    Required Readings

    1. Devereux, George. 1978. Ethnopsychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis and Anthropology as Complementary Frames of Reference / George Devereux. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
    2. Sklar, Jonathan. 2011. Landscapes of the Dark. History, Trauma, Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books.
    3. Kenny, M. G. (1999). A Place for Memory: The Interface between Individual and Collective History. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41(3), 420–437.

     

    Week 11           Healing

    Required Readings

    1. SIDKY, H. (2009), A Shaman's Cure: The Relationship Between Altered States of Consciousness and Shamanic Healing. Anthropology of Consciousness, 20: 171-197.
    2. Ismael Apud & Oriol Romaní (2020) Medical anthropology and symbolic cure: from the placebo to cultures of meaningful healing, Anthropology & Medicine, 27:2, 160-175.
    3. Moerman, D. E. (1979). Anthropology of Symbolic Healing. Current Anthropology, 20(1), 59–80.

     

    Week 12           Alternative Therapies

    Required Readings

    1. Marcus, O. (2022), Consume and Transform: Perfumes and healing in vegetalista healing practices of the Peruvian Amazon. Anthropology of Conscious.
    2. Charles D. Laughlin (2018) Meditation across cultures: a neuroanthropological approach, Time and Mind, 11:3, 221-257.
    3. Empathy and Healing: Essays in Medical and Narrative Anthropology. Vieda Skultans. New York, NY: Berghahn Books. 2007.
    4. Cook, J. and Cassaniti, J. (2022), Mindfulness and culture. Anthropology Today, 38: 1-3.
    5. Myers, N., Lewis, S. & Dutton, M.A. Open Mind, Open Heart: An Anthropological Study of the Therapeutics of Meditation Practice in the US. Cult Med Psychiatry 39, 487–504 (2015).

     

    Week 13           Happiness and Well-being

    Required Readings

    1. ORTNER, S. 2016. Dark anthropology and its others: theory since the eighties. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6, 47–73.
    2. JOHNSTON, B., E. COLSON, D. FALK, ET AL. 2012. On Happiness. American Anthropologist 114, 6–18.
    3. MOORE, H. L. 1990. ‘Visions of the good life’: anthropology and the study of utopia. Cambridge Anthropology 14, 13–33.

     

    Week 14           Empathy and Hope

    Required Readings

    1. Geertz, C (1983) “`From the native’s point of view’: On the nature of anthropological understanding” originally published in Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 28, No. 1. (1974), pp. 26-45.
    2. C. JASON THROOP. “Suffering, Empathy, and Ethical Modalities of Being in Yap (Waqab), Federated States of Micronesia.” The Anthropology of Empathy. 1st ed. Berghahn Books, 2011.
    3. CHUA, J. L. 2014. In pursuit of the good life: aspiration and suicide in globalizing South India. Berkeley: University of California Press.

     

    Week 15           Contemporary Political-Economic Issues 1 (Case Study Presentation):

    Market, Capital, & the State

     

    Week 16           Contemporary Political-Economic Issues 2 (Case Study Presentation):

    Community Building & Interethnic Relations

     

    Week 17           Contemporary Political-Economic Issues 3 (Case Study Presentation):

                            Environmental Crises & New Human-non-human Relations

     

    Week 18           No class. Term paper due－an essay on one of the above topics.

    授課方式Teaching Approach

    30%

    講述 Lecture

    30%

    討論 Discussion

    30%

    小組活動 Group activity

    10%

    數位學習 E-learning

    0%

    其他： Others:

    評量工具與策略、評分標準成效Evaluation Criteria

    1. Attendance & participation in discussion (20%)
    2. Oral Presentation: Required Readings (20%)

    Week 3-8; week 10-14.

    1. Oral Presentation: Case Study (20%)

    Week 15, 16, 17

    1. Feedback for the guest lecture/documentary (10%)
    2. Term paper (30%)

    指定/參考書目Textbook & References

    1. C. Strauss and N Quinn, A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning (1997)
    2. M. Bloch, How We Think They Think (1998)
    3. D. Sperber, Explaining Culture (1996)
    4. M. Cole, Cultural Psychology (1996)
    5. M. Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999)
    6. P. Boyer, Religion Explained (2001).
    7. E. Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild.
    8. J. Lave, Cognition in Practice.
    9. R. Astuti, G. Solomon and S. Carey, Constraints on Conceptual Development.
    10. CHUA, J. L. 2014. In pursuit of the good life: aspiration and suicide in globalizing South India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
    11. DAVIES, W. 2015. The happiness industry: how the government and big business sold us well-being. London: Verso.
    12. FISCHER, E. F. 2014. The good life: aspiration, dignity, and the anthropology of wellbeing. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
    13. JOHNSTON, B., E. COLSON, D. FALK, ET AL. 2012. On Happiness. American Anthropologist 114, 6–18.
    14. KAVEDŽIJA, I. & H. WALKER (eds) 2016. Values of happiness: toward an anthropology of purpose in life. Chicago: HAU Books.
    15. MATHEWS, G. & C. IZQUIERDO 2009. Pursuits of happiness: well-being in anthropological perspective. New York: Berghahn Books.
    16. MOORE, H. L. 1990. ‘Visions of the good life’: anthropology and the study of utopia. Cambridge Anthropology 14, 13–33.

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