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：114-1 Fall Semester, 2025
  • 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: HO HAO-TZU
  • 先修科目：無Prerequisite(N/A)
  • 上課時間：二567 Session: tue14-17

課程簡介Course Description

The rapid development of artificial intelligence has created ethical debates about whether a robot, if one day it has self-consciousness, should be treated like a human being. Likewise, a growing demand for psychological therapies has resulted in/from the quest for meanings and purposes of being alive. Underlying these contemplations is a fundamental question: What makes a human a human? This course aims to facilitate discussions and provide potential answers from academic literature. 

 

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 field trips/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 and in-class discussions. 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). This course will emphasise analytical perspectives and critical thinking. Students are required to read before classes and bring their reflections and questions to in-class discussions. In addition to presentations, students are expected to write reading notes. Finally, this course encourages students to apply their knowledge to the real world by analysing a case related to the topics mentioned in this course. Students are expected to demonstrate their findings both in presentations and written works.

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

    Week 1     Introduction & Logistics

    Instructor abroad for conference; class pre-recorded, attendance required.

     

    Week 2     Anthropological Perspective and Cross-cultural Comparison

    Reference Readings

    1. Kuper, A. 1983 Anthropology and Anthropologists: the Modern British School. London: Routledge.
    2. Leach, E 1966 “Chapter 1” of Rethinking Anthropology, London, Berg.
    3. Bock, K. E. (1966). The Comparative Method of Anthropology. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 8(3), 269–280.
    4. Borofsky, Robert. 2019. Where Have the Comparisons Gone? Society for Cultural Anthropology.

     

    Week 3     Ethnographic Methodology 1: An Approach Both Top-Down and Bottom-Up

    Required Readings

    1. Moore, H.L. & T. Sanders (eds.) 2006 Anthropology in Theory: Issues in Epistemology.
    2. 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.
    3. Shah, Alpa. (2017) Ethnography? Participant observation, a potentially revolutionary praxis. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7 (1). pp. 1-15.

     

    Week 4     Ethnographic Methodology 2: Fieldwork

    Required Readings

    1. M. Bloch, How We Think They Think (1998).
    2. Holland, Dorothy, and Kevin Leander. 2004. Ethnographic Studies of Positioning and Subjectivity: An Introduction. Ethos 32(2): 127-139.
    3. Jenkins, Timothy. “Fieldwork and the Perception of Everyday Life.” Man 29, no. 2 (1994): 433–55.
    4. Ho, Hao-Tzu. 2019. Cosmopolitan Locavorism: Global Local-food Movements in Postcolonial Hong Kong. Food, Culture & Society 23(2): 137-154.

     

    Week 5     Phenomenology of Humanity: Death, Living and the Person

    Required Readings

    1. Shweder, R.A., Bourne, E.J. (1982). Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally? In: Marsella, A.J., White, G.M. (eds) Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy. Culture, Illness, and Healing, vol 4.
    2. Astuti, R. (2008) What happens after death? In Astuti, R., Parry, J. & Stafford, C. (eds) Questions of anthropology, pp. 227-247. Berg.
    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.
    4. Conklin, B. and L. Morgan. 1996. Babies, Bodies, and the Production of Personhood in North America and a Native Amazonian Society. Ethos 24(4):657-694.

     

    Week 6    Memory, Self and Society

    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.
    2. Ewing, Katherine P. 1990. The Illusion of Wholeness: Culture, Self, and the Experience of Inconsistency. Ethos 18(3): 251-278.
    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.
    4. 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.

     

    Week 7    Kinship, Relationships and Relatedness

    Required Readings

    1. Carsten, J. 2004. Introduction: After Kinship? Chapter 1 from After Kinship, pp. 1-30.
    2. Carsten, J. 1995. The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood, and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi. American Ethnologist 22, no. 2: 223-241.
    3. Carrier, J. 1999. People Who Can Be Friends: Selves and Social Relationships. In S. Bell & S. Coleman (eds) The Anthropology of Friendship.
    4. Jackson, M. 2002. Familiar and foreign bodies: a phenomenological exploration of the human-technology interface. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8(2): 333-46.

     

    Week 8     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.
    2. Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4: 29-34.
    3. Cassaniti, J. L., & Luhrmann, T. M. (2014). The Cultural Kindling of Spiritual Experiences. Current Anthropology, 55(S10), S333–S343.

     

    Week 9  Emotion, feeling and Affect

    Required Readings

    1. Beatty, A. (2005). Emotions in the Field: What Are We Talking About? The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 11(1), 17–37.
    2. Danilyn Rutherford. 2016. Affect Theory and the Empirical. Annual Review of Anthropology 45:1, 285-300.
    3. Skoggard, I. and Waterston, A. (2015), Introduction: Toward an Anthropology of Affect and Evocative Ethnography. Anthropology of Conscious, 26: 109-120.
    4. Sangren, P. S. 2004. Psychoanalysis and Its Resistances in Michel Foucault's "The

    History of Sexuality": Lessons for Anthropology. Ethos 32, no. 1: 110-122.

     

    Week 10   Treatment & 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 11   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. Cook, J. and Cassaniti, J. (2022), Mindfulness and culture. Anthropology Today, 38: 1-3.
    4. 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 12 Care: For Others and One’s Self

    1. Hsu, E. (2025). An Introduction to the Medical Anthropology of Care and Self-Care. Medical Anthropology, 44(2), 97–108.
    2. Hoppe S. (2020). The other within oneself: Understanding care for a family member with Early‐Onset dementia through the lens of dividuality. Ethos, 48(2), 231-249.
    3. Rosenbaum, S. and Talmor, R. (2022), Self-Care. Feminist Anthropology, 3: 362-372.

     

    Week 13   Happiness & 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 & 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   Case Study Presentation.

     

    Week 16   Completing term paper. No class.

    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 (25%)
    2. Required Readings (35%)
    3. Group Presentation (20%)
    4. Individual Reading Notes (15%)
    5. Case Study (Individual) (40%)
    6. Oral Presentation (20%)
    7. Written Work (20%)

    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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