| source University of Western Australia (1524) |
level |
department Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (X) |
Different people across the world and across time have varying understandings of what it means to 'be human'. At the same time, all people share some experiences in common—all learn and communicate cultural beliefs, create and maintain social relationships, adapt to local environments, and make a living through particular modes of production. This unit explores the world's rich diversity by examining cross-cultural examples of such things as religion, identity, livelihood, social organisation and social inequality. It also considers how anthropologists and sociologists conduct their research in a variety of ways, with consideration of a range of ethical and other issues.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
What does globalisation mean at local levels? In the face of so much 'progress', why are many people still so poor and others so rich? This unit explores how people's lives have been transformed by colonialism, economic development and globalisation. Focusing particularly on Australia and our region, it examines various social science perspectives on inequality, migration, urbanisation, work, modernisation, globalisation, culture, communication and the environment.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
In introducing anthropological perspectives on religion, this unit focuses on the religious systems of a range of societies and how they relate to other social institutions. It considers religion in small-scale societies, the globalisation of world religions like Christianity and Islam, and religious phenomena closer to home. An overview of major theoretical influences, particularly those of Marx, Weber and Durkheim, underpins the examination and evaluation of subsequent anthropological theories. Considerable attention is devoted to past and present approaches to analysis including evolutionary, functional, structural, psychoanalytical and symbolic perspectives. Important analytical challenges that are canvassed include problems of definition, meaning, interpretation, assessment of personal faith, and of ensuring continued commitment. Religious phenomena such as ritual, belief, possession, magic, sorcery and conversion are discussed and investigated through ethnographic projects. The unit also examines the relationship of religion to issues of ideology, politics, gender and social change.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
Since the onset of modern field research in anthropology at the turn of the twentieth century, visual documentation has been a focal endeavour in data collection and representation of cultures. This unit concentrates on how visual media, complementary to the written word, have constructed representations of other cultures, encompassing movie film, video, DVDs and, more recently, interactive media. Through lectures and discussion, screening of films, DVDs and videos, and exercises with interactive media, students confront such issues as the anthropological construction of myths about other cultures, the nature of ethnographic film/video as anthropological text, differences between the ethnographic and the documentary, the role of dialogue between the filmer and filmed, indigenous filmic grammar, and the general contribution of film, video and interactive media to the re-thinking of the nature of ethnography. Perspectives used to explore these issues may include semiotics, vidistics, feminism and postmodernism.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
The language and models used in finance have come to dominate more than simply the business pages. Citizens as consumers and investors are increasingly expected to have financial literacy as a core skill and engage with the culture of measurement in the form of self-management, audit and forms of accountability. Financial markets have become the central feature of contemporary capitalism as profits become more tied to forms of rent, develop seemingly unending possibilities for the distribution of risk and are less connected to trade and commodity production. This unit examines how anthropologists have studied the increased importance of finance, audit and money. What are the implications of these new forms for the self and for social organisation? What are the fictions of finance, its techniques and apparatus? What are the social and cultural realities of financial service professionals, their worksites and their instruments such as futures, derivatives, options and audits? How can these specific examples be extended to understand broader issues, social worlds, institutions and other experiences? The unit links contemporary theoretical and methodological innovations with anthropology's long interest in alternative economic forms. Although based in anthropological work, the unit is interdisciplinary in scope.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
This unit focuses on the nature and practice of healing and medical care in different historical and cross-cultural contexts. It draws on medical anthropology and sociology to explore the close articulation between individual suffering and the social, moral and political order within societies. The unit encourages students to think critically about (1) conceptions of the body and suffering; (2) the health care seeking process; and (3) the cultural organisation of medical knowledge and practice. These themes are developed in topics which include various approaches to illness, disease and health; the language, symbolism and imagery of healing and medicine; lay perspectives of the illness experience; the history and experience of pain; and studies of ethnomedicine, biomedicine, medical pluralism and international health.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
Applied anthropology is increasingly recognised as an important field of anthropological enquiry and expertise. This unit introduces students to applied anthropological practice. Topics covered include land claims and Native Title, cultural heritage, the anthropology of the environment, and health and medicine. Research issues such as ethics, collaborative methods and cross-cultural analysis, are explored by way of ethnographic case study material drawn from a range of settings including Australia and Southeast Asia.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
As cities assume a growing importance in all societies, as they house an increasing proportion of the world's people, and as they become more closely interlinked through the processes of globalisation, so they command more attention from anthropologists and sociologists. How do we imagine, produce, live in and experience cities? Does urban life across the globe differ fundamentally from rural life, or is it better understood in reference to particular structural, societal or cultural contexts? How do pre-industrial, modern and postmodern cities vary and what do they have in common? Is it possible to differentiate between Western cities and cities of the so-called developing world? How should anthropologists and sociologists view cities: as embodiments of structured political and economic power relations; as complex spatially configured symbolic texts; or as fluid, variegated ethnographic laboratories made up of people whose lives are both collective and atomised, sedentary and transient, opulent and impoverished? This unit examines the variety of ways in which anthropologists and sociologists have explored and conceptualised cities and urban living. It is concerned with the variable theoretical perspectives that have been brought to bear on urban life, and with the way in which ethnographic research may be undertaken in cities.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
This unit introduces students to anthropological perspectives and approaches to indigeneity today, with a particular focus on Indigenous Australia. Using these analytical tools, students are encouraged to think critically about issues affecting Indigenous Australians, and about their location within the Australian nation-state. The unit brings a distinctly anthropological perspective to issues concerning indigenous identity, culture and social change.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
This unit examines the phenomenon of social inequality within and between a range of societies or nation-states, with reference to such concepts as class, status, gender, race, ethnicity and globalisation. Drawing on varied theoretical perspectives and empirical studies, the unit probes the social and cultural meanings of inequality, as well as the ways in which inequalities are produced, reproduced and experienced. It also explores the discontent, conflict, ideologies and societal change that may arise out of social inequality.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
Culture/gender/sexuality provides a significant site from which all forms of social life can be explored. This unit examines the centrality and diversity of gender relations and sexual identity by placing an emphasis on cultural beliefs and practices in a range of ethnographic settings. By way of written texts, popular culture and contemporary film, the themes considered include how the relationships between women and men are constituted, the politics of sexual difference, gender-crossing, dress and language, and the intersection and representation of gender with race, class, religion, age and ethnicity.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
This unit examines how people in different societies resolve disputes, exercise power and maintain social control. Students are introduced to anthropological perspectives on persons, property and power, and examine topics such as the cultural context of legal systems and practices, international human rights, the relationship between customary and European law, and land claims and native title.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
What does it mean to live within (and outside of) Australian social structures and systems? Is there any such thing as 'Australian society' and, if so, how do social scientists go about describing and analysing it? This unit examines the main theoretical perspectives that have been applied to studies of Australian social life. An important objective is to provide students with the conceptual tools required for developing a critical understanding of major characteristics of 'Australian society'. Particular attention is paid to issues relating to institutions like the family and education, as well as issues of belonging and community identity. Topics covered include Australian community studies, national identity and migration, gender relations, social inequality and stratification, and the rural versus urban divide. Historical and contemporary analyses of Australian society are complemented by a selection of thought-provoking ethnographic and documentary films.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
How are people interconnected materially, emotionally, politically, morally and symbolically? How are these different dimensions of social and cultural life related? These perplexing questions and the contemporary debates that surround them are examined with reference to such ideas as globalisation, power, meaning, practice, modernity, identity and inequality.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
Students are introduced to the subfield of psychological anthropology via exposure to one or more of the approaches used by psychological anthropologists as they seek to understand the whys and hows of person, processes and structure interaction. These approaches may include culture and personality, cognitive anthropology, cultural psychology, ethnopsychology, neo-Darwinian theory, neuroanthropology and psychoanalytic anthropology.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
This unit is offered in partnership with the Berndt Museum of Anthropology and the School of Indigenous Studies. It introduces students to the anthropology of Australian Aboriginal visual art, focusing on various anthropological approaches to understanding the productions of individual artists within their respective sociocultural contexts. Frameworks derived from the sub-disciplines of visual anthropology, cultural anthropology, the new museology and the anthropology of art provide analytical structure for approaching an understanding of Australian Aboriginal art within the broader Australian postcolonial setting. Several local Aboriginal artists and commentators participate in the unit as guest lecturers. Topics addressed may include rock art as a living tradition; regional perspectives and stylistic values; art and the transmission of culture; art and its relationship to land; cultural creativity and the maintenance of religious knowledge; art and the emergence of new identities; respecting cultural values; and appropriation and copyright.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
This unit provides a critical overview of health and illness in Australian society. These subjects are approached with the premise that Australian health care is an area in need of widespread critical appraisal and should not be confined to the domain of science or medicine. The activities and assessments associated with the unit have been designed to develop generic and transferable skills as well as to increase knowledge of the topics covered, which include gender and social class inequities in health; Aboriginal and migrant health; rural and urban health; economic and technological imperatives in health care; the role of alternative health in contemporary Australian health care; the role of public health and health promotion; and health care ethics.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
This unit acquaints students with a variety of theoretical perspectives and research skills used by anthropologists and sociologists. While giving an overview of the broad range of research techniques used by social scientists, the unit focuses on qualitative techniques which include field research and participant observation; various forms of interviews and focus groups; genealogical, archival and census research; and textual-based content analysis. It uses both lectures and practical exercises to prepare students for future vocations and further research-oriented studies.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
This unit introduces students to anthropological perspectives on human engagements with the natural environment. It draws on case material from societies around the world to illustrate a variety of environmental beliefs and practices. The unit familiarises students with the main theoretical currents in environmental anthropology and provides them with a selection of frameworks for thinking about human interactions with nature. It encourages students to think analytically about the values and knowledge that human communities, urban and rural, hold about landscapes, plants and animals. The unit addresses both academic and applied research and is relevant to students from a range of disciplines including agriculture and the environmental sciences.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
This unit considers the ways in which media produce and reproduce culture. The advent of mass media and new forms of communication has generated novel ways of interpreting self and other. Through an examination of contemporary approaches to the analysis of media, contemporary social life, power, subjectivity and representation are explored. Throughout the unit students consider two key issues: (1) whether the media is a liberating or controlling element in contemporary life; and (2) the ethnography of media across world cultures. The unit combines a focus on contemporary debates about television, film, photography and electronic media, with an investigation of non-Western uses and forms of media.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
Business anthropology is a new specialisation within the worldwide discipline of anthropology. This unit applies anthropological knowledge and methods to the work of public and private business enterprises. It has three main areas of study—the culture of organisations; cross-cultural business activities; and product design/development based on ethnographic observation of human interaction with consumer products and services.
Score: 6.551792 Details | Listing | Web page
1 - 25 26 - 50 51 - 75 76 - 100 101 - 125 126 - 150 151 - 175 176 - 200 201 - 225 226 - 250 251 - 275 276 - 300 301 - 325 326 - 350 351 - 375 376 - 400 401 - 425 426 - 450 451 - 475 476 - 500 501 - 525 526 - 550 551 - 575 576 - 600 601 - 625 626 - 650 651 - 675 676 - 700 701 - 725 726 - 750 751 - 775 776 - 800 801 - 825 826 - 850 851 - 875 876 - 900 901 - 925 926 - 950 951 - 975 976 - 1000 1001 - 1025 1026 - 1050 1051 - 1075 1076 - 1100 1101 - 1125 1126 - 1150 1151 - 1175 1176 - 1200 1201 - 1225 1226 - 1250 1251 - 1275 1276 - 1300 1301 - 1325 1326 - 1350 1351 - 1375 1376 - 1400 1401 - 1425 1426 - 1450 1451 - 1475 1476 - 1500 1501 - 1524