21A.218J Identity and Difference ( ) (Same subject as SP.454J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Examines several theoretical perspectives on human identity and focuses on processes of creating categories of acceptable and deviant identities; how identities are formed, how behaviors are labelled, and how people enter deviant roles and worlds; and responses to differences and strategies for coping with these responses. Describes how identity and difference are inescapably linked. Enrollment limited. J. Jackson
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.219J Law and Society ( ) (Same subject as 11.163J , 17.249J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Studies legal reasoning, types of law and legal systems, and relationship of law to social class and social change. Emphasis on the profession and practice of law including legal education, stratification within the bar, and the politics of legal services. Investigation of emerging issues in the relationship between institutions of law and science. Enrollment limited. S. Silbey
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.225J Violence, Human Rights, and Justice ( ) (Same subject as SP.621J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 An examination of the problem of mass violence and oppression in the contemporary world, and of the concept of human rights as a defense against such abuse. Explores questions of cultural relativism, race, gender and ethnicity. Examines case studies from war crimes tribunals, truth commissions, anti-terrorist policies and other judicial attempts to redress state-sponsored wrongs. Considers whether the human rights framework effectively promotes the rule of law in modern societies. Students debate moral positions and address ideas of moral relativism. Enrollment limited. E. C. James
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.226 Ethnic and National Identity ( ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Lecture: MW2.30-4 ( 56-180 ) An introduction to the cross-cultural study of ethnic and national identity. Students explore the history of nationalism, focusing on ideologies about the nation-state, and look at the ways gender, religious and racial identities intersect with ethnic and national ones. Ethnic conflict is examined, along with the emergence of social movements based on identity, in particular indigenous rights movements and the ways culture can become highly politicized. Finally, students discuss the effects of globalization, migration, and transnational institutions. Enrollment limited. J. Jackson
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.232J Rethinking the Family, Sex, and Gender (New) ( ) (Same subject as SP.429J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Cross-cultural case studies introduce students to the anthropological study of the social institutions and symbolic meanings of family, gender, and sexuality. Investigates the different forms families and households take and considers their social, emotional, and economic dynamics. Analyzes how various expectations for, and experiences of, family life are rooted in or challenged by particular conceptions of gender and sexuality. Addresses questions surrounding what it means to be a "man" or a "woman," as well as a family member, in different social contexts. H. Paxson
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.235 American Dream: Exploring Class in the US ( ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Lecture: F10-1 ( 16-220 ) Americans have historically preferred to think of the United States in classless terms, as a land of economic opportunity equally open to all. Yet, social class remains a central fault line in the US. Subject explores the experiences and understandings of class among Americans positioned at different points along the US social spectrum. Considers a variety of classic frameworks for analyzing social class and uses memoirs, novels and ethnographies to gain a sense of how class is experienced in daily life and how it intersects with other forms of social difference such as race and gender. C. Walley
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.245J Power: Interpersonal, Organizational and Global Dimensions ( ) (Same subject as 17.045J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Using examples from anthropology and sociology alongside classical and contemporary social theory, subject explores the nature of dominant and subordinate relationships, types of legitimate authority, and practices of resistance. Examines how we are influenced in subtle ways by the people around us, who makes controlling decisions in the family, how people get ahead at work, and whether democracies, in fact, reflect the will of the people. S. Silbey
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.252 How Cultures Remember ( ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Introduces scholarly debates about the socio-cultural practices through which individuals and societies create, sustain, recall, and erase memories. Emphasis is given to the history of knowledge, construction of memory, the role of authorities in shaping memory, and how societies decide on whose versions of memory are more "truthful" and "real." Other topics include how memory works in the human brain, memory and trauma, amnesia, memory practices in the sciences, false memory, sites of memory, and the commodification of memory. M. Buyandelger
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.253 God, Violence, and Media ( ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Approaches to the socio-cultural study of religion. Provides conceptual tools for analyzing the resilience and diversity of religious experience in the face of large socio-economic and political change. Traces the connections between contemporary religious resurgence and violence, displacement, globalization, economic insecurity, and ethnic and national identity. Cases include Catholic conversion via mass media in the Philippines; a witchcraft epidemic in post-apartheid South Africa; underground Protestantism in the atheist Soviet Union; spiritual shopping in the United States. M. Buyandelger
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.265 Food and Culture ( ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Explores connections between what we eat and who we are through cross-cultural study of how personal identities and social groups are formed via food production, preparation, and consumption. Organized around critical discussion of what makes "good" food good (healthy, authentic, ethical, etc.). Uses anthropological and literary classics as well as recent writing and films on the politics of food and agriculture. H. Paxson
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.270 Anthropology through Speculative Fiction (New) ( ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Lecture: T1-4 ( 56-114 ) Examines how anthropology and speculative fiction (SF) each explore ideas about culture and society, technology, morality, and life in "other" worlds. Investigates this convergence of interest through analysis of SF in print, film, and other media. Covers traditional and contemporary anthropological themes, including first contact; gift exchange; gender, marriage, and kinship; law, morality, and cultural relativism; religion; race and embodiment; politics, violence, and war; medicine, healing, and consciousness; technology and environment. E. C. James, S. Helmreich
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.337 Documenting Culture ( ) (Subject meets with CMS.917 ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Surveys how and why people seek to capture life on film. Examines the motives of documentary and ethnographic filmmakers, including curiosity about exotic peoples, concern with documentary as a form of science, and an interest in capturing the truth about cultural life. Students view documentaries about people in the US and abroad, studying the relationship between film images and "reality," tensions between art and observation, and the ethical relationship between filmmakers and those they film. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments. C. Walley
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.339J DV Lab: Documenting Science through Video and New Media (New) ( ) (Same subject as STS.064J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-3-6 Introductory exploration of documentary film theory and production, focusing on documentaries about science, engineering, and related fields. Students engage in digital video production as well as social and media analysis of science documentaries. Readings drawn from social studies of science as well as from documentary film theory. Uses documentary video making as a tool to explore the worlds of science and engineering, as well as a tool for thinking analytically about media itself and the social worlds in which science is embedded. Class includes a lab component devoted to digital video production in addition to class time. Enrollment limited. C. Walley, C. Boebel
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.340J Technology and Culture ( ) (Same subject as STS.075J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 URL: http://web.mit.edu/anthropology/course_desc/index.html#340 Lecture: W EVE (7-10 PM) ( 16-220 ) Examines the intersections of technology, culture, and politics in a variety of social and historical settings ranging from nineteenth century factories to twenty-first century techno dance floors, from Victorian London to anything-goes Las Vegas. Discussions and readings organized around three questions: what cultural effects and risks follow from treating biology as technology; how computers have changed the way we think about ourselves and others; and how politics are built into our infrastructures. Explores the forces behind technological and cultural change; how technological and cultural artifacts are understood and used by different communities; and whether, in what ways, and for whom technology has produced a better world. K. Downes
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21A.341J Energy Decisions, Markets, and Policies (New) ( ) (Same subject as 14.43J , 15.031J ) Prereq: 14.01 or permission of instructor Units: 4-0-8 Structured around choices and constraints regarding sources and uses of energy by households, firms, and governments. Introduces managerial, economic, political, social and cultural frameworks for describing and explaining behavior at various levels of aggregation; includes examples of cost-benefit, organizational and institutional analyses of energy generation, distribution, and consumption. Topics include the role of markets and prices; financial analysis of energy-related investments; institutional path dependence; economic and political determinants of government regulation and the impact of regulation on decisions; other forms of government action and social norms regarding desired behavior and opportunities for businesses and consumers, including feedback into the political/regulatory system. Examples drawn from a wide range of countries and settings. D. Lessard, R. Schmalensee, S. Silbey
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.342 Environmental Struggles ( ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Offers an international perspective on the environment. Using environmental conflict to consider the stakes that groups in various parts of the world have in nature, while also exploring how ecological and social dynamics interact and change over time, subject considers such controversial environmental issues as: nuclear contamination in Eastern Europe; genetic bioprospecting in Mexico; toxic run-off in the rural US; the Bhopal accident in India; and the impact of population growth in the Third World. C. Walley
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.344J Drugs, Politics, and Culture ( ) (Same subject as STS.062J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Examines the relationship between drugs, politics, and society in cross-cultural perspective; use of mind-altering and habit-forming substances by "traditional societies"; the development of a global trade in sugar, opium, and cocaine with the rise of capitalism; and the use and abuse of alcohol, LSD, and Prozac in the US. Finishes by looking at the war on drugs, shifting attitudes to tobacco, and by evaluating America's drug laws. Staff
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21A.345 The Politics of International Development ( ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Offers an anthropological perspective on international development. Students consider development, not in policy or technical terms, but through its social and political dynamics and its impacts on daily life. Examines the various histories of, and meanings given to, international development as well as the social organization of aid agencies and projects. Follows examples of specific projects in various parts of the world. Examples: water projects for pastorialists in Africa, factory development in Southeast Asia, and international nature parks in Indonesia. C. Walley
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.348 Photography and Truth ( ) (Subject meets with CMS.835 ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Photographs in anthropology serve many purposes: as primary data, illustrations of words in a book, documentation for disappearing cultures, evidence of fieldwork, material objects for museum exhibitions, and even works of art. Topics include: the relationships between subject and treatment of image, between art and photography and ethnographic documentation, the role of a museum photograph and its caption, the social practice of "taking pictures" and a case study of photographing women in the Middle East and North Africa. J. Howe
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.355J The Anthropology of Biology ( ) (Same subject as STS.060J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. Examine such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. Offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology — ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic — are changing. Examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, asks how we might answer Erwin Schrodinger's 1944 question, "What Is Life?", today. S. Helmreich
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.360J The Anthropology of Sound ( ) (Same subject as STS.065J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Credit cannot also be received for CMS.407 Lecture: W1-4 ( 16-220 ) Examines the ways humans experience sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. Consider how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across sociocultural and scientific contexts. Learn how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally as well as the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, sound recording, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of sound ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the digital age are also addressed. S. Helmreich
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.370J Art, Craft, Science ( ) (Same subject as STS.074J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Lecture: R1-4 ( 16-220 ) Examines how people learn, practice, and evaluate traditional and contemporary craft techniques. Social science theories of design, embodiment, apprenticeship learning, skill, labor, expertise, and tacit knowledge are used to explore distinctions among art, craft, and science. Also discusses the commoditization of craft into market goods, collectible art, and tourism industries. Ethnographic and historical case studies include textiles, Shaker furniture, glassblowing, quilting, cheesemaking, industrial design, home and professional cooking, factory and laboratory work, CAD/CAM. Demonstrations, optional field trips, and/or hands-on craft projects may be included. S. Roosth
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.430J Introduction to Latin American Studies ( ) (Same subject as 17.55J , 21F.084J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Interdisciplinary introduction to contemporary Latin America, drawing on films, literature, press accounts, and scholarly research. Topics include economic development, ethnic and racial identity, religion, corruption, democracy, transitional justice, and the rule of law. Examples draw on a range of countries, especially Mexico, Chile, and Brazil. Terms taught by Professor Nobles will cover the English-speaking Caribbean; terms taught by Professor Lawson will focus more on Mexico. Requirements include class presentations and written essays. more information ... C. Lawson, M. Nobles
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21A.470J Gender and Representation of Asian Women ( ) (Same subject as SP.448J ) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Explores some of the forces and mechanisms through which stereotypes are built and perpetuated. In particular, examines stereotypes associated with Asian women in colonial, nationalist, state-authoritarian, and global/diasporic narratives about gender and power. Students read ethnography, fiction, and history, and view films to examine the politics and circumstances that create and perpetuate the representation of Asian women as dragon ladies, lotus blossoms, despotic tyrants, desexualized servants, and docile subordinates. Students are introduced to debates about Orientalism, gender, and power. M. Buyandelger
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
21A.510 Seminar in Anthropological Theory (21A.110) ( ) Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 3-0-9 TBA. Focuses on core issues and approaches in anthropological theory and method. Studies theoretical frameworks for the analysis and integration of material from other subjects in cultural anthropology. Reading and discussion of classics of anthropological theory and contemporary critiques. Students prepare and present analyses of texts. Preference to Anthropology majors and minors. J. Jackson
Score: 6.2746572 Details | Listing | Web page
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