Welcome to Cultural Anthropology!
This is my favorite subject, and my favorite
course!
That must make you my favorite people online
this semester!
Of course, I believe that every person should
take a course in cultural anthropology to
better navigate such a complex, increasingly
globalized world!
I hope you'll take this semester to examine
your own cultural patterning, learn how to
recognize and explain cultural similarities
and difference with other cultural groups
and increase your overall knowledge of interesting
people groups from around the world!
And maybe, just maybe, if we care deeply enough,
we can reduce our own ethnocentrism for the
sake of being reconciled to our neighbors
in our backyard and around the globe.
You will learn about developing anthropological
lenses, eyes to see and ears to hear what
underlies the cultural patterning that you
encounter in yourself and in others.
The insights gained from the discipline of
cultural anthropology will broaden your perspective
on the human diversity in our world if you
let them.
The community you live in will serve as the
lab that you will explore as you learn what
cultural patterning is and how it operates.
This class will nudge you out into the community
into cross-cultural experiences.
I will guide you into and help you process
these experiences with insights from historical
and contemporary researchers of culture.
But, your learning will be minimal unless
you move out of your comfort zone into first-hand
contact with the cultural other within your
reach.
This means you'll need to get outside of your
neighborhood and limited social circles into
the social worlds of people who speak another
language, who have different customs and traditions,
whose understanding of family varies from
yours, those whose jokes and poetry is different
from what you grew up with.
Welcome to Cultural Anthropology!
And remember - it's not strange, it's not
weird...it's just different!
