Welcome to anthropology! This class is one of two introductory units in anthropology at the University of Sydney. This section of the Anthrocyclopaedia is provided as a supplement to the university sites and online resources for this class. On the pages here, you will find a guide to the class and lecture outlines from Ryan's lectures. All of your writing assignments, other assignments, and the quizzes for lecture are submitted using the class Canvas site.

Anthropology is unlike any other social science. It is part science, and part art. Anthropologists wish to observe human beings and their social patterns, but we also want to step into the shoes of another person and see the world from that person's point of view.

Today, there are many problems and issues which affect all societies and people everywhere. We can say that the most important social problems are global in nature. If that's true, then they also affect people in different cultures, each of whom sees the world and other people in a distinct way. Therefore, you cannot understand contemporary trends from a single culture's point of view. The world needs anthropology and anthropologists, namely you.

In this class, Ryan and Jadran want to argue that people are incomplete without the input from their social environment which determines how they see themselves, how they see other people, what they think is right and wrong, and what the purpose of their own lives are. This has two important aspects to it. First, there is no one single way to be human because humans are products of their particular cultures. Second, no person is an island; every person is part of a community of other people, and this community is held together and made into a system through the worldview that people in this community share, and which they transmit to the next generation. Human beings are defined by their diversity, but that diversity shows us that there are universals, specifically the capacity to acquire cultural patterns of thought and action, and the capacity to participate in a culture as a system.

For Semester 1, 2020, the University of Sydney anthropology department has created a new format for this class, based on the successful model of ANTH 1002: Anthropology in the world, which runs in Sem 2. We will work through four three-week modules on different topics that introduce you to the study of culture, cultural difference, and the main perspectives in anthropology as a social science.