The class consists of two one-hour lectures on Monday and Wednesday (at 2 p.m.) and several tutorial sections throughout the week. Students should attend the lecture on Monday and on Wednesday every week, and attend their assigned tutorial section once a week from Week 1.

We have organized the topics we will cover in this class into four three-week modules, each of which poses a question which is crucial to anthropology. A module starts with a chapter from a textbook or an introductory overview of a topic so that we all have the same common knowledge. In the next two weeks, we explore the main ideas in this area further by looking at classic writings by scholars which changed the way people think about culture and the study of culture. We also will read a detailed, in-depth description and analysis of a single case (an “ethnographic case study”). Each module leads to an assignment which is related to the main idea of the module.

Ryan will be lecturing in the first two modules on the concept of culture and the practice of ethnographic research and analysis. Jadran will take the second two modules on theories of kinship as a system within a society, and on shamanism, the nature of consciousness, and relationship of cultural patterns to the mind. in the final week, Ryan returns to review the class and discuss the relationship between all the separate ideas in the class and the field of anthropology.

In other words, all the parts of the class—the lectures, your tutorial, the readings, and your ideas—work together. If you work through each module and show us what you have learned and discovered for yourself in each assignment, then by the end of the semester you will have constructed an edifice of knowledge rather than collected bits and pieces of information. For all the pieces to come together, you have to do something for this class every week for the whole semester.