SOCI1003 aims to provide students with an understanding of what anthropology is all about; it targets year-1 semester-1 students from the Faculty of Social Sciences, and there are no prerequisites to join except being curious and open-minded. We will begin by looking at anthropology’s four fields: archaeology, bio-physical, linguistic, and sociocultural anthropology. This course focuses mainly on the latter, and we will see what anthropologists do, the role of ethnographic fieldwork, the concept of culture, and some famous theories. Among the “classic” topics, we will explore environmental adaptation, economic systems, kinship, gender, race and ethnicity, political organization, rituals and rites. But we will also look at concepts such as “nation” and “globalization,” and at some specific themes, such as migration, violence and warfare.

This course emphasizes cross-cultural comparison, and I will offer you case studies from all over the world, involving, for example, bands of foragers, small-scale agricultural societies, and industrialized nation-states. The fundamental question that anthropology asks—and I will keep asking you throughout the course—is: what does it mean to be human?