ANT 205 - Traditional Cultures of the World

3 credit hours - Three hours weekly; one term.
Learn about culture as expressed by a cross-section of world traditional cultures. Using a cross-cultural perspective, review contemporary and historical case material from specific traditional cultures in detail, comparing the lifestyles of each group. Lectures cover hunters and gatherers, tribes, chiefdoms and pre-industrial groups from diverse parts of the earth.

Prerequisite(s): SOC 111 or SOC 121 or ANT 121 or permission of department chair.

Crosslisted: Also offered as SOC 205 ; credit is not given for both ANT 205 and SOC 205 .

Course Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

Apply an ethnological (scientific) approach to the understanding of human behavior in cross cultural settings
- Distinguish between and among ethnological and other biological, psychological, sociological and anthropological perspectives
- Identify and discuss the four fields of anthropology and how archaeological, linguistic and physical anthropological, in addition to ethnological studies, impact on ethnography
- Apply the fundamental ethnological perspectives to daily sociocultural life
- Compare and contrast diverse ethnographic case histories
Evaluate the methodology, results and conclusions of ethnographic research
- Describe quantitative and qualitative research designs and strategies of data collection in the field
- Evaluate the quantitative and qualitative research designs in the analysis of daily cultural life in addition to the seasonal round
- Demonstrate the fundamental quantitative and qualitative analysis strategies
- Compare and contrast data presented in a cross section of monographs
- Communicate an understanding of independent literature review
Explain the social structure and social interaction in an institutional framework within a cross-section of diverse ethnic peoples
- Determine family, political, economic, religious and educational structures of diverse social entities in cross-cultural perspective
- Compare and contrast similarities and differences among and between diverse human social institutions
- Apply institutional structure to a sample of world’s indigenous cultures
- Characterize government to government interaction in a social change context within diverse indigenous groups
- Communicate familial, religious, economic, political and educational, structural and functional interaction patterns within four indigenous groups in as many continents
Discuss adaptive cultural mechanisms necessary for survival and subsistence in cross-cultural context
- Describe the culture area ethnographic approach to human adaptation
- Analyze samples of subsistence patterns from diverse geographical regions
- Compare and contrast similarities and differences between and among hunters and gatherers, horticulturalists, pastoralists and agriculturalists
- Utilize the recognition of environmental limitations of human adaptation in a cross-cultural context
- Demonstrate awareness of world culture areas
Apply ethnographic principles and skills to participant observation in the field, for logical, rational problem-solving
- Employ ethnographic understanding and ethnological perspective to investigate daily life and life cycle activities in a cross-cultural setting
- Integrate and apply ethnological perspective and ethnographic skills into further understanding of daily life, seasonal round and life-cycle activities in a cross cultural setting
- Explain the added value of participant observation techniques in the analysis of diverse ethnic communities, from cross-sectional and longitudinal perspective
- Compare and contrast ethnographic understanding with four-fields perspectives, in addition to biological, psychological and sociological perspectives
Apply ethnological principles to the understanding of cultural change
- Employ various biological, psychological, sociological and anthropological theoretical paradigms utilized in understanding culture change
- Utilize ethnological principles in understanding vanishing societies
- Explore economic and political dominance of core society’s role in human and environmental exploitation
- Compare and contrast past and present diverse ethnic peoples regarding cultural change
- Explain the biological, psychological, sociological and anthropological perspectives in understanding cultural change
- Indicate the social impact of cultural change regarding human interaction
Explain the nature of culture and society
- Describe the process of enculturation
- Ascertain the nature of the enculturation processes within lineage, clan, phratry and moiety
- Assess the impact of the enculturation process on ethnically diverse human social outcomes
- Apply various adaptive participant observation models to the understanding of the interaction between society and culture
- Appraise the components of culture and society
- Distinguish between the components culture and society to understand human behavior
Interpret the nature of social institutions and their impact as adaptive mechanisms within specific cultural settings
- Explain institutional adaptive behavior
- Summarize functions of family, religion, education, economy and government in ethnically diverse communities
- Describe various institutional structures in cross-cultural context
- Demonstrate understanding of the vanishing nature of bands, tribes and chiefdoms
- Discuss state control
- Understand mono-culture

Core Competencies
Core 1 Communication Core 6 Scientific Reasoning Core 8 Social and Civic Responsibility Core 9 Global Perspective Core 10 Innovative and Critical Thinking