ANTHR 6000 - Proseminar: Culture and Symbol

Fall. 6 credits.

S. Sangren.

Focuses on an appreciation of symbolic, expressive, and representational forms and processes both as producers and products of social activities. Through the study of symbolic anthropology, structuralism, exchange, myth and ritual, religion, gender, personhood, linguistics, semiology, etc., the course investigates how identity and meaning are linked to the practical exigencies of social life. While emphasizing aspects of the discipline generally associated with cultural anthropology, the course endeavors to set the stage for a dialectical understanding of social, political, economic, and symbolic activities as interrelated phenomena. The works of de Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Dumont, Geertz, Victor Turner, Sahlins, among others, as well as contemporary theories are given careful attention.