Contemporary Culture and the Self
Elmer Beal Jr. - Instructor

Course Syllabus

This is an introductory course in cultural anthropology. The emphasis is on the individual and freedom of choice in contemporary America leads many students to think that they are not products of a culture but rather, or their own choices. Only by recognizing the extent to which our choices are determined by culture can we come to know what choices we might really make. To this end, the basic concepts of cultural anthropology are introduced by a general text and other pedagogical devices, as follows.

The concepts of culture, enculturation, and ethnocentrism are presented, along with the notion of a universal pattern of culture. The basic attributes of the human organism which allow culture to be created and used are outlined, including the capacity for symbolic thought, language, speech, tool making/use, upright posture and social behavior. This leads to a consideration of the extent to which culture may be the predominate adaptive mechanism by which humans mitigate or mediate environmental pressures. The "nature/nurture" continuum is described, along with the principal theoretical positions which argue for predominance of one over the other.

The patterned cultural traits of technology, economy, kinship, marriage, reproduction and child rearing, social organization, religion, ideology, art and play are examined in an historical and comparative context, encouraging the student to examine his/her own culture while explaining and expecting cultural relativism. The distinction between cultural relativism and moral indifference is explained.

An historical perspective on cultural change looks at epochs characterized by hunting/gathering, agriculture, industrialization and their subtypes as technologies typified by distinct cultural configurations, levels of resource use and population densities. This introduces the seminal relationship of anthropology to human ecology.

In order to make the relativity of culture and the reality of enculturation more accessible, a number of novels (usually 3) which have reliable cross-cultural content are read and discussed. For example, the reality of Maxine Hong Kingston's mother's China is detailed in the novel, The Woman Warrior. The sharp contrast between the mother's cultural reality and the student's own helps to make their enculturation seem more real, while the mother's deep conviction in the correctness of her own culture illustrates cultural relativity. Ethnocentrism is also dramatized both by the mother's attitudes and by the students' reaction to her.

Students are also asked to write autobiographical papers on their own basic values, roles in their families, and attitudes towards nature. By sharing these papers, students discover the great extent to which their enculturation has produced very similar experiences and views.

Current texts include: Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior; Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits; Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, and Marvin Harris' Cultural Anthropology (5th ed.).

College of the Atlantic; 105 Eden St. Bar Harbor, ME, 04609
Phone: 207-288-5015 Fax: 207-288-4126
Admission: 1-800-528-0025

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