FYS 24 Cultural Anthropology & Other/Realities
Cultural anthropology emerged within the past two centuries as a means of coming to grips with the diversity of ways of being human. While cultural anthropology’s history has been tainted by collusion with racist and imperialist programs, it remains the single loudest academic voice on behalf of indigenous peoples around the world—not only in terms of advocacy for such folks, but also in terms of fomenting understanding of people who are not like us. In this course, we will look at a part of the world—New Ireland, Papua New Guinea—that is different, in many respects, from the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) societies from which most, if not all, of the students in this class come. In doing so, we will discover that non-WEIRD societies have a logic to their ways of being and relating, and that sometimes, WEIRD ways of doing things are, well, weird. Open only to first year frosh.