ANTH 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Adam Kadmon, Cultural Relativism, Female Genital Mutilation
11 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
The study of humanity in the widest and most inclusive possible sense. Human diversity in the context of broader/global relations, processes, and forces across time and space. Studies humans in terms of both their social/cultural features and their physical (biological) nature. Allows us to ask questions like are there gender differences found everywhere/at all times? . To know others in order to know ourselves. The problem of generalizing from a partial sample. Questioning what we take for granted as natural or normal adolescence. Using your own culture to understand/judge another culture. Creates a blind spot when we interpret things in terms of what they would mean in our own culture. Doing business across borders and local knowledge good to know etiquette. A standard anthropological perspective is to make the exotic familiar, and to eroticize things that we take for granted. The idea that all parts of a society are intertwined.
