Course Description
Explores contemporary and past hunter-gatherer societies. The course examines cultural anthropologists' attempts to understand the similarities and differences between the lives of foragers and ourselves, ecological anthropologists' attempts to explain diversity of foraging behaviors, and indigenous peoples' current struggles for legal rights and cultural survival.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will complete additional readings that follow
the schedule of topics. They will meet with the instructor on
alternating weeks for discussion of these readings. Students
will be assigned two professional-level term papers.
Athena Title
HUNTERS & GATHERERS
Prerequisite
ANTH 1102 or ANTH 2120H or permission of department
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
1. Students will be knowledgeable about key findings and major debates within hunter-gatherer studies. 2. Students will learn the history of Western attitudes toward hunter-gatherers, particularly our tendency to define them in opposition to ourselves rather than as autonomous peoples with their own unique histories and cultures. 3. Students will learn ecological and economic theories that attempt to explain the diversity of hunter-gatherer behavior. 4. Students will gain an appreciation for the political struggles faced by indigenous peoples during colonialism and today. 5. Students will have the opportunity to practice academic research and writing with guidance and feedback from the instructor. 6. Students should have a broader perspective on human diversity and universality.
Topical Outline
PART 1: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 1. Course introduction 2. Hunter-gatherers in European imagination and social theory 3. Film: Nanook of the North (1922) 4. The Tasaday controversy 5. Man the Hunter Conference (1966) 6. Original affluence 7. Fieldwork among Kalahari San 8. Kinship and social organization among Kalahari San 9. Religion and worldview among Kalahari San and others 10. Hunting and gathering contrasted to agriculture PART 2: EVOLUTIONARY AND ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 1. Human behavioral ecology 2. The prey choice model 3. Applications of the prey choice model 4. Are hunter-gatherers natural conservationists? 5. Hunter-gatherers and subsistence risk 6. Food sharing, part 1: kin selection and reciprocal altruism 7. Food sharing, part 2: tolerated theft 8. Food sharing, part 3: Showing off and costly signaling 9. Age-sex division of labor 10. Children’s foraging 11. The human life history debate PART 3: POLITICAL-ECONOMY PERSPECTIVES 1. Whither relicts or refugees? The Kalahari San debate of the 1990s 2. Hunter-gatherer histories: Case studies 3. Hunter-gatherers as bricoleurs: Diversified economies and global commodity chains 4. Indigenous peoples' rights in the developed world: U.S., Canada, Australia 5. Indigenous peoples' rights in post-communist Russia 6. Indigenous peoples' rights in developing countries: Africa, South America, SE Asia 7. Indigenous peoples and archaeology: Beyond NAGPRA 8. Hunter-gatherers meet conservation 9. Hunter-gatherers meet international development 10. Course conclusion
Syllabus