Inhabiting Cultural Worlds: Introduction to Anthropology

Anthropology addresses humans as social and cultural beings. All over the world, people organize themselves empirically—giving rise to various forms of social structure, which anthropologists study under rubrics such as kinship, age, gender, caste and class. Such structures are continually expressed, reproduced and modified in meaningful ways. Not only do people arrange themselves in various ways, they also devise a wide array of rules to regulate social interactions in the natural and supernatural (spiritual) worlds. Anthropologists study and compare how all of this is achieved—and contested—around the globe, in the present as well as in the past.

Inhabiting Cultural Worlds is the core module of the new 15- and 30-ECTS inter-faculty university minor Anthropology: What It Means to be Human. Is is also part of the minor Religion in the Modern World.

In the first block students will be introduced to the field of cultural anthropology, as well as how it relates to other fields of anthropology—namely, linguistic anthropology, physical anthropology and anthropological archaeology. We will discuss crucial concepts and methods in the field, and students will engage with some of the key themes of anthropological research, such as Indigeneity, decolonialization and local worldviews.

In the second block (in the Anthropology minor only) students will engage more intensively and deeply with particular topics they select. Individually or in small groups, they will conduct clearly-delimited research projects in relation to different kinds of data—for example, anthropological literature, archival documents, material objects (from the ethnological collection of the University Museum), or documentary films. The result of this research can be presented in different formats. Students may choose to write an essay, make a podcast or create an online exhibition.