This free and open online course in Cultural Anthropology was produced by the WA State Board for Community & Technical Colleges [http://sbctc.edu/].
Students examine the anthropological perspective of human culture, including such institutions as kinship, politics, and religion, and evaluate the interrelationship between culture, environment and biology. Students explore the effects of globalization on culture while developing critical thinking skills through the application of essential anthropological approaches, theories, and methods. This course is divided into 3 units:
Culture & Cultural Anthropology: In the first unit, the anthropological concept of culture is explored, including overarching themes such as cultural relativism, holism, ethnocentrism, identity, and language. Cultural anthropology theories and methodologies are also introduced.
Social Institutions: In the second unit, students examine from a relativistic standpoint, the various manifestations of social institutions such as economic systems, including subsistence strategies, political organization, marriage, family, kinship, healthcare, and religion.
Globalization: In the third unit, students will research, critique and assess the impact of globalization on culture, particularly the effects on indigenous (non-Westernized, non-industrial, disenfranchised) peoples.
This module is part of the Open Course Library, a collection of shareable course materials created for faculty to use in their classes. As part of the Open Course Library this content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which means that you are free to reuse the course in its entirety, edit it and use a your own modified version, or pick out only pieces which can be incorporated into your own course, as long as you credit the original author for their work.
To access all materials for this course you may download either the ANGEL export file or the IMS Common Cartridge file. While the ANGEL file is specific to that system, the Common Cartridge file is compatible with many learning management systems. More information on Common Cartridge is available at http://www.imsglobal.org/cc/ .
