Sexual Power In Society - Anthropology 441


In this course, we see how archaeologists show how and why civilizations rise and collapse. Not open to students with credit for ANTH In this course we explore how various cultures think about the role of death in life. Using a variety of anthropological texts and methods including ethnographic, archaeological and forensic perspectives , we examine the range of experiences that people have with the dead, what people do with and to their dead and the meanings that those experiences have for the living. This course examines the intersections between the social and physical bodies that human beings inhabit and takes a critical perspective on Western medical assumptions about death and dying.

This seminar is on wars and militarism and how these effect and shape human lives. We discuss whether or not wars and the concomitant militarization of human societies are inevitable aspects of our existence. Do wars and militarism reflect primordial human biological and psychological instincts and are therefore inevitable features of human existence?

Or can these be traced to certain social, political, and economic contingencies and processes? Can wars be conceptualized only in terms of armed conflicts between nation-states or do wars encompass much more than is usually accepted or understood? This course is intended to blur several boundaries: Through an interdisciplinary lens that brings together insights from anthropology, security-studies, cultural-studies, feminist theory, political-science and history, we will define, identify, and understand the different kinds of wars that are being fought in contemporary times.

The focus of the course will be to highlight the lived experience of wars and militarism, the strategies of survival that people employ in sometimes extremely adverse situations; the underlying assumptions of wars and militarism that are reflected in social institutions seemingly little connected to them; and most importantly, the power differences that underpin and drive contemporary wars. This course examines archaeological and physical anthropological research on the human body.

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The course considers how such research is carried out, what it contributes to our understanding of ancient societies, and the ethical issues unique to the study of human remains. Topics discussed include mortuary ritual, the relationship between the living and the dead, prehistoric warfare, and skeletal markers of disease. In this course, students examine the cultural, political, economic, psychological and social aspects of life in Africa.

Through lectures, discussions, films and a variety of readings, students will explore a number of issues, including ancient Egypt, slavery, colonialism, religion, music, art, African cinema and Pan-Africanism. This course studies innovative, timely and often interdisciplinary topics that are not a formal part of the sociology and anthropology curriculum. Often these courses apply anthropological perspectives and insights to issues that we either take for granted or study in other disciplines.

ANTH , sophomore standing or permission of the instructor. The course may be repeated for credit with different topics. Development is often considered synonymous with progress and economic growth. This course seeks to challenge the framework within which development policies and practices have been conceptualized since the s. How do discourses and practices of development reflect struggles over power, history, and culture? Why has development often been understood as a "neocolonial" endeavor that seeks to maintain the global hegemony of the first world over the third world?

How has the trajectory of development shifted in the past five decades to encompass divergent agendas, practices, and meanings? How have these "macro" agendas shaped the lives of millions of men and women living across the globe? Can development be understood as a monolithic category or is it experienced differently by men and women cross-culturally? This course will also highlight some of the most pressing concerns over the merits and limitations of globalization thereby engaging students with ongoing social, political and economic debates.

Using anthropological insights, we will explore the connections between colonialism, development, capitalism, and globalization to analyze how "development" is embedded in social inequities, and whether or not a more equitable form of development can be envisioned. Lectures, discussions, films, and a range of ethnographic literature will introduce students to these religious systems. Among the topics and themes to be addressed in relation to relgiion are issues of identity, ethnicity, gender, performance, and class.

Case studies in Brazil, Cuba, and among Latinos in the U. This course focuses on the relationship between cultural performance and identity. Specific case studies include ethnographies on tango, rumba and Mexican corridos. Of particular interest are the interconnected roles of power and politics in the performance of culture--how the two are performed in an attempt at re-forming and sometimes de-forming and mis-informing each other.

This is a seminar style course that examines the intersections between the interrelated perspectives in public health, international health, and global health from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Specifically this course will examine the role of health and medicine in mediating the relationships between metropolis and colony, state and citizen, North and South, public welfare and private interest, research practices and human subjects, the commodification of health and the body, and human rights discourse throughout Africa and the Diaspora.

The course will be divided chronologically into four parts, tracing imperial health formation formations in the late 19th century, the nascent internationalism of the interwar period, the construction of bureaucracies of development in the postwar and postcolonial era, and contemporary configurations of public and private interests in the new global health of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Students in this class will acquire knowledge of the history and practice of public health in Africa and the Diaspora through a wide range of readings from multidisciplinary and anthropological sources.

Students will acquire the practical skills necessary to evaluate contemporary public health issues in an African context utilizing skills in Community Needs Assessment practice. Students will work collaboratively to produce a Needs Assessment document for a community that will be shared with those in the continent and who are actively working in public health. This course examines the social and cultural constructions of reproduction, and how power in everyday life shapes reproductive behavior and its cross cultural meanings.

Utilizing a hemispheric and ethnographic approach to reproduction, this course engages with examples from throughout the Americas, including but not limited to Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. The course is organized to address a reproductive spectrum including fertility, childbirth and parenting, as well as the roles and expectations for women and men in each of these stages of reproduction. Additional topics addressed are state intervention on fertility, technologies of reproduction, the cultural production of natural childbirth, the politics of fetal personhood, and the diverse reproductive health situations influenced by the intersectional nature of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality and class.

A survey history of the central theoretical perspectives, questions and data of socio-cultural anthropology. Focusing on significant scholars and case studies, the course explores the development of different ways that anthropologists have formulated and understood fundamental questions concerning human society, culture, change and universals. Junior or Senior; Anthropology or Sociology-Anthropology major or permission from instructor. An exploration of selected topics in anthropology, culture and society see Anthropology of the U.

May be repeated for credit with different topics.

Sociology & Anthropology Courses

Formerly ANTH A course designed to introduce students to anthropological methods of qualitative research. Readings and discussion in seminar-like format on participant observation, formal and informal interviewing, research design and interpretation of data will prepare students to carry out their own ethnographic projects. The course will also cover ethics in fieldwork and the current debate on the subjectivity of ethnographic inquiry. A seminar of senior Anthropology majors focused on contemporary theories and issues of culture, change, development, universals and diversity.

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The actual topic alters each year. Students discuss a common core of readings while researching-writing a senior thesis. An introduction to sociology: The focus is on how human societies organize themselves; how culture, socialization, norms, power relations, social institutions and group interaction affect the individual; and how, in turn, societies are transformed by human action. Of particular concern are problems facing contemporary societies.

Not open to seniors or for Pass-Fail credit.

  • Patriarchy!
  • Anthropology of Sex, Gender, and Power – Anthro | Peggy Reeves Sanday;
  • Anthropology of Sex, Gender, and Power – Anthro 411.

This course, designed especially for first-year students, explores an innovative or timely issue in sociology. Sociological perspectives and ways of knowing are used to study a particular topic in depth. Ethical, historical and sometimes comparative dimensions to the issue will be examined. Popular Culture in the U. An exploration of a timely topic in sociology, sometimes interdisciplinary in nature, that is not offered in the formal sociology curriculum. The course may be repeated with different topics.

SOC or sophomore standing. This course examines the role of gender systems in human societies. How do societies vary in the positions assigned to men and women? In the power and privileges accorded each sex? How do we acquire a gender identity? What are the consequences of sex-typing and sex-stratified societies?

The role of religion, intellectual traditions, language, families and schools, economic organization, labor markets and the state is explored. The focus is on contemporary U. This course examines issues associated with family life, such as gender role socialization, sexuality, mate selection, the internal dynamics of relationships, domestic violence and marital dissolution. The course also considers the social implications of current trends in family life and the expanding definitions of family that include non-traditional relationships that have until recently lacked institutional legitimacy.

The course explores theoretical explanations for criminal behavior, empirical research on crime in diverse contexts and policy debates on crime control and punishment in the U. We place particular emphasis on the intersection of race, social class and gender as a conceptual lens through which to analyze street crime, white collar crime and intimate familial crime. This course is a socio-historical analysis of hip hop examining the conditions for the creation and continued existence of this genre of music.

We approach it through theoretical frameworks such as Marxism and feminism, address questions such as how capitalism and the commodification of hip hop affect our society. In addition, how do artists conceptualize and present masculinity and femininity? Is it really okay to be a P. Finally, what role does race and ethnicity have in hip hop music? Are white artists such as Eminem really appropriating the culture from minorities? Our intent is to discover how the socially constructed characteristics of race, class, and gender are addressed and conveyed in hip hop music.

This course is an examination of the changing definitions and explanations of deviance.

Men and the Power of the Visual

Conceptions of deviance are looked at within historical, political and cultural contexts. Implications for policies of social control are explored. An exploration of the diverse ways in which human sexualities have been conceptualized, molded, policed and transformed in particular cultures, social contexts, moral climates and political terrains. Investigated are how the seemingly personal and natural world of sexual desire and behavior is shaped by larger societal institutions e.

Also examined is how social categories that have primacy in a culture, e. This course explores the origins, changes and possible futures of racial and ethnic relations. It is concerned with both the development of sociological explanations of ethnic and racial conflict, competition and cooperation as well as with practical approaches to improving inter-group relations. The course surveys global and historical patterns of inter-group relations but focuses on late 20th-century and early 21st-century United States.

Cross-listed with ANTH Are you healthy or ill? How do you know? Can your race, class and gender really affect your health? Is the health care system able to take care of our country's citizens? These and many, many more questions will be explored in Medical Sociology. The course is divided into four parts. In the first, we will explore how macro-level factors affect health. Men and women were both subject to strict laws regarding sexual behavior, however men were punished infrequently in comparison to women.

Additionally, women's punishment often carried strong social stigma, "rendering [women] unmarriageable," a stigma which did not follow men. In the modern era, the concept of Patriarchy is asserted to manifest itself in institutionalized control, rather than simply being about an individual's sexism. Feminist theorists have written extensively about patriarchy either as a primary cause of women's oppression, or as part of an interactive system. Shulamith Firestone , a radical-libertarian feminist, defines patriarchy as a system of oppression of women.

Firestone believes that patriarchy is caused by the biological inequalities between women and men, e. Firestone writes that patriarchal ideologies support the oppression of women and gives as an example the joy of giving birth, which she labels a patriarchal myth. For Firestone, women must gain control over reproduction in order to be free from oppression. The system of patriarchy accomplishes this by alienating women from their bodies.

Interactive systems theorists Iris Marion Young and Heidi Hartmann believe that patriarchy and capitalism interact together to oppress women. Young, Hartmann, and other socialist and Marxist feminists use the terms patriarchal capitalism or capitalist patriarchy to describe the interactive relationship of capitalism and patriarchy in producing and reproducing the oppression of women. In its being both systematic and universal, therefore, the concept of patriarchy represents an adaptation of the Marxist concept of class and class struggle. Audre Lorde , an African American feminist writer and theorist, believed that racism and patriarchy were intertwined systems of oppression.

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Anthropology of Sex, Gender, and Power – Anthro [Lines Antigone by Sophocles, produced approximately BC, this translation by Trobriand society, and to the roles that men play, should give us, as anthropologists cause. versal sexual asymmetry as though it were a basis of social structure. (Leach ). values, relationships of power and authority, the creation and mainte- nance of group Anthropology & Education Quarterly 30(4) Copyright ?.

Does a "good mother," she asks, train her son to be competitive, individualistic, and comfortable within the hierarchies of patriarchy, knowing that he may likely be economically successful but a mean person? Or does a good mother resist patriarchal ideologies and socialize her son to be cooperative and communal but economically unsuccessful? Gerda Lerner , in her The Creation of Patriarchy , makes a series of arguments about the origins and reproduction of patriarchy as a system of oppression of women, and concludes that patriarchy is socially constructed and seen as natural and invisible.

Some feminist theorists believe that patriarchy is an unjust social system that is harmful to both men and women. Because patriarchy is a social construction, it can be overcome by revealing and critically analyzing its manifestations. Jaggar, Young, and Hartmann are among the feminist theorists who argue that the system of patriarchy should be completely overturned, especially the heteropatriarchal family, which they see as a necessary component of female oppression.

The family not only serves as a representative of the greater civilization by pushing its own affiliates to change and obey, but performs as a component in the rule of the patriarchal state that rules its inhabitants with the head of the family. Many feminists especially scholars and activists have called for culture repositioning as a method for deconstructing patriarchy.

Culture repositioning relates to culture change. It involves the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society. Sociologist Joan Acker, analyzing the concept of patriarchy and the role that it has played in the development of feminist thought, says that seeing patriarchy as a universal, trans-historical and trans-cultural phenomenon where "women were everywhere oppressed by men in more or less the same ways […] tended toward a biological essentialism. Anne Pollart has described attempts the use of patriarchy as circular and conflating description and explanation.

As a common standard of differentiation between sexes, advocates for a patriarchal society like to focus on the influences that hormones have over biological systems. Sociologists tend to reject predominantly biological explanations of patriarchy [1] and contend that socialization processes are primarily responsible for establishing gender roles. Biologist Richard Lewontin asserts that patriarchy persists through social and political reasons, rather than purely biological causes.

Opponents of gender feminism , such as Christina Hoff Sommers , have argued that patriarchy has its origin in biological factors. This is called biological determinism , which looks at humanity from a strictly biological point of view. Thus, the evolution of science in a patriarchal society's focus begins with man and woman. The male testosterone hormone is, for instance, known to greatly enhance risk taking behaviour; which can generate increased status in groups if successful balanced with an equal increase in number of failures, with potential losses of status or death as result.

The potential magnitude, frequency and longevity of the increased status from a hormonally driven risk-taking success depends on opportunities, which increases rapidly with societal complexity. A hypothetical patriarchal culture based primarily on a hormonally-driven increased rate of male successes, thus require a certain critical level of societal evolution [ clarification needed ] before it could evolve. Other proponents of this theory posit that because of a woman's biology, she is more fit to perform roles such as anonymous child-rearing at home, rather than high-profile decision-making roles, such as leaders in battles.

Through this simple basis, "the existence of a sexual division of labor in primitive societies is a starting point as much for purely social accounts of the origins of patriarchy as for biological. Although patriarchy exists within the scientific atmosphere, "the periods over which women would have been at a physiological disadvantage in participation in hunting through being at a late stage of pregnancy or early stage of child-rearing would have been short", [60]: Lewontin and others argue that such biological determinism unjustly limits women.

In his study, he states women behave a certain way not because they are biologically inclined to, but rather because they are judged by "how well they conform to the stereotypical local image of femininity". Feminists believe that people have gendered biases, which are perpetuated and enforced across generations by those who benefit from them.

This claim cloaks the fact that men also have periods of time where they can be aggressive and irrational; furthermore, unrelated effects of aging and similar medical problems are often blamed on menopause, amplifying its reputation. A growing body of research has found key points of the biological argument to be groundless. For example, it was asserted for over a century that women were not as intellectually competent as men because they have slightly smaller brains on average. On the other hand, men have a greater variability in intelligence, and except in tests of reading comprehension, in tests of perceptual speed and associative memory, males typically outnumber females substantially among high-scoring individuals.

Furthermore, no discrepancy in intelligence is assumed between men of different heights, even though on average taller men have been found to have slightly larger brains. Within the structure of a patriarchal society, patriarchal biases and values are more likely to be promoted in the educational system. Particularly in mathematical and scientific fields, boys are presumed to have more keen spatial abilities than girls, whereas girls are supposed to assume better linguistic skills. These stereotypical manifestations within educational institutions contract with the notions of differently gendered brains and a "relationship between intelligence and brain size".

Sociologist Sylvia Walby has composed six overlapping structures that define patriarchy and that take different forms in different cultures and different times:. Some sociobiologists , such as Steven Goldberg , argue that social behavior is primarily determined by genetics , and thus that patriarchy arises more as a result of inherent biology than social conditioning.

Goldberg also contends that patriarchy is a universal feature of human culture. In , Goldberg wrote, "The ethnographic studies of every society that has ever been observed explicitly state that these feelings were present, there is literally no variation at all. Concerning Goldberg's claims about the "feelings of both men and women", Eleanor Leacock countered in that the data on women's attitudes are "sparse and contradictory", and that the data on male attitudes about male—female relations are "ambiguous".

Also, the effects of colonialism on the cultures represented in the studies were not considered. An early theory in evolutionary psychology offered an explanation for the origin of patriarchy which starts with the view that females almost always invest more energy into producing offspring than males, and therefore in most species females are a limiting factor over which males will compete.

This is sometimes referred to as Bateman's principle. It suggests females place the most important preference on males who control more resources that can help her and her offspring, which in turn causes an evolutionary pressure on males to be competitive with each other in order to gain resources and power. However, an alternative evolutionary theory has challenged this theory. Because the investment in offspring required by human males and females is nearly equal, they are proposed to have evolved sex-similar mating preferences Mutual Mate Choice , [74] that is, both men and women prefer caring, attractive, and successful partners.

The idea that patriarchy is natural has, however, come under attack from many sociologists, explaining that patriarchy evolved due to historical, rather than biological, conditions. In technologically simple societies, men's greater physical strength and women's common experience of pregnancy combined together to sustain patriarchy. Similarly, contraception has given women control over their reproductive cycle.

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There is considerable variation in the role that gender plays in human societies. Among the Mosuo a tiny society in the Yunnan Province in China , however, women exert greater power, authority, and control over decision-making. She lists six ways that it emerged:. While the term patriarchy often refers to male domination generally, another interpretation sees it as literally "rule of the father". Some of these younger men may inherit and therefore have a stake in continuing these conventions.

This psychoanalytic model is based upon revisions of Freud's description of the normally neurotic family using the analogy of the story of Oedipus. The operations of power in such cases are usually enacted unconsciously. All are subject, even fathers are bound by its strictures. Arguing from this standpoint, radical feminist Shulamith Firestone wrote in her The Dialectic of Sex:.

Marx was on to something more profound than he knew when he observed that the family contained within itself in embryo all the antagonisms that later develop on a wide scale within the society and the state. For unless revolution uproots the basic social organisation, the biological family — the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled — the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Patriarch disambiguation. The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with Western culture and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject.

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It investigates the fundamental issues of how social order is maintained and conversely, how social conflict and change occur. Plato in Twelve Volumes. Trobriand women have power which is publicly recognized on both sociopolitical and cosmic planes…. There is considerable variation in the role that gender plays in human societies. Distribution Area Prerequisites Credits One course in sociology or permission of instructor. Distribution Area Prerequisites Credits Social Science -or- Privilege, Power And Diversity 1 course SOC Women, Culture and Identity Drawing on work in sociology, psychology, and cultural and feminist studies, the course investigates how women from various ethnicities, socio-economic strata, and age groups make sense of gendered expectations, opportunities, and constraints.

You may improve this article , discuss the issue on the talk page , or create a new article , as appropriate. November Learn how and when to remove this template message. Circumscription theory Legal anthropology Left—right paradigm State formation Political economy in anthropology Network Analysis and Ethnographic Problems. Adamson Hoebel Georges Balandier F.

Sex differences in humans and Social construction of gender difference. Anthropology portal Sociology portal Politics portal Feminism portal Religion portal Discrimination portal. Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Societies, Networks, and Transitions. Today, as in the past, men generally hold political, economic, and religious power in most societies. Women's studies encyclopedia, Volume 2. Encyclopedia of Motherhood, Volume 1. In Kuper, Adam; Kuper, Jessica.

The Social Science Encyclopedia. In Ritzer, George; Ryan, J. The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology. Encyclopedia of Social Theory. In O'Hara, Phillip A. Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2: International Encyclopedia of Social Policy. Transforming capitalism and patriarchy: Agricultural and pastoral societies in ancient and classical history. Evolved Dispositions Versus Social Roles". Modelling the early human mind. Cambridge McDonald Monograph Series. Historical Constructions of Subject and Self p.

The Creation of Patriarchy. An Ancient Family Process". In Kramarae, Cheris; Spender, Dale. Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women's Issues and Knowledge, Volume 2. New York; Abingdon, UK.