ANTH312-19S1 (C) Semester One 2019

Kinship and Family in Comparative Perspective

30 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 18 February 2019
End Date: Sunday, 23 June 2019
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Friday, 1 March 2019
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 10 May 2019

Description

This course focuses on the importance and nature of family and kinship in the construction and maintenance of social relations by individuals as well as groups, in a variety of ethnographic contexts.

Family and kinship provide important ways for people to be related to each other in all societies throughout the world. An understanding of any human society is impossible without some understanding of kinship and family in that society. For this reason, topics of kinship and family have long attracted scholarly attention from various disciplines of social sciences, in particular anthropology and sociology. In this course, we will discuss classic and contemporary case studies of kinship and family in cultures and societies around the world, including African tribal societies, pre and post communist China, Medieval Europe, the United States and New Zealand, to list just a few. We will cover the topics of biology and culture, personhood and subjectivity, gender, and global capitalism.

Course Aims: This course is designed to enable students to understand the importance of kinship and family in human societies and the cross-cultural variations in how kinship and family are conceptualized and practiced. This course is also to give students a comprehensive knowledge of historical and contemporary theories and methods in kinship and family studies and enable students to apply these theories and methods to the analysis of kinship and family systems.

Learning Outcomes

After taking this course, students are expected to:

a)  Understand the ways in which anthropologists have understood kinship and family historically, and how these understandings have shifted in line with wider theoretical changes in the discipline.
b)  Appreciate the cross-cultural variation in how kinship and the family are conceptualized and practiced, and the role of these conceptualizations and practices in the structuring and conduct of social relations.
c)  Understand how the conceptions and practice of family and kinship are shaped by the broader socio-cultural, economic and political contexts.
d)  Be able to apply the theories and methods learned to the analysis of kinship and family systems.

Prerequisites

30 points of ANTH including 15 points at 200 level; OR 30 points of ANTH or SOCI at 200 level; OR 60 points in related subjects including 30 points at 200 level with the approval of the Head of Department.

Restrictions

ANTH212, GEND218, GEND318, SOCI212, SOCI312

Equivalent Courses

SOCI312

Course Coordinator / Lecturer

Zhifang Song

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Leading Discussion 10% Each student will have two opportunities to lead the group discussion
Attendance and participation 5%
Mid-term test 26 Mar 2019 25%
Ethnographic Project and Final Essay 05 Apr 2019 20% Part 1 - Data collection
Ethnographic Project and Final Essay 31 May 2019 40% Part 2 (3000 words)

Textbooks / Resources

Readings will be available on Learn.

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,523.00

International fee $6,375.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Language, Social and Political Sciences .

All ANTH312 Occurrences

  • ANTH312-19S1 (C) Semester One 2019
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