THIS SYLLABUS is designed to be a "generic" syllabus,primarily for students who might be taking one of the various Anthropologycourses I teach at California State University,Chico. Rather than "create" a new syllabus for each course(each semester), this "generic syllabus" is referred to in variouslectures in all of my courses (and is referenced in the various course-specificsyllabi distributed to the students).
AS THE SEMESTER moves along (and the years speed along),this "Generic Syllabus" will be modified, so you might be interestedin "bookmarking" it!
PHILOSOPHY: In the paradigm I use in all of my courses, I haveseveral major themes that I attempt to present (at various stages in thecourse and at various levels for the various courses). With that in mind,this "generic syllabus" deals with IDEAS, BEHAVIOR,WORDS, and THINGS. In my mind, the "IBWT"paradigm is both descriptive and explanatory and allows me to make innumerablecomments (through time and across space) about "culture" and thehuman condition.
This Generic Syllabus is thus divided as follows: RESEARCH, LOCAL CONTEXT/PERSPECTIVE,FIELDWORK, COMMUNICATIONS AND FINISHED ITEMS, CHANGES & THE FUTURE.I stress the anthropological concept of culture, as well as pointingout the need to "place things into perspective" and the need for"simple" ABCs: Appreciation of Basic Cultural Diversity Everywhere!
I also use many quotations and graphics (not reproduced here at the moment):my "opening quote" for years has been from the distinguished scientistSir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944):
"I say my philosophy, not as claiming authorship of ideaswhich are widely diffused in modern thought, but because the ultimate selectionand synthesis must be a personal responsibility." (Sir Arthur Eddington,The Philosophy of Physical Science, 1949: viii)And I always end my quote selection from Montaigne (1533-1592): "Iquote others only the better to express myself."
"The study of Anthropology promotes an understanding ofself and of all humanity by exploring human nature from its beginnings tothe present. In today's world -- where every society is dependent upon othersocieties --ignorance of the goals, values, and customs of other peoplescan lead to discrimination and racism in the community or to war and oppressionbetween nations. Anthropologists, through study and analysis, try to reducethese social tensions."Specific course descriptions then follow (and for Fall 1996, they were ANTH13-1, ANTH 13H-1, ANTH 198ABC, and ANTH 196).
"The difficulty is that modern human beings no longer directly perceivethe world they live in and whose conditions affect them" (James Burkeand Robert Ornstein, 1995, The Axemaker's Gift: A Double-Edged Historyof Human Culture, page 280).
"The latest figures from the Census Bureau confirm the bad news: Theincome gap between rich and poor in the U.S. continues to widen. And theincreased importance of education means that college graduates possess anenormous edge in the job market, while high school graduates lag behind"[Business Week, July 22, 1996, page 74].
"...organisms, and their microbial cousins, have an influence on lifethat is wholly disproportionate to their dimensions and invisibility. First,consider the difference in size between some of the very tiniest and thevery largest creatures on earth. A small bacterium weighs as little as 0.000000000001grams. A blue whale weighs about 100,000,000 grams. Yet a bacterium cankill a whale" (Bernard Dixon, 1994, Power Unseen: How Microbes RuleThe World, page xvii).
"Most of the 8,500 people infected with the AIDS virus worldwide eachday have little hope of getting the costly new treatments causing so muchexcitement in the industrialized world, top AIDS experts said Sunday [July7, 1996]" (Kim Painter, "8,500 New HIV Cases Occur Daily"in USA TODAY, July 8, 1996, page 1).
"University of Washington scientists have succeeded in reading theentire genetic code in one part of the body's disease-fighting arsenal,opening the door to new research on how the body's immune system works.The achievement, announced Friday [June 21, 1996] in the journal Science,represents the longest segment of human DNA yet decoded: a string of geneticinformation 684,973 segments long that governs the disease-fighting betaT-cell receptors. The human DNA code has 3 billion such segments, knownas nucleotides, and scientists hope to read the entire sequence by 2005"(Bill Dietrich, "Scientists Make History By Decoding Big DNA String"in The Sacramento Bee, June 22, 1996, page B8).
"'America began to change on a mid-September day in 1958, when theBank of America dropped its first 60,000 credit cards on the unassumingcity of Fresno, California,' according to Joseph Nocera, in his book A Pieceof the Action: How The Middle Class Joined The Money Class. (In Josh Hammond& James Morrison, 1996, The Stuff Americans Are made Of: The SevenCultural Forces That Define Americans--A New Framework For Quality, Productivity& Profitability, page 245).
"USA Today published the first issue, Volume 1, Number 1 onSeptember 15, 1982; in 1984, "it was losing more than $10 million amonth. Put another way, the newspaper was losing $339,726 every day, $14,155every hour, $236 every minute, $3.93 every second. ... [finally] USA Todaybroke into the black with profit of $1,093,756 for month of May [1987],six months ahead of schedule" (Peter S. Prichard, 1987, The MakingOf McPaper: The Inside Story of USA Today, pages 305 and 378].
"Gambling is now bigger than baseball, more powerful than a platoonof Schwarzeneggers, Spielbergs, Madonnas and Oprahs. More Americans wentto casinos than to major league ballparks in 1993. Ninety-two million visits!"(The New York Times Magazine, July 17, 1994) and "Nevada's major hotel-casinosgrossed $12 billion in fiscal 1995 and reported annual net, pre-federaltax profits of $1.28 billion....In the previous fiscal year the clubs tookin $11 billion and had a pre-tax profit of $1.2 billion...." (RenoGazette-Journal, February 5, 1996, page 4F); and see The Sacramento Bee,July 23, 1996, page B8: "From 1974 to 1994, the amopunt of money legallywagered annually has risen 2,800 percent, to $482 billion from $17 billion.The gambling industry generates six times the revenue of all American spectatorsports combined." [And please see: http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/FApr11-96.html].
"Murders and physical assaults in the workplace have climbed to a recordhigh.... There were 1,071 Americans murdered at work in 1994, and 160,000physically assaulted" (Marilyn Elias, in USA TODAY, July 8,1996, page 1). "Of the 1,071 workplace homicides in 1994, 56 percent[560] of the victims worked in retailing or other service industries"(San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 1996, page A4).
"More than 2,600 people in California were victims of reported hatecrimes last year, a figure that authorities admit may not paint an accuratepicture of the problem.... crimes authorities believe were motivated bybias related to race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or disability...."(San Francisco Examiner, July 19, 1996, page A-2).
"If Western Nevada Clean Communities reaches its goal of recycling100,000 [telephone] books, 4,200 trees will be saved, 750 cubic yards oflandfill space will be available for something else and 1.75 million gallonsof water will be conserved." (Reno Gazette-Journal, August 1,1996, page B1)
"The news media are usually thought of as agents for change, and sometimesthis is true. ... Bad news can in fact persuade people that the world ismuch more dangerous than it is. George Gerbner of the Annenberg School ofCommunication at the University of Pennsylvania finds that people who watcha lot of television see the world as much more threatening and filled withmenace than those who watch less [stress added]" (Caryl Rivers, 1996,Slick Spins And Fractured Facts: How Cultural Myths Distort The News,page 3).
"McDonald's Japan, currently with 1,688 stores nationwide [in Japan],is opening another 500 this year alone. ...in 2006, it plans to have nofewer than 10,000 stores throughout the country [of Japan!]. ... McDonald'sCorp. of the United States owns 50 percent of McDonald's Japan, and theexpansion is part of the parent company's worldwide plan to add as manyas 3,200 units this year and next to its 18,000 restaurants. ... KentuckyFried Chicken has more than 1,000 outlets nationwide [in Japan].... [stressadded]" (Michelle Magee, "Big Mac Attack In Japan" in theSan Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 1996, pages D1 and D6).
PLEASE NOTE: If one year = 365.25 days then 3200/730.5 = 4.3 newMcDonald's a day for two years!
"Last year, about 208,000 portable computers were stolen--nearly twicethe number of filched desktop computers. ... In 1994, only 150,000 laptopswere taken" (Jeff Zeleny, "Laptops: Little, Light--And Easy ToFilch" in The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 1996, page B1). [SO,~569/day!]
"The world is headed for an unprecedented food shortage that neitherscience nor current farming practises will be able to meet, a summit ofleading agriculture scientists has concluded. ...the Third World's populationis expected to grow by 2 billion people by 2025, developing countries willneed at least 75 percent more food than currently consumed.... 'A globalwake-up call is needed'.... The world must also cope with an unprecedentedincrease in population, with projected growth averaging 90 million peopleannually." ("World Food Shortage Is In Store, Agriculture ScientistsWarn" in The Sacramento Bee, July 13, 1996, page A14)
"Scientific evidence is mounting that...music may be as powerful afood for the brain as for the soul. Not only does it pluck at emotionalheart strings, but scientists say that it also turns on brain circuits thataid recognition of patterns and structures critical to development of mathematicsskills, logic, perception and memory" (Bill Henrrick, "Parents,Studies Say Music Lends An Ear To Learning" in the San FranciscoChronicle, July 6, 1996, page A7).
"Texas Instruments Inc. announced Tuesday [May 28, 1996] that it couldmanufacture a new generation of advanced semiconductors that would speeddevelopment of new miniature products from wallet PCs to Dick Tracy-stylewristwatches. Each chip will be the size of a thumbnail but will have theprocessing power of 20 of today's personal computers. TI will be able topack on a single 125 million-transistor chip the functions of a microprocessor,memory chips and other specialty devices. Today's most-complex chips havebetween 5 million and 7 million transistors [stress added]" (Alan Goldstein,"TI Plans Potent Chips To Fit In Tiny Products" in San FranciscoExaminer, May 30, 1996].