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COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

COURSE OUTLINE: ANTHROPOLOGY 10 (SSP)

Course Title: Bodies, Senses and Humanity

Course Description: Interaction of biology and culture in the shaping of humanity

Course Credit: 3 units

Prerequisite: None

A. Orientation: The Tools for Inquiry. A review of the spectrum of social and naturalsciences and humanities, and the place of anthropology in this spectrum. Emphasis on theneed for multidisciplinary approaches toward understanding "reality". (Week 1)

B. Whats human? Drawing from physical anthropology, a preliminary exploration of whatmakes us human: our brain? Our upright bipedal posture? Our genes? But going beyond

the physical, students will be encouraged to think about how evolutions tempo hasbeen amplified through culture and society. An introduction to the nature versus nurture

debate. (Week 2)C. The Senses. Looking at how the senses are used to apprehend reality. Looking at the

biological bases of these senses and at the same time showing the broad culturaldifferences in sensory categories and attributes. The difference in emphasis on senses:why do the British so emphasize the visual, and reading while the Filipino seems more

oral and aural, preferring the "kuwento"? Why do Filipinos smell everything, and

describe their loved ones as "mabango"? This module shows how the use of our senses isin fact a function of a cultural interpretation of reality (Weeks 3 and 4)

D. What is culture? Taking off from the discussion of the senses, students will now be in abetter position to define culture. What makes culture, emphasis on the small "c"? Are

smells and sounds culture? Are graffiti and text messages and cellphones culture?Driving habits? Food, fashions, fantasies? Traditional definitions of culture (e.g., "shared

beliefs and practices transmitted from one generation to another") will be presented and

dissected. A case study, "Do apes have culture?" will be used to challenge existingdefinitions. As students begin to appreciate cultural complexity, we will be able tointroduce the range of social science study methods to emphasize how a combination of

the quantitative and qualitative are vital toward capturing intersubjectivity (Webersverstehen) in culture. (Weeks 5 and 6)

E. Mindful Bodies that meet and move. We will now link the two modules on senses andculture. How do we make sense of the world around us? What role do our bodies play in

this sensory apprehension of the world around us? Are we programmed to react in a

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certain way to this world? What programs usour genes? Instinct? Brains? Culture?Relationships between the body and aspects of culture (rhythm in music, numbers in

math) will be explored, oriented toward explaining the roles our bodies play to make us

see and not just look, listen and not just hear. This module provides a vital link betweenthe individual and society as students understand how their identities are embodied, both

in the physical individual body as well as in the social body. We end the module byasking, as bodies meet and interact, how and under what conditions is this identity shapedand reshaped? (Weeks 7 and 8)

F. Bodies and power. In this module we emphasize the broader biological and social contextof culture. We help students to look at how bodies encounter and process the world in the

context of power differentials, based on class, gender, ethnicity, religion. Thesedifferences affect the way we look at reality, and the way we relate to each other. We will

dissect stereotypes and show how they relate to that broader context, e.g., why the

Ilokano is thrifty (or stingywho uses which term and why) in the context of ecology,society, history. We will also show how we inscribe power and status on our bodies

(from logos and name brands to piercing, from fashions to dietary practices) and how this

inscription enables individual bodies to relate to the body politic. We will show howpeople tap into a wide repertoire of symbols and meanings, how, for example, the hijab

(head veil) can be seen as a restrictive covering by outsiders, but as an ethnic marker byMuslim women themselves. (Weeks 9 and 10)

G. Controlling bodies. We will look at the different mechanisms of social control, withemphasis on "micropolitics" of control such as media representations. We will look intohow notions of patriotism, nationalism, religion, are manipulated to control not just

bodies and minds but the very processes of thinking and sensory apprehension. Linking

this module to earlier ones, we will reexamine how social control shapes what we do to

our bodies (including a discussion of current body image disorders) and how we move.We will show how even non-conformity is in fact a form of social control, e.g., the

artificial sense of autonomy when in fact we are conforming to consumerism andfaddism. (Weeks 11 and 12)H. Survival and subversion. This module challenges the notion of culture as consensus,

showing how people make rules to break them. The previous module emphasizes social

control; this module shows how people constantly subvert those attempts at control, and

how these strategies for survival ultimately remake societies and culture. We will showthe range of these strategies, from the creation of slang to broader political action such as

the EDSA mobilizations and how these different strategies converge or clash. Students

will see culture as the result of accommodation as well as resistance, with exposure toexamples of syncretism and radical overhauling of norms and practices. (Weeks 13 and

14)

I.

Into the ancient future. Looking at the brave bold new world of computers and theInternet, of genomes and cloning of street parties and resolutions, we will ask students toproject into the future. What changes are to be anticipated and how much of a role will be

played by biology, by culture? How much space will there be for individual agency?

How new, or ancient is the future, as we retool and reinvent our bodies, our societies andultimately our humanity? (Week 15 and 16)

IV. Resource requirements

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While we want to link to studentshigh-tech worlds, we want to show that it is possibleto use "old-fashioned" methods to teach in a high-tech world. We will emphasize, in the

anthropological tradition, the value of participant-observation methods, of observing the

minute details of the world around us, of social interactions.

We do recognize the need to plug into young peoples worlds of cable television,cinema, and the media in general, mainly by presenting these as options for students intheir quest of knowledge. We want to encourage a return to reading, by showing the joysof active reading and re-reading, as well as active writing and rewriting as students

explore the world around them, and their power to move beyond rhetoric and to change

reality.

V. Number of sections:Three sections will be offered as a start.