Undergraduate Course: Ethnography of the USA (SCAN10059)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Social Anthropology |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/undergrad/subject_and_programme_specific_information/social_anthropology/honours |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | North America as an anthropological region is marked by diversity, not simply from the First Nations indigenous inhabitants, but from the settler societies that have been arriving in waves for now over five hundred years. Despite this seemingly fractured and fractious constitution, early sociological writings by authors such as Weber and Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized modes of constructing collective sociality through a host of associations, organizations, and denominations.
This balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces, always tested, has been given particular shocks during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. During that time accelerations in the flow of capital, shifts in the inter- and intra-American circuits of human movement, new technological capacities, and religious revivals and mutations all catalyzed each other, transforming some modes of sociality, while intensifying others. And this concatenation of forces has had effects that have played out well beyond the North American borders.
This course will attempt to trace out this phenomenon, using the above-mentioned four aspects (capital flows; population movement; technology; and religious change) as unifying thematics to guide the selections from the series of ethnographic texts that will be covered.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 Anthropology courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
| By the end of the course students should have extensive and specialist knowledge of the ethnography of the United States of America, of the current set of debates animating this sub-field, and of the methodology and the evidential and representational conventions found in contemporary American ethnography as a subfield. |
Assessment Information
This course will be assessed by a combination of (i) a short essay (word-limit: 1,500) and (ii) a long essay (word-limit: 2,500).
The short essay carries a weighting of 20% towards the final overall mark for the course as a whole, and the long essay carries a weighting of 80%. |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Not entered |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Not entered |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Jon Bialecki
Tel: (0131 6)51 5534
Email: Jon.Bialecki@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Ewen Miller
Tel: (0131 6)50 3925
Email: Ewen.Miller@ed.ac.uk |
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