ANTH-MAJ Anthropology

Anthropology is the comparative study of different ways of life. It seeks an 'insider' perspective on alternative ways of being in the world. To interpret human behaviour, anthropologists ask questions not just about what people do, but also about why they do it, what they mean by it, what motivates them, and what values guide them.

You will explore anthropological issues across a range of human and more-than-human cultures, and will be challenged to reflect on your own cultural world from perspectives that may differ radically from your own. In the process, you will gain skills in research methods distinctive to anthropology, and be given the opportunity to study and apply these methods in Australian society and also at a field site in Malaysia (optional). You will have the opportunity to develop an understanding of the key concepts and debates in anthropology via detailed examination of topics including drugs; sex, gender and reproduction; human mobility and migration; international aid and development; human rights; indigeneity; magic, science and religion.

In the past, anthropologists were invariably Westerners making observations of societies that visibly differed from their own. Contemporary anthropologists are still interested in studying difference and the generation of difference, but they are playing an increasingly complex and important role in the modern world: wherever human diversity and cross-cultural understandings are an issue, anthropologists are called upon to provide their expertise, knowledge and research methodologies. Specialised fields include: ethnography, health, well-being and medicine, sex, gender and reproduction, resource exploitation, climate change and human/non-human relations, refugees, migration and identity, human development aid and policy and its alternatives, indigenous issues, and cultural production, curating/museum practice.

Availability
Anthropology is listed in A2000 Bachelor of Arts at Clayton as a major and a minor, and in A0502 Diploma of Liberal Arts at Clayton as a major.