121-051 Social Order and Social Change

Note

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Semester

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Subject Description

Beginning with human origins, this subject explores the variety of ways in which human behaviour and institutions are both constrained by and transcend environments and our shared nature as human beings. The major focus of the subject is an exploration of the dynamic interaction between processes of order and change in social life and its effects on how people experience the different worlds they inhabit. Important topics to be considered include the relationship between the global and the local, the transformative aspects of ritual experience, the persistence of kinship relations and religious ideologies, and the politics of identity. There is a regional emphasis on Australia and the Pacific. Students who complete the subject should have a general familiarity with the range of forms of social structure and social organisation to be found in ethnographic literature; a general understanding of the conditions under which social change occurs; a background of relevant ethnographic knowledge on which to base further anthropological studies.

Assessment

Written work totalling 3000 words and a 1-hour class test.

Prescribed Texts

A subject reader will be available.

• D Gewertz & F Errington, Twisted Histories, Altered Contexts. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• R Tonkinson, The Mardu Aborigines. Living the Dream in Australia's Desert. Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1991.