THEORIES OF CULTURE

Robert N. St. Clair Fall 2007 Humanities 123

Cross-listed with Humanities, Linguistics and Communication Humanities 671 Course Number: 11446 Communication 690-1 Course Number: 11442   Linguistics 690-75 Course Number: 11444 Wednesday, 5:30-8:15 pm, Humanities 123

Course Description

Some of the most interesting work in the study of language and culture can be found in the fields of cognitive anthropology and in the sociology of culture. Cognitive anthropology and cognitive linguistics are new disciplines that have to do with how human beings conceptualize and express themselves through language and other symbolic systems. This course investigates three approaches to culture: culture as a symbolic system, culture as social activity (practical knowledge) and culture as personal constructs. The first two approaches are integrated into a new model known as the language and social construction of culture. The topics included in this seminar are: spatial models expressed through language and visual metaphor, counting systems and how they are articulated, the role of analogical reasoning, the uses of metaphor and metonymy and other major tropes as cultural tools, the difference between ritual and drama, the concept of world views and how they are constructed, grammaticality as an instrument of language, social and cultural scripts and the role that they play in practical knowledge, discourse structures as organized social interactions, and the political sociology of world societies, world cultures.

SYLLABUS

Session One: Introduction to the course, course requirements, course procedures. and final papers

 

Lecture Series: Theoretical Approaches to Culture. Lecture and discussion

Session Two: The Social Construction of Culture, lecture and discusssion

Session Three: Symbolic Models of Culture, lecture and discussion

Session Four: Culture as Communication, lecture and discussion

Session Five: Cultural Materialism, lecture and discussion

Session Six: Culture as Praxis, lecture and discussion

Session Seven: Business Culture and Postmodern Culture, lecture and discussion

Session Eight: Framing Culture, lecture and discussion

 

Seminar Series - Part I

TEXT: Globalization and Culture

Session Nine: Globalization and Human Integration

Session Ten: Globalization and Culture - Three Paradigms

Session Eleven: Globalization and Hybridization

Sessuib Twelve Continuation on Hybridity and Reactions to the Concept

Session Thirteen: Clobal Mélange

 

Seminar Series - Part II

TEXT: Culture Theory

Session Fourteen: Part I - Culture Theory an Introduction

Session Fifteeen: Part II - Culture, Self and Emotion

Session Sixteen: Part III - Culture, language and thought

Session Seventeen: Part IV - Commentary and Preface to the book

 

FINAL RESEARCH PAPER

Textbooks

CULTURE THEORY: ESSAYS ON MIND, SELF, AND EMOTIONS. Richard A. Shweder and Robert A. LeVine. 1084. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 0-521-31831-9 Paperback. COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE Tony Schirato and Susan Yell