Week 8 — Midterm Review & Exam
Why this matters
A nursing student hearing a family explain a home remedy and a business major sizing up a new market abroad both choose a lens before they judge what they see.
In plain language
This week you look back at the first seven weeks and see how they fit together. Each topic so far turns on one key distinction, such as emic versus etic, or power versus authority. You also meet one small piece of new material: how anthropology's own ideas about culture changed since the nineteenth century. Each of those ideas became a lens (a school of thought used as a way of looking at a practice). You will try each lens on one documented case, the kula, and see which lenses the discipline kept and which one it threw away.
- Already covered: the perspective, culture, fieldwork, language, making a living, exchange, and power (Weeks 1 to 7).
- This week: one distinction per week, five lenses on culture, and the midterm.
- How they connect: each lens turns back on the market and the kula.
- Where we're going next: Week 9, Kinship and Descent, opens the second half.
Focus
What one distinction does each week ask for, and which ways of looking at culture did anthropology keep?
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
- [ ] name and apply the key distinction from each of Weeks 1 to 7
- [ ] say why the discipline rejected unilineal evolutionism
- [ ] read the kula through each of the later lenses
To-do
Plan your week
- Read Chapter 8 (about 35 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
- Do the practice set (about 20 minutes) and the discussion (about 45 minutes).
- Use the study guide and practice exam, then take the midterm.
This week's checkpoint: read one practice through two lenses and say what each shows.
You've got this
You have done this work already. Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.
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