Anthropologists want to know what makes us human. This unit introduces you to the unique perspective on human experience in cultural anthropology. Anthropologists argue that each individual is incomplete without the input of the shared patterns acquired from one's community. In this class you will learn how anthropologists define the concept of culture, how they use cultural relativism, and how they conduct research through cultural immersion and participatory fieldwork. You will examine several cases that demonstrate the human capacity for cultural diversity, and will understand several of the core topics that anthropologists investigate to capture a society's worldview and way of life.

As humans, culture completes us, but we also create culture through our words and deeds. Social and cultural anthropologists are engaged in both cultural description and cultural criticism: their work contributes to understanding the world and changing it. Anthropologists challenge many dominant beliefs about how the world works. In this class, you will be introduced to the unique perspective of cultural anthropology on human experience through a study of how anthropologists have contributed to debates on contemporary issues of global importance. You will learn how anthropological understandings of culture and society help us to rethink the way we live and the world we inhabit.

This unit introduces students to contemporary issues in anthropology and the world. Students will learn approaches to climate change, illness and well-being, human-animal relations, life in cities, new forms of media, work and welfare, inequality, poverty and development, the social life of new digital technologies, the changing character of the family, emergent forms of violence and domination and the new forms of protest and resistance that are occurring in the world today. The unit will provide students informed and practical approaches to contemporary social problems and an appreciation of the different cultural lenses through which they are understood.

This is a unit on psychoanalytic anthropology. With the focus on the unconscious dimension of human cultural existence the unit critically examines the systematic topical, theoretical, ethnographic and historical aspects of this unique field of anthropological inquiry. All psychoanalytic conceptual frameworks are elucidated and assessed through ethno-psychoanalytic work done in different cultural life-worlds. Firmly grounded in detailed ethnographic evidence the unit provides a comprehensive phenomenological-existential validation of the discipline and its contribution to both anthropology and psychoanalysis.

This unit explores anthropological approaches to genders, gender relations and sexualities in different cultural settings across the world. Students will gain insights into ethnographically informed analysis of local
and global practices and ideas that reproduce, but can also challenge, dominant views of genders and forms of sexuality, and how such views are implicated in structures of inequality that fundamentally shape people's everyday lives and experiences.

The 1949 speech by US president, Harry Truman, declared his country's commitment to the 'development' of the Third World, and began what many consider to be development as an institutional approach to non-Western societies. Anthropology, well established in its study of non-Western societies, was able to offer a rich ethnographic insight into the developing world. Combining ethnographic detail with social science concepts, this unit covers topics such as food crisis, land, environment, cities, fair trade, migration, nation-state, NGOs, poverty and informal economy.

A majority of the world's population live in cities and anthropologists seek to understand urban life and culture. This unit focuses on ethnographic studies of urbanism around the world, including walled cities, slums, urban migrations, environmental transformations and other recent topics in anthropology. Lectures discuss ethnography as research method in urban environments.

Medical anthropology is a comparative and ethnographic response to the global influence of biomedicine within diverse cultural worlds. This unit will examine major theoretical approaches, their respective critiques, and the methods that underpin them. Concepts such as 'health/illness', 'disease', 'well-being', 'life-death', and 'body/mind' will be located in a variety of cultural contexts and their implications for different approaches to diagnosis and treatment considered. The unit will include culturally located case studies of major contemporary health concerns, such as AIDS.

A comparative study of race and ethnic group relations The unit will consider the history of ideas of race and practices of racialising and their relationship to ethnicity It will draw on studies from various areas including North America the Caribbean Japan and Australia

Anthropology is known for its distinctive method of long-term field work and participant observation engagement with the peoples it studies. This unit will teach students how anthropological methods inform anthropological concepts and broader social theories and how anthropological fieldwork, research and writing contributes to contemporary social debates and reveals new ways of seeing the world that can help to change it for the better. It shows how to put anthropology into practice in all facets of research, writing and public engagement.

This unit consolidates students' understanding of anthropology as a discipline through: 1) exploring key concepts of anthropological analysis and critique; 2) enhancing knowledge of the ethnographic method and its contemporary challenges; 3) strengthening research skills and experience in formulating a research project.

Ethnography as method is grounded in the 'participant observation' of social practice and the self-understanding of social actors in particular cultural contexts. Ethnography as analysis raises issues of representation and comparison. This unit explores these relationships in regionally and thematically specific debates.

Melanesia is both a distinctive culture area and, with over 1000 different languages, a site of intense and highly localised cultural variation. This unit will explore the nature of that variation around themes of power, status, gender, secrecy, cosmology and local organization. The unit also examines the impact of this diversity on modern projects of Christianity, state formation and the market economy and the influence this has had on the wider anthropological literature on modernity.

Anthropogenic climate change is the primary challenge facing the next generation of leaders. Anthropology's holistic approach to the social world provides key insights into the ways human/environment interactions have caused - and can mitigate - climate change. This unit will explore social/political/cultural aspects of climate change, focusing on current indicators and outcomes, and seek to understand and evaluate different forms of mitigation. The unit will rely on Anthropology's close association with social justice issues, and will focus on climate change effects in the developing world.

Southeast Asia is a region of great geographic and cultural diversity, a meeting point for civilisational influences from India and China including the religions of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It is also the laboratory for much anthropological inquiry, attracting the attention of prominent anthropologists and social scientists, including Clifford Geertz and Benedict Anderson. This unit will examine Southeast Asia in historical and contemporary context, and draw on ethnographies dealing with issues such as nationalism, ethnic minorities and the nation state, gender and modernity, drugs and development, and the rural-urban divide.

The unit uses an anthropological lens to examine how Indigenous Australians have long engaged with a diversity of non-Indigenous practices, ideas and values as they continue to articulate distinct Indigenous lives. It investigates ethnographically changing Indigenous lifeworlds since colonisation with a focus on state policy and rights politics.

In this unit we explore how to view films as anthropologists. We examine changing strategies of ethnographic filming and the increasing role people play in filming and representing their own lives. Issues include the richness of the visual, the subjectivity of the filmmaker, ethnographic observation and fiction, and the politics of representation.

The body as a site of culture has been of interest to anthropologists from the inception of the discipline. This unit focuses on anthropological approaches to and ethnographic explorations of the body. The key question will be to explore different theories that attempt to explain the relationship between the body and society. We will study important theoretical approaches including Marx, Mauss, Bourdieu and Foucault. Along with each theorists' primary work(s) on the body, we will read associated ethnographic texts, to understand how anthropologist base ethnographies on social theory.

This course approaches the study of Latin American societies through an interdisciplinary approach to studying indigenous movements. These movements have been pivotal actors in the shaping of contemporary conceptions of democracy, citizenship and statecraft in the continent, and have also drawn attention globally. Students will gain insight into cultural diversity of Latin American societies and acquire analytical tools for studying and understanding a wide variety of topics associated with political structure and agency in the continent.

Interdisciplinarity is a key skill in fostering agility in life and work. This unit provides learning experiences that build students' skills, knowledge and understanding of the application of their disciplinary background to interdisciplinary contexts. In this unit, students will work in teams and develop interdisciplinarity skills through problem-based learning projects responding to 'real world problems'.

This interdisciplinary unit provides students with the opportunity to address complex problems identified by industry, community, and government organisations, and gain valuable experience in working across disciplinary boundaries. In collaboration with a major industry partner and an academic lead, students integrate their academic skills and knowledge by working in teams with students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. This experience allows students to research, analyse and present solutions to a real¿world problem, and to build on their interpersonal and transferable skills by engaging with and learning from industry experts and presenting their ideas and solutions to the industry partner.