Outline

Overview

The unit introduces key social science concepts relevant to Development Studies. Students will learn to identify and critically assess fundamental ideas in social theory, including society as social facts, social action and change, the moral dimensions of human life, intercultural relations, and the idea of the global and universal in human societies.

Unit details and rules

Unit code	ANTH6916
Academic unit	Anthropology
Credit points	6
Prohibitions ?	None
Prerequisites ?	None
Corequisites ?	None
Assumed knowledge ?	None
Available to study abroad and exchange students	No

Teaching staff

Coordinator	Paul Mason, paul.mason@sydney.edu.au

Type	Description	Weight	Due	Length
Online task	Weekly reading journal Students take specific roles in each class discussion	15%	-	500 words equiv.
Outcomes assessed:
Online task	Various contributions to shared online knowledge base	15%	-	n.a.
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Take-home writing assignment Essay responses to open-ended questions on classical social theories	30%	Mid-semester break Due date: 09 Apr 2021 at 23:59	2000 words
Outcomes assessed:
Assignment	Essay An analysis of literature on a topic as a scholarly debate	40%	Week 13 Due date: 04 Jun 2021 at 23:59	3500 words
Outcomes assessed:

Assessment summary

See the class Canvas site for full details and instructions for each assignment.

Assessment criteria

The University awards common result grades, set out in the Coursework Policy 2014 (Schedule 1).

As a general guide, a High distinction indicates work of an exceptional standard, a Distinction a very high standard, a credit a good standard, and a pass an acceptable standard.

Result name	Mark range	Description
High distinction	85 - 100
Distinction	75 - 84
Credit	65 - 74
Pass	50 - 64
Fail	0 - 49	When you don’t meet the learning outcomes of the unit to a satisfactory standard.

For more information see sydney.edu.au/students/guide-to-grades

For more information see guide to grades.

Late submission

In accordance with University policy, these penalties apply when written work is submitted after 11:59pm on the due date:

Deduction of 5% of the maximum mark for each calendar day after the due date.
After ten calendar days late, a mark of zero will be awarded.

Academic integrity

The Current Student website provides information on academic integrity and the resources available to all students. The University expects students and staff to act ethically and honestly and will treat all allegations of academic integrity breaches seriously.

We use similarity detection software to detect potential instances of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breach. If such matches indicate evidence of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breaches, your teacher is required to report your work for further investigation.

You may only use artificial intelligence and writing assistance tools in assessment tasks if you are permitted to by your unit coordinator, and if you do use them, you must also acknowledge this in your work, either in a footnote or an acknowledgement section.

Studiosity is permitted for postgraduate units unless otherwise indicated by the unit coordinator. The use of this service must be acknowledged in your submission.

Learning support

Simple extensions

If you encounter a problem submitting your work on time, you may be able to apply for an extension of five calendar days through a simple extension.  The application process will be different depending on the type of assessment and extensions cannot be granted for some assessment types like exams.

Special consideration

If exceptional circumstances mean you can’t complete an assessment, you need consideration for a longer period of time, or if you have essential commitments which impact your performance in an assessment, you may be eligible for special consideration or special arrangements.

Special consideration applications will not be affected by a simple extension application.

Using AI responsibly

Co-created with students, AI in Education includes lots of helpful examples of how students use generative AI tools to support their learning. It explains how generative AI works, the different tools available and how to use them responsibly and productively.

Weekly schedule

WK	Topic	Learning activity
Week 01	Introduction to the seminar: The relevance of social theory.	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 02	Exchange as a social, not economic, fact. Read Mauss ([1925] 1990), *Piot (1999)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 03	Sex and gender as social constructs and social process. Read Rubin (1975)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 04	The material conditions of human life. Read Marx ([1844b] 1972) Marx ([1848] 2000), Marx ([1844a] 1972), Marx ([1845] 1972), Fleck (1999), *Vora (2009)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 05	The rationality of the social actor. Read Weber ([1904] 1946), Brenner (1996), Gerth and Mills (1946)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 06	Society as collective consciousness. Read Durkheim ([1895] 1966), *Lukes (1973)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 07	How does it feel to be a problem? Read Du Bois (1903), Du Bois (1921), *Omi and Winant (2014)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 08	Rules as resources. Read Bourdieu (1990), Bourdieu (1977), Swartz (2012b), *Swartz (2012a)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 09	Social remittances. Read Levitt (1998), Levitt and Lamba-Nieves (2011)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 10	Power as relationship and flow. Read Foucault (1982) McNay (1994), Schirato, Danaher, and Webb (2012)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 11	Neoliberalism and the making of subjects. Read Gershon (2018), Danaher, Schirato, and Webb (2000), Rabinow (1984)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 12	Society as distributed consciousness. Read Latour (2005b), Latour (2005c), Latour (2005a), *Latour (2005d)	Seminar (2 hr)
Week 13	Globalisation, Culture and Development	Seminar (2 hr)

Attendance and class requirements

Attendance: According to Faculty Board Resolutions, students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences are expected to attend 90% of their classes. If you attend less than 50% of classes, regardless of the reasons, you may be referred to the Examiner’s Board. The Examiner’s Board will decide whether you should pass or fail the unit of study if your attendance falls below this threshold.
Lecture recording: Most lectures (in recording-equipped venues) will be recorded and may be made available to students on the LMS. However, you should not rely on lecture recording to substitute your classroom learning experience.
Preparation: Students should commit to spend approximately three hours’ preparation time (reading, studying, homework, essays, etc.) for every hour of scheduled instruction.

Study commitment

Typically, there is a minimum expectation of 1.5-2 hours of student effort per week per credit point for units of study offered over a full semester. For a 6 credit point unit, this equates to roughly 120-150 hours of student effort in total.

Required readings

Recommended readings are noted with an asterisk.

*Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. “The Objective Limits of Objectivism.” In Outline of a Theory of Practice, translated by Richard Nice, 1–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511812507.

———. 1990. “Structures, Habitus, Practices.” In The Logic of Practice, 52–65. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

*Brenner, Suzanne. 1996. “Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and ‘The Veil’.” American Ethnologist 23 (4): 673–97. doi:10.1525/ae.1996.23.4.02a00010.

Danaher, Geoff, Tony Schirato, and Jen Webb. 2000. “Technologies of Governmentality & the Liberal Attitude.” In Understanding Foucault, 1st ed., 89–95. London: Sage Publications. http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/43921210.

Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” In The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, 1–12. Chicago: A. C. McClurg. http://books.google.com?id=11SMCwAAQBAJ.

———. 1921. “The Souls of White Folk.” In Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, 29–52. New York: Harcourt, Brace. http://archive.org/details/darkwatervoicesf00duborich.

Durkheim, Emile. (1895) 1966. ““What Is a Social Fact” and “Rules for the Observation of Social Facts”.” In The Rules of the Sociological Method, edited by George E. G. Catlin, translated by Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller, 1–13, 14–46. New York: The Free Press.

*Fleck, Jack Lucero. 1999. “ABCs of Change.” Dialectics for Kids. http://home.igc.org/~venceremos/ABCS.htm.

Foucault, Michel. 1982. “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 8 (4): 777–95. doi:10.1086/448181.

Gershon, Ilana. 2018. “Employing the CEO of Me, Inc.: US Corporate Hiring in a Neoliberal Age.” American Ethnologist 45 (2): 173–85. doi:10.1111/amet.12630.

*Gerth, H. H., and C. Wright Mills. 1946. “Intellectual Orientations.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 45–74. New York: Oxford University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2005a. “Conclusion: From Society to Collective—Can the Social Be Reassembled?” In Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, 247–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2005b. “Introduction: How to Resume the Task of Tracing Associations.” In Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, 1–17. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2005c. “On the Difficulty of Being an ANT: An Interlude in the Form of a Dialog.” In Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, 141–56. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

*———. 2005d. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Levitt, Peggy. 1998. “Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-Level Forms of Cultural Diffusion.” The International Migration Review 32 (4): 926–48. doi:10.2307/2547666.

Levitt, Peggy, and Deepak Lamba-Nieves. 2011. “Social Remittances Revisited.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2011.521361.

*Lukes, Steven. 1973. “Introduction.” In Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study, 1–36. London: Penguin Books.

*Marx, Karl. (1844a) 1972. “Estranged Labour [a section from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844].” In The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, translated by Martin Milligan, 70–81. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

———. (1844b) 1972. “Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialistic and Idealistic Outlooks—Preface & Ideology in General, German Ideology in Particular [Sections from the German Ideology, Part I].” In The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, translated by S. Ryazanskaya, 147–75. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

*———. (1845) 1972. “Theses on Feuerbach.” In The German Ideology, edited by C. J. Arthur, 121–23. New York: International Publishers Company. http://books.google.com?id=DujYWG8TPMMC.

*———. (1848) 2000. “The Communist Manifesto [Parts I, II, and IV].” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, 245–55, 270–71. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://books.google.com?id=yTWcAQAAQBAJ.

Mauss, Marcel. (1925) 1990. “Selections from Introduction, Chapters 1-2, and Conclusion.” In The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, translated by W. D. Halls, 1–14, 39–46, 78–83. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

*McNay, Lois. 1994. “Introduction.” In Foucault: A Critical Introduction, 1–12. Cambridge: Polity Press. http://books.google.com?id=ARYNAAAAQBAJ.

*Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 2014. “The Theory of Racial Formation.” In Racial Formation in the United States. London: Routledge. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=1715791.

*Piot, Charles. 1999. “Exchange: Hierarchies of Value in an Economy of Desire.” In Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa, 52–75. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

*Rabinow, Paul. 1984. “Introduction.” In The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow, 3–23. New York: Pantheon Books. http://books.google.com?id=cG5gQgAACAAJ.

Rubin, Gayle. 1975. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex.” In Toward an Anthropology of Women, 157–210. New York: Monthly Review Press.

*Schirato, Tony, Geoff Danaher, and Jen Webb. 2012. “Glossary of Theoretical Terms.” In Understanding Foucault: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed., xvii–xxviii. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

*Swartz, David. 2012a. “Chapter 5: Habitus: A Cultural Theory of Action.” In Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 95–116. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://books.google.com?id=pNcnAgAAQBAJ.

*———. 2012b. “Chapter 6: Fields of Struggle for Power.” In Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 117–42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. http://books.google.com?id=pNcnAgAAQBAJ.

*Vora, Kalindi. 2009. “Indian Transnational Surrogacy and the Commodification of Vital Energy.” Subjectivity 28 (1): 266–78. doi:10.1057/sub.2009.14.

Weber, Max. (1904) 1946. “The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by C. Wright Mills, 302–22. New York: Oxford University Press.

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are what students know, understand and are able to do on completion of a unit of study. They are aligned with the University's graduate qualities and are assessed as part of the curriculum.

Outcomes
Graduate qualities

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

LO1. identify and distinguish central paradigms of the social sciences and their roots in social theory
LO2. critically assess how different theoretical frameworks in the social sciences shape different methods and analytical approaches to social and cultural realities
LO3. identify and critically assess scholarly arguments and analysis in the traditions of social theory
LO4. identify research based literature relevant to a topic
LO5. demonstrate an understanding of the relevance of social theory to understanding development paradigms
LO6. identify the empirical base of an argument
LO7. apply a higher level of academic skills in critical thinking, writing and oral presentation.

Graduate qualities

The graduate qualities are the qualities and skills that all University of Sydney graduates must demonstrate on successful completion of an award course. As a future Sydney graduate, the set of qualities have been designed to equip you for the contemporary world.

GQ1	Depth of disciplinary expertise Deep disciplinary expertise is the ability to integrate and rigorously apply knowledge, understanding and skills of a recognised discipline defined by scholarly activity, as well as familiarity with evolving practice of the discipline.
GQ2	Critical thinking and problem solving Critical thinking and problem solving are the questioning of ideas, evidence and assumptions in order to propose and evaluate hypotheses or alternative arguments before formulating a conclusion or a solution to an identified problem.
GQ3	Oral and written communication Effective communication, in both oral and written form, is the clear exchange of meaning in a manner that is appropriate to audience and context.
GQ4	Information and digital literacy Information and digital literacy is the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, manage, adapt, integrate, create and convey information using appropriate resources, tools and strategies.
GQ5	Inventiveness Generating novel ideas and solutions.
GQ6	Cultural competence Cultural Competence is the ability to actively, ethically, respectfully, and successfully engage across and between cultures. In the Australian context, this includes and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, knowledge systems, and a mature understanding of contemporary issues.
GQ7	Interdisciplinary effectiveness Interdisciplinary effectiveness is the integration and synthesis of multiple viewpoints and practices, working effectively across disciplinary boundaries.
GQ8	Integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity An integrated professional, ethical and personal identity is understanding the interaction between one’s personal and professional selves in an ethical context.
GQ9	Influence Engaging others in a process, idea or vision.

Outcome map

Learning outcomes	Graduate qualities
Learning outcomes

Responding to student feedback

This section outlines changes made to this unit following staff and student reviews.

No changes have been made since this unit was last offered

Disclaimer

The University reserves the right to amend units of study or no longer offer certain units, including where there are low enrolment numbers.

To help you understand common terms that we use at the University, we offer an online glossary.

Current students

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Attendance and class requirements

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Disclaimer

On this page

Useful links

Media

Student links

About us

Connect

Current students

ANTH6916: Culture and Development: Key Concepts

Semester 1, 2021 [Normal day] - Remote

Overview

Overview

Unit details and rules

Teaching staff

Assessment

Assessment

Assessment summary

Assessment criteria

Late submission

Academic integrity

Learning support

Learning support

Simple extensions

Special consideration

Using AI responsibly

Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule

Attendance and class requirements

Study commitment

Required readings

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

Graduate qualities

Outcome map

Responding to student feedback

Responding to student feedback

Disclaimer

On this page

Useful links

Media

Student links

About us

Connect