Click here to return to the course list. ANTH 1116: PEOPLES AND CULTURES OF EAST AFRICA East Africa enjoys an extraordinary degree of social and cultural diversity, with representatives of all four of the major cultures families of the continent occurring in the region. How did this cultural variety arise, how does it relate to environmental diversity we find in East Africa? Amidst diversity how has the region evolved a high degree of social commonality and cohesion? This course will provide academic context for pursuing field study in East Africa. Including team teaching it will offer background to the history, politics, languages, and cultures of the region, and will focus on study of those societies visited during the program. These will include representatives of the major cultures of the region: Bantu, Nilotic and Cushitic-speakers. The course will includes an introductory overview of the peopling of East Africa, the emergence of ethic groups and evolution of the human use of natural resources, drawing on recent work in genetics archaeology, historical linguistic, and pre-colonial history. We will examine reports written by early explorers, who describe peoples encountered and their own responses to them, and will ask whether these documents reflect accurate accounts of East African societies, and in what ways might they be biased? We will investigate the structure and function of some major social institutions that characterize East Africa s culture groups, among them: local forms of agrarian economy, indigenous environmental knowledge; environmental adaptations, territory and political organization; kinship, age-organization, family, and domestic life; and cultural traditions ; oral literature, ritual, religion and music. | |
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