SUBJECT
Anthropological Theories and Methods 1-5.
lecture + practical
master
2+3+2+2+3
Semesters 1-4
Autumn/Spring semester
General objective of the course is to introduce the history of development of cultural anthropological theories and methods to the students. Specific objective, in addition to a general, all-encompassing presentation, is to bring home to students the understanding of how theory and method “goes together” in the history of anthropology.
“Anthropological Theories and Methods 1.”
Franz Boas and his “school” (Franz Boas, Alfred Louis Kroeber, Clyde Kluckhohn, Robert Harry Lowie, Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Melville Jean Herskovits, Paul Radin, Ruth Fulton Benedict, Ralph Linton, Margaret Mead)
“Anthropological Theories and Methods 2.”
British Social Anthropology (forerunner: Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frances James Gillen, the Torres-Straits expedition; British diffusionism; William Halse Rivers Rivers, Bronislaw Malinowski; Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown; Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard; Meyer Fortes; Max Gluckman; Daryll Forde; Raymond Firth; Edmund Leach)
“Anthropological Theories and Methods 3.”
The main directions of cultural anthropology after World War II (neoevolucionizmus and cultural ecology, ecological materialism, ethno-science and cognitive anthropology, structuralism, symbolic and interpretive anthropology)
“Anthropological Theories and Methods 4.”
Questions and discussions of cultural anthropology (the Oedipus-complex, the Castaneda debates; the Margaret Mead vs Derek Freeman controversy; the Philippine Tasaday hoax; the sociobiology debate; problem of translation / translatability; gender issue; “The odds of culture research”: postmodern anthropology? etc.)
“Anthropological Theories and Methods 5.”
Development of cultural anthropology in Hungary (Lajos Bíró, Emil Torday, Géza Róheim, Bódog Somló, Károly Polányi, Vilmos Diószegi, László Vajda, Edit Fél, Tamás Hofer, Mihály Sozán, Tibor Bodrogi, Lajos Boglár)