AN 112 - NCH Understanding Asian Cultures

4.00 credits.

(Non-Western Cultural Heritage Core Course)
In Understanding Asian Cultures, we shall use the concepts, theories, methods and data used by cultural anthropologists to look at various Asian cultures and see what we can learn about their value systems, languages, economic systems, family and kinship structures, systems of power and social stratification, etc. After that, we will do a close reading of Gill (et.al)’s ‘Japan Copes with Calamity’ an ethnography of disaster politics in Japan. This will help us understand how an Asian country handles disaster in uniquely specific ways helping us gain insights into how we can benefit from such strategies.