Classes

Winter 2021

ANTHRO 45A: Science, Culture, Power (GE3)

Winter Quarter 2021 – Tuesday-Thursday 11:00am-12:20pm (may also be taken asynchronously)

Prof. Mike Fortun

What makes “science” different from other forms of human knowledge, past and present? How can science be simultaneously powerful (“knowledge is power”) yet insistently separated, conceptually and socially, from the domain of “politics”?  If science embodies an ideal “culture of no culture” – existing beyond our everyday world of different perspectives, preferences, needs, and desires – how can we make sense of such a paradoxical state? How can the vibrant and volatile worlds of culture and meaning co-exist with the seemingly dispassionate demands and cold claims of the worlds of the sciences, and their scientists within them?  What kind of a person is a scientist, anyway, and how does that change with the time and place of culture, and with new political contexts and demands?

In this course we will build an understanding of science as a human activity—a particularly potent kind of cultural activity in a dynamic give-and-take with other domains of culture: religion, politics, gender differences, the forces of media. We will read historical documents; articles by anthropologists, historians, and philosophers of science; and the writings and reflections of scientists themselves to develop our understandings of science in cultural context.