How Culture Works

Four small children, two holding jack-o'-laterns, pose in their Halloween costumes.

Children show off their costumes during a Halloween Parade in Tokyo. As a final project for this course, students complete an ethnographic study on Halloween. (Image courtesy of Buz Carter on flickr. License CC BY-NC-SA.)

Instructor(s)

MIT Course Number

21A.01

As Taught In

Fall 2012

Level

Undergraduate

Cite This Course

Course Description

Course Features

Course Description

This course introduces diverse meanings and uses of the concept of culture with historical and contemporary examples from scholarship and popular media around the globe. It includes first-hand observations, synthesized histories and ethnographies, and visual and narrated representations of human experiences. Students conduct empirical research on cultural differences through the systematic observation of human interaction, employ methods of interpretative analysis, and practice convincing others of the accuracy of their findings.

Related Content

Manduhai Buyandelger. 21A.01 How Culture Works. Fall 2012. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.


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