ANTH 2820 Human Osteology (original) (raw)

Course Description Sports are pervasive component of Western society. Billions of dollars and countless hours are spent training, playing, and spectating the various sporting events that occur on a day-today basis. Yet despite this, sports have often been overlooked—or even ridiculed by—anthropologists as a subject for cultural inquiry. In this course, we will consider the various roles that sports have played in human societies from our earliest beginnings as a species to the present. In many ways, it is play and sports, more so than work that has defined societies across the globe. By utilizing ethnographic methods, anthropologists have demonstrated that sports have wide ranging implications for how humans construct society and generate cultural norms and taboos. Specifically, anthropologists are interested in sports in a cross-cultural context. That is, what importance do sports have in societies that are far different than our own? By taking a deep, focused examination of sport, we can begin to unravel the cultural norms, attitudes, social dynamics, and institutions of a particular society. This course is not a history of sports, nor will we take a culture-by-culture examination of sports. We will begin the course by trying to understand how exactly we define play, games, and sports. We then move on to consider the various theories about why sports exist and why they are so central to our lives. Next, we will discuss how other fields in anthropology have studied sports. For example, we will look at how long-distance running may be the most important factor in our evolution as a species, or how sports may be the first source for economic inequality in the ancient Americas. Following this, we will turn to cultural anthropology in examining the relationship between sport and culture. We will study how sports are used to socialize children, how sports are important in our notions of sexuality, femininity, and masculinity, and how sports are foundational to our sense of identity. Next, we will look at the relationship between sports and race in the U.S., and how globalization is changing how we view and play sports. Through all of this, we will look at some fascinating case studies. We will look at how maybe we love sports because we are a naturally violent species. We will examine the lives of masked Mexican wrestlers, and how lucha libre is tied to Mexican identity and masculinity. Little League Baseball and its exploitive characteristics will capture our gaze, and how female body builders construct their own unique sense of femininity will be discussed. We will conclude the course with readings on the importance of baseball in the Dominican Republic.