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2022 unit information
Unit delivery will be in line with the most current COVIDSafe health guidelines. We continue to tailor learning experiences for each unit to achieve the best possible mix of online and on-campus activities that successfully blend our approaches to learning, working and research. Please check your unit sites for announcements and updates.
Last updated: 4 March 2022
Trimester 1: Burwood (Melbourne), Waurn Ponds (Geelong), Cloud (online), CBD*
Nil
Students will on average spend 150-hours over the teaching period undertaking the teaching, learning and assessment activities for this unit.
1 x 1-hour class per week, 1 x 1-hour seminar per week
1 x 1-hour class per week (recordings provided), 1 x 1-hour online seminar per week
*CBD refers to the National Indigenous Knowledges, Education, Research and Innovation (NIKERI) Institute; Community Based Delivery
This Unit allows students to practice “doing anthropology” — using ethnographic research methods to explore anthropological questions in their own urbanised contexts. They will design and carry out fieldwork projects incorporating: participant observation, fieldnotes, interview techniques, audiovisual documentation, surveys, data analysis (both traditional and digital), and ethnographic writing and communication in traditional and emerging media.
The Unit applies these methods to contemporary, cosmopolitan issues at work in students’ own “backyards”, developing anthropological and interdisciplinary frameworks to explore the sociocultural, political, and economic dynamics that shape our everyday lives and urban environments. This unit will therefore explore questions such as: How do global forces remake local places? How is culture reflected in urban space? What social relations make a city? What flows of people and things make up global economies? Who becomes empowered or vulnerable in the process? And what forms of agency do people create in their cities and neighbourhoods?
Analyse cultural processes of urban space- and place-making according to anthropological theories and methods; and engage these with the theories and methods of other disciplines, including geography and sociology
GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities
Identify the relationships between urban place-making and global forces such as migration, mass communication, economic liberalisation, and post-colonial conflict
GLO4: Critical thinking
GLO8: Global citizenship
Identify and pursue a specific line of anthropological inquiry; develop and support an argument regarding contemporary events using primary and secondary data sources
Capture detailed, effective descriptions of sociocultural processes and systems using text and visual media; effectively and communicate and support arguments in writing
GLO2: Communication
These Unit Learning Outcomes are applicable for all teaching periods throughout the year
The assessment due weeks provided may change. The Unit Chair will clarify the exact assessment requirements, including the due date, at the start of the teaching period.
The texts and reading list for the unit can be found on the University Library via the link below: ASS204 Note: Select the relevant trimester reading list. Please note that a future teaching period's reading list may not be available until a month prior to the start of that teaching period so you may wish to use the relevant trimester's prior year reading list as a guide only.
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