Albany Senior High School/Coursebook/3SAN

What is this course about?
In an increasingly globally interconnected world, understanding human difference has become increasingly important. It’s important to understand how people think, what values they have that influence their thoughts and opinions, and the shared experiences and ideologies that in turn shape those values. Social anthropology is about understanding social issues, conflicting points of view, social change, and about being engaged citizens who ourselves work to bring about social improvement.

Social anthropology brings together a little sociology, a little psychology, a little history, media studies, economics, politics, in order to attempt to make sense of society.

What will students learn?
Students will ponder questions such as: How do societies work? How does culture and context influence behaviour? Why do people subscribe to different ideologies? Why do good people do bad things? How do individuals, communities, and societies both respond to and attempt to bring about change? What actions can we personally take that might bring about social improvement? How can we become informed, critical, active, and responsible citizens?

What sorts of things will students do?
Central to the course is developing a “sociological imagination” through in-class discussion and debate, examination of current social issues and exploration of academic literature. We use the tools of anthropology to think about questions that matter in the world. These often relate to human rights and responsibilities, to issues of inequality or oppression or marginalisation in the world.

The social inquiry cycle will be followed to independently complete a critical social inquiry research project exploring an area of social justice or cultural change.

Students will take part in an in-depth class exploration of social actions and the perspectives, values and points of view relating to various social issues. Different campaigns will be considered from different ideological viewpoints including the responses for social change.

Students will consider a "real world" social issue and take part in their own campaign to highlight their chosen issue and effect change.

There may also be opportunity for students to explore explanations for human behaviour through a social psychology lens.