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21A.500[J] Technology and Culture
Prereq: None
U (Fall, Spring)
9 Units. HASS-S
Examines the intersections of technology, culture, and politics in a variety of social and historical settings ranging from 19th-century factories to 21st-century techno dance floors, from Victorian London to anything-goes Las Vegas. Discussions and readings organized around three questions: what cultural effects and risks follow from treating biology as technology; how computers have changed the way we think about ourselves and others; and how politics are built into our infrastructures. Explores the forces behind technological and cultural change; how technological and cultural artifacts are understood and used by different communities; and whether, in what ways, and for whom technology has produced a better world. Limited to 50.
H. Paxson
Same subject as STS.075[J]
Anthropology
https://catalog.mit.edu/schools/humanities-arts-social-sciences/anthropology/
Anthropology studies humankind from a comparative perspective that emphasizes the diversity of human behavior and the importance of culture in both describing and explaining that variety. While the discipline encompasses the biological nature of our species and the material aspects of human adaptation, it takes as fundamental the idea that humans respond to nature and natural forces in large part through culture—that is, the system of practices and signs through which people interact and communicate. Anthropology, then, is the study of human beings as cultural animals. Sociocultural anthropology, the focus of the MIT program, draws its data from the direct study of contemporary peoples living in a wide variety of circumstances, from peasant villagers to tropical forest hunters and gatherers to professionals working in technological organizations to urban populations in modern societies. Anthropology at MIT offers students a broad exposure to scholarship on human culture. The field is more generally distinguished from other humanities and social science disciplines by its insistence that understanding people's ways of life is often best accomplished by living and working among them—that is, by doing fieldwork. This immersive work—often described as ethnography—reveals the multiple positions and perspectives that constitute social worlds. Ethnographic representations in texts and films can provide excellent contextual resources for work in engineering, science, and other fields in the humanities, social sciences, and management.
