21A.157
The Meaning of Life
Examines how a variety of cultural traditions propose answers to the question of how to live a meaningful life. Considers the meaning of life, not as a philosophical abstraction, but as a question that individuals grapple with in their daily lives, facing difficult decisions between meeting and defying cultural expectations. Provides tools for thinking about moral decisions as social and historical practices, and permits students to compare and contextualize the ways people in different times and places approach fundamental ethical concerns.
Spring 2019
Topics
- The Good Life, and Its Meanings [HP]
- What Matters? [GJ]
- The Ideals (and Realities) of Companionate Marriage
- The Moral Laboratory of Parenting
- Module 1 Recitation
- Reciprocity
- Money
- Work
- Module 2 Recitation
- The Meanings of Sex
- Being Sexual
- Sexual Bodies and Agencies
- Module 3 Recitation
- Talent
- Beauty
- Module 4 Recitation
- Remembering and Forgetting
- Cultural Citizenship and Multiple Belongings
- Module 5 Recitation
- Displacement, Loss and Crisis
- A Cause
- Progress
- Religion
- Module 6 Recitation
- Community
Readings
- Kavedžija, Iza, and Harry Walker, eds. Values of Happiness: Toward an Anthropology of Purpose in Life . HAU, 2017. ISBN: 9780986132575.
- [K] = Kavedžija, Iza, and Harry Walker, eds. Values of Happiness: Toward an Anthropology of Purpose in Life . HAU, 2017. ISBN: 9780986132575.
- Basso, Keith H. “Wisdom Sits in Places.” Chapter 4 in Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache . University of New Mexico Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780826317247.
- Justice Kennedy’s Majority opinion on marriage equality (glance through the prologue, plus pp. 1–22):
- Ethnography from 1990s of Mexican transnational families bridging Jalisco and Atlanta:
- ———. “‘Ya No Somos Como Nuestros Papas’ (We Are Not Like Our Parents): Companionate Marriage in a Mexican Migrant Community.” Chapter 4 in A Courtship after Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families . University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780520228719.
- Ho, Karen. “Finance.” Chapter 23 in A Companion to Moral Anthropology . Edited by Didier Fassin. Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. ISBN: 9781118959503.
- [P] Chapter 1: The Setting and the Approach, pp. 6–12, and 14–31.
- [P] Chapter 2: Everyday Life of a Jota, pp. 41–89.
- [P] Chapter 3: Little Boys in Mother’s Wardrobe: On the Origins of Homosexuality and Effeminacy, pp. 104–22.
- [P] Chapter 4: Stealing Femininity: On Bodily and Symbolic Constructions, pp. 152–60.
- [P] Chapter 5: Machos and Mayates: Masculinity and Bisexuality, pp. 198–206.
- Newell, Sasha. “Circuitously Parisian: Sapeur Parakinship and the Affective Circuitry of Congolese Style.” Chapter 11 in Affective Circuits: African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration . Edited by Jennifer Cole and Christian Groes. University of Chicago Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780226405155.
- Lazarre, Jane. “The Richmond Museum of the Confederacy.” Chapter 1 in Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons . Duke University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780822361664.
- Chin, Elizabeth. “The Entries: My Grandmother’s Rings.” Chapter 2 in My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries . Duke University Press Books, 2016, pp. 147–56. ISBN: 9780822361367.
- [HO] Chapter 2: “One Thing Good.”
- [HO] Chapter 3: The Rememberers.
- [HO] Chapter 9: The Deep Story.
- [HO] Chapter 10: The Team Player: Loyalty Above All.
- [HO] Chapter 13: The Rebel: A Team Loyalist with a New Cause.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: None U (Spring) 3-0-9 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2019
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.