Undergraduate - UnitATS2371 - Magic, science and religion

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Anthropology
Offered	Not offered in 2015
Coordinator(s)	Dr Julian Millie

Synopsis

The unit examines some of the contributions that anthropologists and sociologists have made to our understanding of religion. The unit concentrates in particular on the relevance of the concepts of 'magic', 'science' and 'religion' for a comparative understanding of rituals and associated cosmologies in a variety of sociocultural settings.

Outcomes

Students successfully completing the subject should have:

An understanding of the development of Western thought in relation to science and religion and the influence of this on anthropological approaches to the study of non-Western religious traditions.
An appreciation of the nature of rationalities underlying behaviour in other cultures.
Knowledge of some non-Western magico-religious beliefs and practices through the examination of specific ethnographic case studies.
Critical and reflexive skills that will enable them to provide thoughtful, clearly written and logically argued responses to topics and questions provided or chosen.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 60%
Exam: 40%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Julian Millie

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Indigenous cultures and histories
Religious studies
Anthropology

Prerequisites

Twelve credit points of first-year Arts units. It is highly recommended that students only take this unit after they have completed two gateway units in Anthropology.

Prohibitions

ATS3371