A famous social anthropologist once described his job as being a sort of cross-cultural private eye, spying into people's cultures instead of their bedrooms! Anthropologists look at very different societies, often finding different solutions to common human problems, for example the problem of how to obtain food or how to raise children, or how to explain sickness or understand what happens after death. Discovering these differences (or similarities) is fascinating and brings us to the essence of Anthropology - it makes us stand back and question our own assumptions. It shows that almost no piece of human behaviour is either natural or 'inevitable'. On this course we will examine some of the ways people think and act in different cultures, including our own.