AN451 Half Unit
Anthropology of Politics
This information is for the 2008/09 session.
Teachers responsible
Professor Deborah James, A506 Availability
MSc Social Anthropology, MSc Anthropology and Development, MSc Anthropology of Learning and Cognition, MSc Law, Anthropology and Society, MSc China in Comparative Perspective, MSc Development Studies, MSc Human Rights, MSc Regulation and Regulation (Research). MSc Government, MPA Public and Economic Policy/ MPA Public Policy and Management.
Pre-requisites
A background in the social sciences, preferably in anthropology.
Course content
The anthropological analysis of political institutions cross-culturally, including the study of changes wrought by colonial powers, a critical analysis of the appropriateness of analysing colonial and post-colonial settings in terms of “state”-based models; attempts to understand power and its disguises in a variety of non-western settings. Origins of political anthropology in African and Asian studies - structural functionalist to methodological individualist perspectives; political anthropology and colonialism; Foucauldian approaches to power and everyday life; the anthropological study of the state and state formation; civil society and citizenship; patron-client relations and brokers; vigilantism and the margins of the state; nationalism, ethnicity and identity.
Teaching
Lectures weekly MT, Seminars weekly MT. Formative coursework
Students will do presentations during seminars for which they will receive formative feedback. They will also have an opportunity to write tutorial essays on topics from the course which will be formatively assessed.
Reading list
Anderson, B 1991 [1983] Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism; Asad, Talal 1973 Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter; Barth, F 1965 Political leadership among Swat Pathans; Blok, Anton 1988 The Mafia of a Sicilian Village 1860-1960; a study of violent peasant entrepreneurs; Cohen, Abner 2003 [1969] Custom and Politics in Urban Africa; Evans-Pritchard, EE and M Fortes 1940 African Political Systems; Evans Pritchard, EE The Nuer; Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and P. Miller (eds.). 1991 The Foucault Effect: Studies in governmentality; C.J. Fuller and V. Benei (eds). The Everyday state and society in modern India; Gledhill, John 1994 Power and its disguises; Hansen, T B and F Stepputat (eds) 2001 States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State; Hastings Adrian 1997 The construction of nationhood : ethnicity, religion and nationalism; Hutchinson, Sharon 1996 Nuer dilemmas; Leach, Edmund 1954 The Political Systems of Highland Burma; Mbembe, A 2001 On the Postcolony; Navaro-Yashin, Yael 2002 Faces of the state: secularism and public life in Turkey Vincent, Joan 1990 Anthropology and Politics: Visions, traditions and trends; J Vincent, 2002 The Anthropology of Politics
Assessment
There is a two-hour examination (100%) in the ST. ^
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