Postgraduate Course: Culture and Power: The Anthropology of Political Processes (PGSP11178)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course introduces a range of anthropological approaches to politics. It provides a detailed examination of both open and hidden forms of power and their workings at the global, state, national, community, and personal level. Key themes of this course are: bureaucracy and irrationality in the modern state, sovereignty, political violence, resistance, citizenship, religion and human rights. |
| Course description |
Lecture Summary:
1 Anthropology, the Colonial, the Political (Jonathan Spencer)
2 Power and Resistance (Jonathan Spencer)
3 The State (Jonathan Spencer)
4 Sovereignty and Spectacle (Jonathan Spencer)
5 Law, Crime and Dis/order (Serra Hakyemez)
6 Human Rights, Borders and Statelessness (Serra Hakyemez)
7 Nationalism (Jonathan Spencer)
8 Democracy (Jonathan Spencer)
9 Violence (Jonathan Spencer)
10 Religion, Politics, Secularism (Jonathan Spencer)
11. Reading Week & Drop-in Session (re: final assignment prep)
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2019/20, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 50 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
A combination of a short essay (20%) and a long essay (80%). |
| Feedback |
Short written summaries are submitted to tutors weekly during the tutorial session, which serve as the basis for the participation mark. The course convener sets the essay questions; the short essay is based on the short mid-term ethnographic project students must undertake in either the Edinburgh Sheriff Court or the Scottish Parliament. The aim of the assessments is to allow students to develop their own ideas and topics, demonstrate their ability to analyse relevant issues and draw on and synthesise relevant evidence. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- show a clear understanding of the importance and scope of anthropology's contribution to the analysis of power and politics
- take an informed, anthropological perspective on issues of governance, citizenship, processes of democratization, protest, and the role of the state in a variety of ethnographic contexts.
- identify and characterise key approaches from social anthropology, from other social science disciplines, and from interdisciplinary fields like cultural studies, development studies, and science and technology studies to understanding and evaluating issues concerning political anthropology as a sub-field, and identify advantages, problems and implications of these approaches.
- critically evaluate contributions to the academic and public debates regarding political issues in scientific, philosophical, and humanities-related inquiries in order to engage wider audiences regarding issues of human social and cultural difference
- identify and evaluate a selection of techniques and procedures used in political anthropology and their relation to the formal techniques and procedures of anthropology and the social sciences generally.
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Reading List
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1990. ¿The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin women¿, American Ethnologist 17(1): 41-55.
Arendt, H. 1952. The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Man. in H. Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism. London: Secker & Warburg.
Cannell, Fenella. 2010. The Anthropology of Secularism. Annual Review of Anthropology 39: 85-100.
Comaroff J. and Comaroff J. Criminal Obsessions, After Foucault: Postcoloniality, Policing, and the Metaphysics of Disorder. Critical Inquiry 30(4): 800-824.
Curtis, J. and J. Spencer. 2010. Anthropology and the Political. in R. Fardon et al., (eds)Sage Handbook of Social Anthropology. London: Sage. Vol 1. Part 1.11., 168-182.
Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Centers, Kings and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power. In Clifford Geertz. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books Inc. Pp. 121-146.
Hage, G., 2003. "Comes a Time We Are All Enthusiasm": Understanding Palestinian Suicide Bombers in Times of Exighophobia. Public Culture, 15(1), pp.65¿89.
Koch, I. 2017. When politicians fail: Zombie democracy and the anthropology of actually existing politics. Sociological Review Monographs. 65(1): 105-120
Spencer, J. 1990. Writing Within: Anthropology, Nationalism and Culture in Sri Lanka. Current Anthropology 3(2): 283-300.
Wedeen, L. 2003. Seeing like a Citizen, Acting like a State: Exemplary Events in Unified Yemen. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45(4): 680-713.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Jonathan Spencer
Tel: (0131 6)50 3944
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Becky Guthrie
Tel: (0131 6)51 1659
Email: |
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