71 - 80 of 271 results for: ANTHRO

What does it mean to say that archaeology is a colonial discipline? Anthropology and archaeology are rooted historically in projects of domination and extermination by colonial powers. Today many scholars, practitioners, and colonized peoples are exploring ways to recast the archaeological project--to de-colonize it. There are many approaches to such attempts and this course will explore three of them: Indigenous archaeology, community-based participatory research, and activist archaeology. There are no recipes to produce de-colonized archaeology and no clear answers to the questions that arise in the process. As a class we will explore possibilities and chart futures for a practice of archaeology that breaks from divides between researcher and subject, past and present, and scholarship and social justice. From this course you will gain an understanding of foundational critiques of archaeology from inside and outside the discipline and from Indigenous, Black, and people of color who have historically been the subject of archaeology's colonial practices. You will also gain an understanding of attempts to move beyond colonial frameworks and your own position within them through a series of archaeological case studies. You will not leave this course with answers, but you will leave this course with a deeper understanding of the ongoing project of decolonization.

How do we deal with strangers in different parts of the world. What is a stranger? And to whom? Many theorists suggest that dealing with anonymous strangers is central to norms of sociality and civility. For the thinker Georg Simmel, the stranger is less concerned with norms of civility, and more with the promise of urban life, a category ripe for marginalization but also an illustration of the possibilities of ambiguous and multi-faceted life with others that reckons not only with our connections with others but our secrets. Others suggest that questions of empathy and ethics are concerned with how others' are imagined and interacted with. However, is social life an encounter with strangers in a simple sense? Surely what it is to be a friend, enemy or a stranger is socially and historically produced? Who are the same and who are the others? Is anybody an 'other' by virtue of not being oneself? What is the public and what is the private in different places, in different interactions? What is the difference between distant others, and those who are others to each other whose histories are intertwined? This class examines these questions and the complex issues around how heterogenous individuals and communities live together, by emphasizing the historical stratifications of race, class, caste, gender that comprise the stakes in any-one meeting in any space, but especially in certain spaces. We will read ethnographies and histories that teach us the ways in which structures of power, colonialism and often as a corollary exclusion and fear structure how and who meets each other, AND, also emphasize the ways in which social life can be exhilarating, complex, violent, contingent and transformative.

As the Flint, Michigan water situation began to attract attention and condemnation, Michigan State Representative, Sheldon Neeley, describing the 200 troops on the ground and the Red Cross distributing water bottles, said that the Governor had ¿turned an American city into a Third World country [¿] it¿s terrible what he¿s done [¿] no fresh water.¿ Then at the first Congressional hearing, the Chairman of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, Jason Chaffetz, said, ¿This is the United States of America ¿ this isn't supposed to happen here. We are not some Third World country.¿nnWhat is a `third world problem¿? And is the `water problem¿ the same across the world? This course examines how water is governed in a time that is increasingly seen as one of crisis. We will examine how crises are imagined, constructed, sought to be averted, and the governance regimes they give rise to. And how does water, whether as natural resource, public good, a human right, or commodity, determine the contours of such regimes? We will focus mostly on ethnographies, but also examine texts produced by government bodies and aid and environmental organizations, as well as case law. The course will show what anthropology can contribute to the conversation on state and corporate bureaucracies, and their relation with water.

As the Flint, Michigan water situation began to attract attention and condemnation, Michigan State Representative, Sheldon Neeley, describing the troops on the ground and the Red Cross distributing water bottles, said that the Governor had "turned an American city into a Third World country [...] it's terrible what he's done [...] no fresh water. Then, at a Congressional hearing, the Chairman of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee said, "This is the United States of America - this isn't supposed to happen here. We are not some Third World country."What is a "third world problem?" This introductory environmental anthropology course examines how such imaginaries materialize in development programmes and literature, and bespeak charged geopolitical and racial histories; and invites reflection on what futures for working in common they enable/constrain. We will examine how crises are imagined and constructed, and the governance regimes they give rise to. How does water - as natural resource, public good, human right, need, or commodity - determine the contours of such regimes? We will also study chronic, quieter environmental problems and the responses they (do not) generate. Working through a variety of writing genres - ethnographies, policy literature, and legal and corporate publicity material - will enable students to appreciate what anthropology can contribute to the conversation on environmental justice, and state and corporate bureaucracies and their mandates. The course draws on examples from a wide range of settings. The course is offered as an introduction to environmental anthropology and takes students through key themes - infrastructure, race, class, privatization, justice, violence - by focusing on water. It requires no background in anthropology.

From lawsuits over coffee spills to military action staged in the name of human rights, 'law' is one of the most potent ideas to proliferate the modern world. In this course, students will engage with the philosophical questions that the concept of law raises about 'human nature' and 'society,' and explore the forms that legality takes in different cultural traditions. Using a set of case studies that range from tribal councils and Islamic legal debates to transnational business arbitration and shoplifting, we will interrogate law's relationship to social domination, political mobilization, and ideals of freedom, dignity, and morality. Students will leave the course a grasp of key debates in legal philosophy, an expanded knowledge of legal systems throughout the world, and a deeper understanding of the relationship between law, politics, and social conflict.

This course builds on the idea that considering environmental and social justice concerns together is possible and necessary. As such, it examines key issues in environmental justice alongside anthropological studies of related social and environmental concerns. We will study topics related to cities, agriculture, extraction, water, toxicity, and climate, alongside attentions to racial capitalism, settler colonialism, development, war-making, and state-sanctioned violence. In doing so, we will center a critical race and historical perspective that is attentive to social and environmental dynamics that have shaped present injustices. Through readings, discussions, hands-on projects, and interactive classroom engagement, we will consider the ongoing lived, analytical, and political stakes of these issues. Further emphasis on environmental justice strategies and movements will enhance our critical and heterogeneous understanding of these topics, their lived impacts, and their alternative possibilities.

This class seeks to familiarize students with a variety of theoretical perspectives and methodological tools for a study of the state. The social sciences have long deconstructed the image of the state as a coherent unit (along with the Weberian ideal of a neutral bureaucracy) but the idea remains globally prevalent. Therefore, this course's central objective is to contemplate and rethink diverse conceptions of the state in order to open new perspectives and develop the methodological tools necessary for comprehending the state in a distinctively anthropological manner. Our discussions will center around ethnographic and other social scientific research that emphasize the state as a historically situated reality, embodied in the work of its agents and negotiated in everyday encounters with citizens. Important question include how bureaucratic interactions mobilize values and emotions and thereby (re)produce the state, as well as classificatory systems of inclusion and forms of marginalization. Therefore, we will investigate seemingly negative or coercive aspects of states, such as border regimes and military practices, but also aspects that could be seen as their benevolent side, like welfare bureaucracies. By reading different anthropological, humanities, and other social science texts, we will ask how can one think of and research the state, what types of relations characterize different state formations, what kind of routines and subjectivities are formed in interaction with diverse state actors, how well Western concepts of the state, sovereignty, bureaucratic rationality travel to non-Western contexts, how citizens experience and relate to the state in their day to day lives, and how we can think about alternative forms of governing?

Another title for this course could be "mapping and its discontents" because this is a critical methods course. You will learn, through hands-on lab assignments, how to create and use maps in archaeological analysis using open-source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software QGIS and other free online tools. At the same time, you will come to understand the history of mapping as a technology of rule and resistance, how GIS is used to answer archaeological questions, and creative strategies used by scholars and non-scholars alike that challenge conventional practices. This class focuses weekly readings on these topics around assignments that put your critical and spatial thinking to work. By the end of term you will be able to find spatial data from reputable sources, create a GIS using that data, and analyze anthropological questions using that GIS. The course brings together scholarship and resources from anthropology, geography, environmental design and planning, and art to tackle the question "What do maps do?"

Modern life is marked by institutions - schools, hospitals, international conglomerates, even prisons - so how did they develop and become so common? Historical archaeology can help us tell a different history of institutions because it combines documents, especially official records, with the material items left behind by the people who lived and worked in the institution. This course uses archaeological case studies to look at the different theoretical frameworks used to explain why institutions exist and how they function. We will also use practical examples to make connections between historical institutions and modern life. For example, what can looking at nineteenth century prison menus tell us about prison or hospital food today? And how can we use the archaeology of institutions to 'read' the Stanford campus? No prior archaeological experience required.