141 - 150 of 249 results for: ANTHRO

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.

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?"

The Indian Ocean has formed an enduring connection between three continents, countless small islands and a multitude of cultural and ethnic groups and has become the focus of increasing interest in this geographically vast and culturally diverse region. This course explores a range of topics and issues, from the nature and dynamics of colonization and cultural development as a way of understanding the human experience in this part of the world, to topics such as religion, disease, and heritage The course guides studies in the many ways in which research in the Indian Ocean has a direct impact on our ability to compare developments in the Atlantic and Pacific.

This multidisciplinary course combines different approaches to how GIS and spatial tools can be applied in social science research. We take a collaborative, project oriented approach to bring together technical expertise and substantive applications from several social science disciplines. The course aims to integrate tools, methods, and current debates in social science research and will enable students to engage in critical spatial research and a multidisciplinary dialogue around geographic space.

What is masculinity? How are masculinities invested with power and meaning in cultural contexts? How is anthropological attention to them informed by and extending inquiry across the academy in spheres such as culture studies, political theory, gender studies, history, and science and technology studies? Limited enrollment.

Waste is increasingly central as an object and medium of political contestation in the contemporary world, from struggles over garbage, labor, and dignity in Senegal; to explosive remnants of war acting as rogue infrastructure in the Korean demilitarized zone. In response, waste has also become a productive concept in the environmental humanities and humanistic social sciences. In this course we will read a selection of foundational texts focused on waste, many of which draw on case studies from different parts of the world. The case of China will be emphasized, however, since China has emerged in the last few decades as a center not only of global industrial production, but also for processing the world¿s waste, contesting pollution, and fighting for environmental justice. By pairing key theoretical texts with texts dealing with waste-related issues in China and elsewhere, we will ultimately ask how contemporary global waste politics disrupts western understandings of waste, recycling, value, and more.

What does it mean to want to help, to organize humanitarian aid, in times of crisis? At first glance, the impulse to help issue generis a good one. Helping is surely preferable to indifference and inaction. This does not mean that humanitarian interventions entail no ethical or political stakes or that they are beyond engaged critique. We need to critique precisely that which we value, and to ask some hard questions, among them these: What are the differences among humanitarianism, charity, and philanthropy? What of social obligations and solidarities? How does the neoliberal world order currently create structural inequalities that ensure the reproduction of poverty and violence? How does the current order of things resemble or differ from the colonial world order? This course examines the history of humanitarian sensibilities and the emergence of organized action in the 'cause of humanity'. In the early years of humanitarian intervention, political neutrality was a key principle; it has now come under ever greater analytical and political scrutiny. We will examine the reasons for the politicization and militarization of aid -- be it humanitarian aid in natural disasters or political crises; development programs in the impoverished south ('the Third World'), or peace-keeping. We will end with a critical exploration of the concept of human rights, humanity, and personhood. The overall methodological aim of the course is to demonstrate what insights an ethnographic approach to the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of humanitarianism can offer.

This course will explore historical as well as current market transformations of medical ethics in different global contexts. We will examine various aspects of the research enterprise, its knowledge-generating and life-saving goals, as well as the societal, cultural, and political influences that make medical research a site of brokering in need of oversight and emergent ethics.nThis seminar will provide students with tools to explore and critically assess the various technical, social, and ethical positions of researchers, as well as the role of the state, the media, and certain publics in shaping scientific research agendas. We will also examine how structural violence, poverty, global standing, and issues of citizenship also influence issues of consent and just science and medicine.

Engaging the body/mind and its senses in the making of images and things has long been considered to have potentially great therapeutic significance. This course is a close examination of making as a form of therapy, as a form of communication, and, vitally, as a form of knowing. As such, it suggests new, analytically powerful possibilities for anthropological practice.