181 - 190 of 271 results for: ANTHRO

Things sit at the nexus of cross-cutting heterogeneous processes; tracing the entanglements of any prominent thing or class of things demands a transdisciplinary approach that recruits expertise from the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. For example, carbon is a key factor in global warming for reasons that are as much socio-historical as bio-physical, and we could not begin to sketch the full significance of carbon without considering such diverse frames of reference. Our growing appreciation in the social sciences and humanities of the agency, polyvalence and catalytic role of things has given rise to The New Materialist and Post-Humanist movements, which in turn raise questions about intra-action and observational perspective that are echoed in the modern physical and life sciences. In this class we will explore these theoretical convergences in considering themes such as `things-in-themselves¿, networks and open systems, assemblages and entanglements. We will also examine specific examples such as oil, metal (guns), dams, viruses, electricity, mushrooms; each thing will be explored both in terms of its social and ethical entanglements and in terms of its material properties and affordances. There will also be hands-on encounters with objects in labs and a couple of local field trips. The key question throughout will be `why and how does matter matter in society today?

This colloquium will introduce students to the exciting and expanding field of Indian labor history and provide them a comprehensive historiographical foundation in this area of historical research. Seminars will engage with one key monograph in the field every week, with selected chapters of the monograph set as compulsory reading. In these seminars, we will explore the world of the working classes and the urban poor in colonial and post-colonial India, as also the Indian labor diaspora. We will understand myriad workplaces such as jute and cotton mills, small workshops, farms and plantations. We will also explore forms of protest and political mobilization devised by workers in their struggles against structures of oppression and in their quest for a life of dignity. Most importantly, these seminars will train students in the methods deployed by labor historians to access the lives of the largely unlettered workers of the region who seldom left a trace of their consciousness in archival documents. Overall, we will connect the debates in the history of labor in modern India to wider discussions about the nature of capitalism, colonial modernity, gender, class, caste and culture.

This advanced undergraduate and graduate seminar will provide students with practical and theoretical training in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) as applied to archaeological research, introducing students to spatial theories and GIS methodological applications to research design and analysis. Topics covered in the course will include: cartographic skills of displaying and visualizing archaeological data, GIS applications to research design and sampling, data acquisition and generation, spatial analyses of artifacts, features, sites, and landscapes, as well as a critical evaluation of the strengths and limitations of GIS spatial analyses and epistemologies. Prerequisites: By instructor consent. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student in this course.

The course provides an introduction to a broad range of digital tools and techniques for anthropological research. It is geared towards those interested in exploring such methodologies for their research and wanting to add hands-on experience with state-of-the-art digital tools to their skill set. Students will learn to work with some of the most common tools used to collect and manage digital data, and to perform various types of analysis and visualization.Undergraduate students register for 3-5 Units, Graduate students can register for 3-5 units.

Techniques of interpreting data, organizing bibliographic materials, writing, editing and revising. Preparation of papers for conferences and publications in anthropology. Seniors register for 199; master's students register for 299.

Required of and restricted to first-year ANTHRO Ph.D. students. Focus is on contemporary ethnography and related cultural and social theories generated by texts. Topics include agency, resistance, and identity formation, and discourse analysis. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

Required of Anthropology Ph.D. students. The history of cultural and social anthropology in relation to historical and national contexts and key theoretical and methodological issues as these inform contemporary theory and practices of the discipline. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisite: Consent of instructor. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

Modern social theory is based on intellectual horizons emerging in Europe from the 17th to the 19th/20th centuries. This burst of new ideas was intertwined with some of the darkest chapters in Europe's history: the enslavement, subjection and exploitation of vast populations across the globe as Europe's imperial domination expanded and deepened. This course will explore how virtually all the most consequential ideas emerging from now canonical thinkers - on human freedom and autonomy, reason, popular self-determination, property rights, civility, liberal toleration, equality, empirical social sciences and much else - arose as direct answers to the new epistemic, moral and political challenges of empire and colonial conquest. The world of empire indelibly shaped and created the intellectual legacy that informs modern social theory on a global scale - both its internal critiques, its liberal, and emancipatory potentials, as well as its many illiberal, racist and exclusionary strands and impulses. Each section has original texts, commentaries, and background readings that place these texts in their deeper historical setting. Many of these commentaries trace how practical theories of 'lower' or minor selves - the subject people of the colonies, slaves, and other - were integral to the very development of ideas of the modern, autonomous and reasonable self in the western world. Prerequisite: By instructor consent. Significant work outside of class time is expected of the student for this course.

This graduate readings seminar provides a lively introduction to some of the major themes and issues in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). How do technologies and material assemblages perform power? How are their designs and uses shaped by social, cultural, and political dynamics? How do they shape those dynamics? The course draws on an interdisciplinary body of literature in humanities and social science, mixing theoretical material with more empirically oriented studies, and classics with new scholarship.