Utrecht University – University College Utrecht

This course provides an anthropological perspective on the cultural variation among human societies by examining the history, foundations, and some key cases of the discipline. The course consists of two parts. Part I introduces the history and development of some of the basic concepts, approaches, and research methods of social and cultural anthropology. It does this using a critical reading of Evans-Pritchard's classic Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande which is used as an instrument to understand the discipline’s historical development and its relevance today. Selected readings from Nanda and Warms’ textbook, Cultural Anthropology, establish the principal areas of anthropological inquiry. Students gain insight into ethnographic methodology through a field visit involving preparation, and observation description. Part II develops the conceptual and ethnographic insights acquired in Part I through the study of globalization and Brazilian urban culture. Donna Goldstein’s ethnography of a Rio de Janeiro shantytown demonstrates the continuing relevance of cultural anthropology for the study of contemporary post-industrial society. Goldstein portrays the lives of the poor in a Brazilian favela, conveying the most intimate and hidden details of their lives: from crime and sexuality to responsibilities of kinship and friendship, to childhood dreams of riches and the search for dignity. This focus on problems of the inner city shows the consequences of polarized race, class, and gender relations, the relationship between culture and the economy, and between individual responsibilities, and agency structural constraints. Relevant chapters of Nanda and Warms’ textbook and several articles provide a conceptual framework for Goldstein's ethnography. Students gain further insight into ethnographic methodology and questions of representation through a field visit to an ethnographic museum.

This course explores the principles, problems, and methods of sustainability. After a critical historical introduction, the course studies what the natural sciences tell us about processes and cycles on our planet from a systems point of view. Ecology, the end of fossil fuels, alternative energy sources, environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity, and climate change are reviewed. Besides relevant facts, the sciences also provide interpretive theories with important, but often uncertain, implications for the future. The course then moves into environmental ethics and a critical analysis of the relationship of humans to nature. Having heard the facts and discussed values, the course turns to the social, economic, and political aspects of sustainability, and considers the clash between competing interests and different cultures. Possible solutions to such problems are explored, including environmental economics. The relevant agents, government, NGOs, or grass-roots groups are discussed. Finally, the course integrates the different approaches and points of view in an attempt to arrive at policy recommendations. Preferred prerequisites include a course on Earth Studies or Physics.

Comparative politics aims to explain differences between and similarities among countries and utilizes comparison as a tool for social science research to understand broader trends in world politics.  The course draws from both theoretical work and country and regional case studies that cover both advanced industrialized and developing world states. The core question comparative politics ask is "why politics is different across countries"?  Questions explored in this course include: What explains democratization? Are countries with prime ministers more stable than ones in which the president heads the executive branch? Why do some countries have extensive welfare states while others do not? Are multi-ethnic societies more or less prone to civil wars? Why are some countries poorer than others?

After completing this course students are able to:

• Think conceptually as a micro-economist and as a macro-economist
• Have an understanding of the main differences between different schools of thought in economics
• Apply the relevant economic perspective to problems on the level of the individual actor, market(s), the economy(ies), and government(s).

Content

Economists develop theories aiming to explain human behavior, especially – although not exclusively – when they operate in the context of markets and market economies. The course Introduction to Economics provides an introduction to the fundamentals of economics as a science. The course covers   mainstream neoclassical and Keynesian micro- and macro-economics, as well as other schools of thought.
 

Microeconomics focuses on the functioning of a single market and the way governments could promote it. Economic phenomena are explained from the perspective of individual behavior in a market setting. When some goods cannot be produced by private firms and sold via the market, the government can take the initiative to provide these goods, e.g. public utilities and collective goods such as dikes, defense, and justice.

Macroeconomics explains the functioning of a set of interrelated markets at the national or the international level. Also in this perspective the potential role of government is introduced e.g.  in keeping a system of markets stable or in reaching economic growth.

The last weeks in the course will be dedicated to the topic of "Rethinking Economics", covering a.o., but not exclusively, institutional economics, feminist economics, Marxist economics and econological economics.

This course introduces students to the dynamic, diverse, often colorful, and surprising world of global religions. It addresses religious traditions that have a huge influence on the world as we know it: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, but also local traditions in, e.g., Sub-Sahara Africa. The course integrates two components or perspectives: an ideational perspective that concerns religious beliefs and doctrines, and a practical “lived religions” perspective that concerns religious acts and rituals. Both components are approached from a transnational perspective that investigates how religions develop, and interact with each other and with other cultural phenomena and political institutions on a global scale.

This course examines the linguistic processes in language contact situations and how these relate to both societal and individual aspects of multilingualism. The first part of the course introduces the concepts of sociolinguistics that are needed to address issues of multilingualism and language contact, while the last part of the course develops this interdisciplinary perspective further by treating as a case study the island of Aruba, where multiple languages are spoken by overlapping linguistic communities.