Anthropology

This course introduces the causes, consequences, and contexts of contemporary migration and ethnicity focusing on selected cases from Asia and the Americas. This course provides a sociological introduction to migration, migrant incorporation, and racial and ethnic relations. It considers how societies experience and manage immigration. Moreover, while migrants are a distinctive group, they are also part of a larger whole, with implications for how we comparatively understand ourselves. We examine key migration theories, concepts and contemporary debates focusing on the experiences of different groups of migrants. This course entails discussions on human mobility, power relations, and dynamics of structure, agency, adaptation and the interconnectedness of place and identity. Weekly readings will illuminate the social, economic, and political salience of migration and ethnicity.

The most pressing societal challenges in the present have to do with climate change and the loss of biodiversity. In the age of the Anthropocene, nature has become a vital political concern. This course offers cultural historical perspectives upon the present situation. The aim is to explore how humans have used, imagined and shaped animals and physical environments and, conversely, the role that nature and ideas of nature have played in social, cultural, political, economic, and everyday life. The course focuses on ways to describe and theorize the relations between humans and nature—from early modern natural histories and the modern distinction between nature and culture, to ongoing discussions about the Anthropocene. Central themes include the politics of landscape and of domestication, the rise of conservation and scientific ecology, nature and colonialism, nature and the nation-state, and the strange new hybrid natures that emerge with the Anthropocene.

The course consists of practical work combined with formal lectures and seminars. It involves six weeks of field work with a focus on the various methods and techniques ethnographers employ to gather primary data. The course explores ethnographic and other anthropological field survey methods, which involves the collection of oral accounts. Activities include training in data processing, recording, analysis, and interpretation, and in photography and videography.

Inequality is a fundamental part of every society that exists on earth. There is no society that does not manifest some form of it. This course investigates the construction and especially the reproduction of inequality in social life. The main theoretical point upon which this course is based is that although different forms of inequality can seem subjectively to have what Jürgen Habermas has described as “unshakable facticity,” they are in fact constructed and reproduced by humans in social life. Our objective, therefore, is to examine more deeply some of the different ways in which inequality is manifest, and then examine how it is constructed, defined, justified, and reproduced. To investigate this issue in detail, the course introduces theoretical concepts through lectures and readings, conducting three analyses of the construction and reproduction of inequality. The analyses will focus on pre-assigned topics. Students must submit a 1500–1800-word essay that describes their findings for the first two topics. The final analysis essay will be 1800-2100 words. All essays submitted for the course are expected to be thoroughly researched and documented, and cogently argued. These exercises will help students learn more about inequality while also developing their analytical skills.