Anthropology

Climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic are asking us to find new ways of knowing, caring for, and relating to the world. Anthropologists are increasingly paying attention to the human-nonhuman relations that constitute the more-than-human anthropocene, and different forms of knowledge to tackle the crisis of the imagination. This course introduces the interdisciplinary endeavors to find alternative ways of knowing the world that goes beyond the apocalyptic discourse of crisis. Readings include, but are not limited to materials from anthropology of science, environmental anthropology, and science and technology studies.

This course examines ethnographic and historical analyses of new and old methods of surveillance, while exploring the “Deep State” and its transformations over time. It covers the networks of economic, political, and military interests that covertly enable different forms of state surveillance; the experiences of diplomats, spies, and soldiers and how they've changed over time; how states adapt to the digital era; and how common citizens navigate a world without privacy.

This interdisciplinary course practices a critical way of examining contemporary cultural practices. In these practices of production, dissemination, and reception, masculinity and femininity are permanently (re)constructed, just as are concepts of class, race, ethnicity, and geopolitical location. Students study cultural practices manifest through popular culture as well as examine the cultural logic underlying art practice and visual ethnographic research. In all, old and new identities are contested and reconstructed; the interaction between text and image is the main focus.

The course offers students an introduction to modern Swedish society from an anthropological perspective. It is based on issues of politics, social norms, and social change in Sweden and on a number of ethnographical research studies. Anthropology is often based on an empirical understanding of people's experiences and can therefore provide insights into the everyday life of people and organizations. The course enables students to investigate and analyze case studies of social and political changes in Swedish society. Examples of this include the views of political governance, work and education, and focusing on the way they affect the people concerned. 

This course introduces students to the field of cultural heritage diplomacy, including the meaning and positioning of culture, art, and heritage to the contemporary foreign policies of European member states, the European Union (European Parliament, European External Action Service, European Commission), the United States, and others. The course discusses several examples of cultural heritage diplomacy, including its practice in the Middle East and Central Asia. The course also explores the governance and international mobilization of heritage in the modern era and distinctions between heritage as diplomacy and in diplomacy in order to reframe ways in which heritage has played a role in nationalism, international relations, and globalization.

This course focuses on the centrality of gender as a factor structuring, ultimately, all social relations. The course explores relationships between men and women, men and men, women and women, as personal and sexual relations, within the household, the labor market, and the state; how gender relations and practices are performed in different cultures; the role of gender in processes of social transformation and the impact of industrialization and migration on gender relations.