Paper 2: Scope of Social Anthropology: Systems of Power & Knowledge

Street Scene

Religion

This course examines a number of key issues in the anthropology of religion:

  • relationships between the divine order and the social order
  • the nature of ritual and different approaches to the understanding of ritual action
  • classification, liminality and taboo
  • religion as ideology, and the relationship between religion and the state
  • spirit possession, shamanism and witchcraft
  • new religious movements
  • world religions

Politics

The anthropological study of the diverse practical and philosophical forms of political life has long had a foundational importance in generating new anthropological theories and methods. This course introduces students to these past and current developments in social anthropology through a number of themes, including:

  • ethnicity and nationalism
  • globalisation
  • citizenship
  • colonialism
  • biopolitics and governmentality
  • the state and the non-state
  • racism and the politics of exclusion
  • ideology and hegemony
  • social movements
  • dispute settlements
  • war, peace and feud
  • domination and resistance
  • the ethnography of law and human rights