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