SSC 331 Faces of the State: A View from Anthropology

Content

Anthropology retains a long-standing engagement with the state as an object of scholarly study. After their initial attempts to define, categorise and distinguish the state from earlier forms of political organisation, anthropologists shifted toward a quest for state origins. Since the 1990s, anthropologists have moved away from a focus on state formation and have begun paying closer attention to the workings of the state, and to the dynamic and imaginative processes associated with it.

This course takes its point of departure with this most recent body of anthropological work. In doing so, we chart the ways contemporary scholars tackle the complex nature of the state, especially as it relates to social and cultural processes. In particular, the course focuses on the ‘faces of the state’ – that is, on its numerous manifestations and manifold expressions – with the overriding aim of exploring together what might (and should) constitute an ‘ethnography of the state’. In pursing this agenda, we draw on literature from a wide-range of social and cultural contexts, as well as from other related academic disciplines (including history, sociology, geography and political science).

Instructor

Dr. John Friedman

Track

Anthropology

Period

Fall / 2010

Course Material

• Sharma, Aradhana and Gupta, Akhil (2006). The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
• Smith, Anthony (2001). Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History, Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Supplementary reading as assigned

Prerequisites

One needs to have followed one of the following courses in order to take this course:

• SSC 131 Introduction to Socio-Cultural Anthropology
• SSC 151 Introduction to Political Theory
• SSC 211 Modern Sociology
• SSC 231 Anthropology and the Study of Politics
• SSC 251 Foundations of Comparative Politics

Required for

This course is required in order to take the following course:

• SSC 300 Independent Research in Socio-Cultural Anthropology