New course for Summer 2011

S3722: The Anthropology of Violence: Suffering, Rights and the Politics of Humanitarianism 

May 23 – July 1
Mondays through Thursdays, 4:30–6:05 pm

What is violence and what does it do, for whom and in what contexts? What is the place of violence in the making of ‘the human’ and ‘humanity’? And how has the growth of American anthropology and the diffusion of its central object of study, ‘culture,’ contributed to the analysis and making of violence? How do attempts to ameliorate suffering and redress wrongs recognize violence and how might they produce it? This seminar examines these questions by using anthropological and historical writing to think critically about the meaning and forms of violence in today’s world.

We will examine a range of local and global contexts, with a particular focus on films, images and ethnographic texts and analyses situated in the study of South Asia, Africa, Europe and the United States. Key topics for the course include: bureaucratic rule and discipline in colonial encounters; ethnicity and political violence; refugee camps and the management of displaced populations; incarceration; everyday and structural violence; human rights and gender violence; the biopolitics of medical humanitarianism; genocide and military interventions.