During the last eight years, the number of anthropological works that have analysed different notions of life in diverse geographical contexts has increased dramatically. In contrast, anthropology of dying and death has always represented an important subfield that has thrived within the discipline for many decades. Despite the rise of interest in the concept of life and living, contemporary scholarship has paid relatively little attention to the interplay between life and death or living and dying. Instead, many scholars treat these two aspects of everyday reality as opposites and separate them from each other, suggesting that living means an absence of death and death a lack of life. This seminar rejects such separations and maintains that close and sustained attention to the interplay of living and dying can offer fruitful perspectives into what under life and what under death is understood, and how these two processes are entangled in complicated ways and in particular times and places. In other words, an investigation of dying can offer a unique perspective on living and vice versa. We will explore this interplay through concrete ethnographic examples that emerge within different geographical places across the world. Additionally, through the concepts of 'politics of life', 'biolegitimacy', and 'necropolitics' we will track how social, political, and economic inequalities dictate not only how one lives, but also how one dies.
The seminar is open for Master students who can read and converse in English without great difficulties.
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Die verbindlichen Modulbeschreibungen enthalten weitere Informationen, auch zu den "Leistungen" und ihren Anforderungen. Sind mehrere "Leistungsformen" möglich, entscheiden die jeweiligen Lehrenden darüber.
Students interested in this seminar are expected to appear at the weekly sessions regularly, be prepared (read the texts), and participate actively in the discussions. Only those who take part in the discussions will receive the credits for active participation. There is no other way to secure credits for active participation but through engagement in the discussions.
Students, who wish to write a term paper, must complete the active participation part first. To signal their intention of writing a term paper, they should submit a short description (exposé) at the end of the course delineating thereby the topic, research question and scope of the paper. Term papers should be the length of 8000 words (including references) and submitted at the end of the semester.
Zu dieser Veranstaltung existiert ein Lernraum im E-Learning System. Lehrende können dort Materialien zu dieser Lehrveranstaltung bereitstellen: