300070 Social Anthropology and Issues of Development (S) (WiSe 2018/2019)

In this seminar, we will use social anthropological approaches and theories to examine a number of key development issues such as poverty, consumption, and gender. Development here is broadly defined as mediated social changes resulting from planned interventions such as, government programs and policies, or a broader range of causal forces. We shall focus on contexts in which there is a high concentration of disadvantaged people and places, regardless of whether these are located in the Global South or Global North. The seminar will familiarize students with how social anthropologists approach and analyse selected development issues and how they generate insights for understanding them. It will also broaden your set of conceptual and analytical tools, and enable you to perform your own anthropological analyses of development issues.

Learning objectives:
- Students acquire in-depth understanding of selected issues of development.
- Students are exposed to a range of theories to understand these issues.
- Students are acquainted with anthropological approaches to these issues.
Key skills to develop:
• Discussion skills: able to present ideas clearly, formulate a coherent argument, respond to other ideas constructively, and develop confidence in one’s ability to engage with other people in a discussion.
• Reading skills: able to prepare for the weekly seminars and the essay, identify key arguments and evidence used in a piece of writing and then critically appraising them.
• Writing skills: able to prepare an essay, including the abilities to identify a relevant topic and synthesize academic sources, and construct an original and well-presented argument.
• Self-reliance: able to manage time efficiently and be sufficiently reliable for group work, and to independently locate, evaluate, and use anthropological literature.
• Group work: able to prepare presentations, organize meetings of group members, constructively collaborate, and fully and equally participate.
• Presentation skills: able to synthesize information into a short presentation, present information or ideas convincingly, and develop confidence in speaking to groups of people.

Requirements for participation, required level

The seminar is suitable for MA students with some background knowledge of development issues. The reading list contains a number of references for you to begin with, but you are expected to independently locate relevant material, and to find literature on regions or topics of particular interest to you for your coursework. Apart from a number of journal articles, we try to make the Introduction of the books on the key readings list available – these books will be reserved in the library. The additional reading lists contain important references on the topics (also from other disciplines) for you to consult further in preparing your presentation and/or essay – in fact, you might find some key ideas there. In order to best understand the anthropological approach, you should read a number of the ethnographic monographs from cover to cover − the motto is: read, read, and read! It is also highly important for you to attend all seminar sessions in order to benefit from each other’s inputs and develop a sense of how different issues relate to each other.

Bibliography

Literature: See course schedule