300635 Introduction to Political Anthropology (S) (SoSe 2020)

What counts as politics? Contemporary anthropologists' answer to this question is straightforward: everything that has to do with power relationships and inequality counts as politics. More specifically formulated, political action is about constant and everyday efforts to reshuffle often historically established and unequal power relationships. Political action, therefore, cannot be limited to formal politics exercised by political parties in the parliament or between states on a supranational level. Instead, politics takes shape throughout and on different levels of the societal body since power penetrates every fibre of society. Every social issue at any time has the potential to become a political question. Consequently, political anthropologists emphasize that politics is an everyday human action, but also that it is an unpredictable phenomenon that can surface in unexpected places at different moments of social life.
In capturing the fluctuation of political action, most anthropologists rely methodologically on ethnography while in interpreting politics they make use of a wide range of theoretical concepts. Methodological sensitivity and conceptual openness do not suggest, however, that there are no preferred sites for studying politics. Some anthropologists focus on concrete actors such as activists, formal politicians, and leaders of social movements or village heads. Others pay more attention to specific actions such as elections, advocacy, political mobilisation, rebellion, violence, corruption, or war. Yet another set of political anthropologists examine institutions such as bureaucracies, state organisations, human rights groups, or families. Many anthropologists concentrate on political abstractions such as nation and ethnicity; others explore the cultural distinctness of specific political values such as equality, freedom, etc. These prioritizations are simply about approaching politics in different ways and do not imply a separation of actors, actions, institutions, ideas, and values.
In this seminar, we will read different ethnographic texts from different parts of the world prioritizing, thereby, postcolonial societies. A global perspective will help us see not only the range of politics engaged in by different people in different institutional settings but also the cultural distinctiveness of political questions and actions. Taking into account the broad range of topics in political anthropology, we will focus only on a limited number of issues and sites. We will prioritize institutional settings (the "state," bureaucracy, and family); political abstractions (nation, ethnicity, indigeneity); political actions (resistance, violence, war, political mobilisation). At the end of the seminar, we will hopefully gain a better understanding of some of these additional questions: What is the "state"? What is the role of bureaucracy in the state apparatus? Why do social movements come to exist, and why do they fall apart? How do anthropologists approach violence and resistance? How do people manage their everyday lives during a war? Why is the idea of the nation so central to certain people? etc.

Requirements for participation, required level

Since seminars are conceived for exchanging views as well as debating the applicability of ideas the compulsory texts raise, credit points for active participation can be only obtained through active involvement during the weekly sessions at the seminar. This requires (1) the reading of the compulsory text assigned for each session, and (2) active involvement in the debates of the seminar. Please note that there is no alternative way to acquire the credit points for active participation.

Note: credit points depend from the discipline you are enrolled in. For precise information of your credits for this course please check the respective module book or consult your examination office!

For this seminar there has been a Zoom meeting room arranged and the online sessions will take place synchronically imitating sessions of bodily presence. The details for Zoom meetings have been sent via email. Those who did not receive such invitation, should contact the seminar instructor via email or check out the eLearning space belonging to this course.

Bibliography

Chatterjee, Partha. 2004. The politics of the governed: Reflections on popular politics in most of the world. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 1991. Of revelation and revolution. Vol. 1, Christianity, colonialism, and consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Das, Veena, and Deborah Poole. 2004. Anthropology in the margins of the state. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Gledhill, John. 2000. Power and Its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics. 2nd ed. London: Pluto Press.
Ho, Karen. 2009. Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
Lewellen, Ted C. 1992. Political anthropology: An introduction. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Nugent, David, and Joan Vincent, eds. 2004. A companion to the anthropology of politics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sharma, Aradhana, and Akhil Gupta. 2006. The anthropology of the state: A reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tsing, Anna L. 1993. In the realm of the diamond queen: Marginality in an out-of-the-way place. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
Tsing, Anna L. 2005. Friction: An ethnography of global connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
Vincent, Joan, ed. 2002. The anthropology of politics: A reader in ethnography, theory, and critique. Oxford: Blackwell.