Course Description
Summary
Anthropology is an invaluable tool for understanding the world around us. The discipline is also inextricable from problematic histories and inherent power dynamics embedded in its research methodologies. Several decades of efforts to “decolonize” anthropology have led to significant gains in addressing power imbalances created by perspectives mired in colonial, racist, and gendered thought. What happens when we conceptualize not power imbalances but power itself as a root problem sullying anthropological research? This course explores anthropologies that attempt to conduct research in fashions that begin to flatten the hierarchies ingrained in ethnographic inquiry. What can anarchism contribute to the valuable process of “decolonizing” anthropology? What are the broader implications for understanding and interacting with the world around us? Students will construct small-scale ethnographic projects that experiment with anarchism as both a theoretical and methodological framework.
