Theoretical Approaches to Political Anthropology: Sovereignty, Authority, and Refusal

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course will explore understandings of power and its production articulated by ethnographers and political theorists whose work has been influential in anthropology. We will focus on competing claims to sovereignty and authority that reveal the tentative, emergent, and contingent nature of power. Spanning various regions, the course content will elucidate the tensions between nation-states, informal/illegal networks, and the actions and aspirations of individual subjects. Some of the questions we will raise include: What are the roles of performances, narratives, and acts of exclusion and violence in the making of sovereignty and authority? How are competing de facto and de jure forms of power negotiated in various spaces ranging from the institutional to the intimate? The centrality of both physical violence and the complacency born of naturalized political institutions and economic rationality will arise in our examinations of political mobilization and possibility. This course will give students opportunities to develop conceptual understandings of various modes of power that offer insights into the forces of colonialism, global interconnectivity, and politics that shape the 21st century world. As this is a methodology course (fulfilling the MAPSS requirement), students will spend substantial class time reflecting upon the theoretical approaches of contemporary ethnographers and developing their own theoretical approaches to their thesis projects.