Anthropology of Power, Status, and Performance

Undergraduate / Graduate

This introductory graduate course examines the nature of power and status through the theoretical lens of performativity. We will engage with notions of performativity, articulated by influential theorists of linguistics, gender, and religion, that demonstrate the abilities of performances to effect change in the world. Thinking with performativity, we will interrogate practices of negotiating power and status in a broad range of social, political, and geographical contexts. How is the power made and unmade through particular acts? How is status, a particular type of power differentiation, created collectively and individually through acts of saying and doing? Such questions will animate our explorations of power and status in recent ethnographies focused on Asia, the Americas, and Europe.