Anthropology of Deviance

3 units

This course provides an anthropological perspective on notions of deviance as social, psychological, moral, and medical mechanisms of control and regulation. Students will learn to critically engage and evaluate dominant etiological theories of deviance, local and global contexts of deviance, and social responses to deviance as cultural processes through which communities make (and unmake) meaningful human relationships. Through academic texts, ethnographic accounts, clinical case materials, and first-hand accounts, students will explore multiple dimensions of what it means to be deviant or normal in a given social or cultural context. Sample topics include: historical trajectories of deviance, deviance and criminology, social class and inequality, prison cultures, deviance and resistance, deviant personalities, forensic psychiatry, deviant vs. socially sanctioned violence, and stigma.