Writing Power

2023/2024

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

5

ECTS credits

Delivered by:

Department of History

Type:

Minor

When:

3, 4 module

Instructors

Kasatkina, Aleksandra

Masagutova, Maria

Ssorin-Chaikov, Nikolai

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This final paper of the social anthropology minor links two themes of this course. The first is political anthropology that looks at hierarchies and relations of power. The second is the linguistic turn (‘writing culture’) of the 1980s that marked a radical shift from ‘classical’ to ‘contemporary’ anthropology. It did so by looking not just the anthropology of home, rather than far away places, but also at the social and political relations between anthropologists and the people, communities and relationships that they studied. This put forward the relations of power between the observer and the observed, and also paved the way to the current prominence of such theorists as Foucault. This course takes this ‘home’ also by looking at case studies from Russia/Eastern Europe.

Learning Objectives

• This is a concluding course in the social anthropology minor. Its goal is to situate anthropological research in a broader landscape of social theory and to provide a comprehensive overlook of key anthropological theories.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• A student knows the history of the discipline and subfields
• Able to think critically and interpret the experience (personal and of other persons), relate to professional and social activities
• Able to solve professional problems based on synthesis and analysis

Course Contents

• The field, the site and the scale.
• Anthropology since the 1980s.
• Schmitt and Agamben
• Faces of surveillance (anthropology of anthropology)
• Distributed personhood

Assessment Elements

• attendance
• project essay

Interim Assessment

• 2023/2024 4th module
  0.5 * attendance + 0.5 * project essay

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Ingold, T. (2018). Anthropology : Why It Matters. Medford: Polity. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=1801558
• Mihail Petrovich Ostromenskij. (2016). K. Schmitt’s Theory of Partisan: Socio - Political Eventuality of Partisan. Vestnik MGIMO-Universiteta, (5), 86. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsdoj&AN=edsdoj.5889aed8a4a14949b9e07a50f0195069
• Sherry B. Ortner. (2008). Anthropology and Social Theory : Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Duke University Press Books.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• An inquiry into modes of existence : an anthropology of the moderns, Latour, B., 2013