Anthropology has a fraught and complex history within South Asia. Many of its techniques of knowledge production were honed within the colonial context. In the postcolonial period, these techniques have been taken up by scholars within the region and beyond to update and challenge long-standing understandings of the region. Much historical and recent scholarship grapples with how one ought to understand the unique nature of the region's forms of culture and social organization, and to place them in relation to modernity and the West. South Asia proves an insistently fruitful case for assessing the universality or provincial nature of Western social theory and to consider the connections between knowledge and power. In this course, students will come to comprehend and assess the history of ethnography and anthropology in India, Pakistan, and other parts of South Asia. Through contemporary ethnographic texts, they will also gain insight into the major social and cultural categories and phenomena that have come to define South Asia today such as caste, kinship and gender, class, nationalism, and popular culture. Throughout, we will consider the politics of representation and knowledge production that are particularly fraught in this postcolonial context.

Units: 1

Max Enrollment: 20

Crosslisted Courses:

Prerequisites: None

Instructor: Walters

Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis

Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered

Notes: