Anthropology

Semester 1

Course Title: Culture and Humanity | Course Code: ANTH1006A

In this course we think together about the two apparently simple words -- 'culture’ and ‘humanity’ – in the title. We will ask what the two terms have come to mean for us, how we use them (both in academic contexts and in everyday discussions), and what problems we encounter as we think about them more closely. The main aim is for you to come to a more critical understanding of how we talk about human differences, especially in the South African context. We do this work by reading, discussing, and writing about a set of short, published texts in which some anthropologists and other thinkers try to define, question, or criticise the ways that we use the terms 'culture' and 'humanity'. By asking you to read these texts, to talk about them, and then to write about them yourself, we hope to draw you into the world of discussions about these two core concepts.

Semester 2

Course Title: Practices of Identification | Course Code: ANTH1007A

This course builds on the introduction (in ANTH 1006A) to anthropological approaches to understanding human differences. There is no single way to be human. We become human beings only in relation to processes of identification that allow us to consider who we are, who we want to be, how others think we should be, and how we position ourselves within larger social life around us. This includes the ways we position ourselves politically and culturally. These identifications are multiple, they intersect with one another, and they have complex histories. They include, just for a start, identifications in relation to race, religion, gender, generation, sexuality, ethnicity, and the like. This course explores how such processes of identification are constructed and contested. Each of the two blocks focuses in depth on one example of such a process and the practices that make and complicate it.
 
This course also introduces you to examples of ethnographic writing. Ethnographic writing explores how social issues take shape in concrete settings: neighbourhoods; institutions such as hospitals, government offices, NGOs, churches, mosques, or groups of various kinds. This is generally how anthropologists approach their research. It is based on in-depth personal immersion in the context concerned, and it seeks to show how much social context matters when we try to understand the meaning of a social, political, or cultural issue.

Semester 1

Course Title: Embodied Relations | Course Code: ANTH2009A

All human life is contained in a body. However, as meaning making beings, humans across diverse societies have a myriad ways of giving meaning to the body and its significance. In this course, we consider how embodiment helps us describe the porous, visceral, felt, enlivened bodily experiences, in and with inhabited worlds. Two overarching rationales drive this course. The first is theoretical and considers the body as a site through which we make claims. The second is methodological and considers the body as an instrument through which knowledge is produced.

During this 14-week course we consider what it means to think about, through and with embodiment. The course is designed to help students reflect on the ideas as well as the socio-economic, cultural and political processes that inform particular meanings of embodiment. We do not begin with Descartes and the mind-body “problem” (although that will come up). Instead, we begin with a critical oppositional gaze drawn from anti-colonial, post-structuralist and womanist scholarship within anthropology and beyond. The three modules of the course engage with what it means to look at the body, the commodification of the body, the body as metaphor, reading the body through our senses and what it means to undertake research with and through our bodies (ethnographic practice). The course draws on case studies and on students’ own research to support a nuanced approach to questions of embodiment in an increasingly interconnected and yet “disembodied” world.

Semester 2

Course Title: Lifeworlds of the City | Course Code: ANTH2009A

This course is about what it means to live in the city. It asks: how do people belong in the city and how does living in a city shape how they relate to each other and who they are? It starts from the assumption that a city is a place where people can shake off their old identities and can take on new ones. At the same time, it is a place of capitalism, both in the sense of economic possibility and exploitation.

African cities and those in other parts of the Global South are increasingly confronted with people waiting and competing for socio-economic rights such as jobs, access to housing and services like healthcare. These dynamics are shaped by overlapping histories of colonialism, contemporary displacement, internal and international mobility regimes, gentrification, epidemics, heavy-handed policing, violence, and racial capitalism that have generated chronic inequality across cities of the Global South. This presents challenges, particularly related to the growing complexity of managing group diversity, which has different implications both for the governance of cities as well as for the development of urban identities.

In the context of apartheid South Africa this took on a particular constellation where the freedom to be ‘modern’ was reserved for the white minority, yet black people could still be exploited for their labour. This course looks at how these patterns came to be, how they are still shaping city life today and how have they been overlaid by new forces of inclusion and exclusion, and freedom and alienation. It explores both the individual experience of life in the city along with collective struggles for the right to the city.

Semester 1

Course Title: Medicine and the Body | Course Code: ANTH3001A

This course examines how health and illness are shaped, experienced, and understood in relation to historical, political, social, and economic forces. Our perceptions and experiences of well-being and ill- health do not occur in a vacuum. By drawing on case studies from a range of contexts globally, this course illustrates how historical, political, social, and economic forces work their way into our everyday lives: defining problems, setting agendas, and mediating our relationships with our bodies. More specifically, the course is aimed at addressing some of the most pressing issues in the field of Medical Anthropology and global health to inspire students to grapple with social challenges related to health, well-being and ill-health and to hone their critical thinking skills.

Course Title: The Development of Anthropological Thought | Course Code: ANTH3007A

As part of our third-year curriculum, that is, by the time you complete your undergraduate studies in anthropology, we want you to have some sense of how the field of anthropology came into existence, how it has changed over time, and how these developments fit into the general context of modern global society. This course emphasises the relations between anthropology and Western imperialism.

In your first year, you learned about anthropologists’ interest in the range of ways that people make human lives in different times and places as a way of understanding – anthropologically – different expressions of what it means to be human. You learned that such differences are always politically charged. This course reveals that the political and intellectual histories of the discipline and its research methods are shaped by the worlds of Western imperialism – the context in which Anthropology emerged as academic field. We ask you to reflect on these entanglements of anthropological thought with colonial power, and to consider what it might mean to think anthropologically at a time that includes many struggles to decolonise how we live and how we think.

Semester 2

Course Title: Expression, Representation, Practice | Course Code: ANTH3010A

Why is it important to seriously consider the political implications of how you, as an anthropologist, communicate your ideas? How does the intellectual work you do through spoken word, written text, image-making, fashion, and other representational and expressive forms impact how people (including you) see and experience the world(s) around them?

In this course you will be introduced to the key concept of representation in the areas of Creative Critical Writing, Visual Arts, Theatre, Music, and Film. Throughout the semester, you will be exposed to a range of case studies from these different disciplines. The course is arranged according to three overarching themes, namely expression, representation, and practice. The content presented in this course reader will help you to gain an understanding of how theory lives in everyday life. Its aim is to encourage you to be unafraid to have a scholarly voice that is accessible yet complex - a voice that can change how knowledge is made in the university and beyond.
It is important to understand that theory and practice work in tandem. As such, you will be expected to attend art-based events that relate to the theory we will be discussing in class. Participation in intellectual and cultural life of Johannesburg is critical for your own growth as a scholar and anthropologist. There are special concessions for you to attend performances and exhibitions. Some events may take place in the evenings or on weekends. Transport and access to the events will be organised by the Anthropology department.

Course Title: Thinking with Earth: Anthropology in the Anthropocene and Climate Crisis | Course Code: ANTH3012A

This course focuses on the anthropology and critical theory of the Anthropocene and the challenges that the present climate crisis poses to Western anthropocentric thought. It provides an introductory understanding of both the science and politics of human-caused climate change. Beyond the climate crisis, this course focuses on human and non-human relations, and on social and ecological connections, to engage the idea of ‘thinking with earth’. This idea points to the ways human thought, language, and action are nested within environmental, material, and communicative systems. We consider the intersections between the science of climate change, indigenous African and South American conceptions of ecology, and decolonial politics. We engage transatlantic Black, Indigenous, and intersectional thought with a view to provoke critical thinking about climate change, not to foster despair. Our examination of these intersections helps us question capitalist production and consumption systems as we learn more about the threats these systems pose to the planet and the ways that these systems reinforce colonial, class, gendered, and racialised inequalities. À×ËÙÌåÓý_À×ËÙÌåÓýÖ±²¥s will write three formative written assessments over the duration of the course, and a final summative essay on climate justice in their own communities.