Anthropology

Politics and Power

Module code: L6071
Level 5
15 credits in spring semester
Teaching method: Lecture, Seminar
Assessment modes: Essay

You explore forms of power by drawing on political anthropology and social theory.

In Western societies the term 'politics' tends to imply a narrow range of activities and institutions, typically those focused around parties, government and the state.We use the term 'political' in a much wider sense, and link it to the operations of power.

Power is not a thing, but an aspect of a vast range of relationships from the most local to the global.

There can be no neat boundaries around this field of study. Instead our intention is to explore the way the analysis of power has widened and deepened over the last fifty years, and to suggest continuity with economic and cultural processes that you are studying in other modules.

Module learning outcomes

• Demonstrate critical understanding of key themes in analyses of power
• Show knowledge of how concepts such as hegemony, ideology, resistance, discourse and governance have been used by anthropologists
• Ability to apply key concepts to new ethnographic cases