GLCb2017 Global Issues in Social Antrhopology

Faculty of Social Studies
Spring 2023
Extent and Intensity
1/1/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. Kateřina Čanigová (lecturer)
Irena Kašparová, M.A., Ph.D. (lecturer)
PhDr. Patrick Laviolette, PhD. (lecturer)
doc. Mgr. et Mgr. Adéla Souralová, Ph.D. (lecturer)
doc. Mgr. Eva Šlesingerová, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. et Mgr. Adéla Souralová, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Contact Person: doc. Mgr. et Mgr. Adéla Souralová, Ph.D.
Supplier department: Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Timetable
Thu 14:00–15:40 U53
Prerequisites
none
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 6 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
The aim of this course is to provide students with the anthropological lenses for seeing contemporary global challenges. The course is divided into four thematic parts that focus on: Global otherness: religion and cosmology, Global medicine and global bodies, Global capitalism, and Global kinship and care. In the course, the students will read anthropological and ethnographic texts to gain the knowledge about cross-cultural, local and global variations of particular issues.
Learning outcomes
After successfully completing this course, the students will be able to:
- use relativist perspective upon issues of own and other culture and society.
- understand multiple approaches to cosmology, economis, medicine and kinship across the world as well as inside a single country.
- apply their knowledge about the nature of social relations, social institutions and social acting in all areas of social life.
Syllabus
  • Part 1: Global otherness: religion and cosmology
  • Week 1: Absence of faith? Cosmology, individuality and neoliberal challenge
  • Winzeler, Robert, L. 2012. Anthropology and Religion: What We Know, Think, and Question, 2nd Edition. Plymouth: AltaMira Press. Pp. 1-76.
  • Week 2: Christianity, Islam and other missionaries: challenges of the universal
  • Week 3: The attractive Other: religious seclusion and the loss of collectivity
  • Stein, Rebecca and Philip Stein. 2017.The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft 4th Edition. Oxon: Routledge. Pp. 279-291
  • Part 2: Global medicine and global bodies
  • Week 4: Medicine wo/men, Shamans and … Neurologists_ Multiple medical systems around the world
  • Lock M and Nguyen VK (2010) Anthropology of Biomedicine. Wiley-Blackwell, p. 57 - 74.
  • Week 5: Healthy populations, geno-graphies, and global genetic Odyssey
  • Reardon J (2017) The Postgenomics Condition (Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome). The University of Chicago Press, p. 1-24.
  • Week 6: Everything you wanted to know about global organ and tissue trafficking but were afraid to ask about
  • Scheper-Hughes N (2000) The Global Traffic in Human Organs, In Current Anthropology, 41 (2): 191-224.
  • Week 7: Reading week
  • Part 3: Global Capitalism
  • Week 8: Anthropology as a study of global capitalism: From the studies of colonial encounters to research of global capitalism
  • Ong, Aihwa. The Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia. American Ethnologist 15(1): 28-42.
  • Week 9: Neoliberalism as political and economic system and a type of governmentality
  • Ortner, Sherry B. 2016. Dark anthropology and its Others: Theory since the eighties. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 (1): 47–73.
  • Week 10: Work under global capitalism
  • Standing, Guy. 2011. Precariat. In The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury. 1–26
  • Part 4: Global kinship and care
  • Week 11: Global biological reproduction
  • Chapters "Our Baby, Her Womb" and "My Womb, Their Baby" from Hochschild, A.R. 2012. The outsourced self. New York: Picador.
  • Week 12: Global care chains and stratified reproduction
  • Parrenas, R. (2000). Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers and the International Division of Reproductive Labor. Gender and Society, 14(4), 560-580.
  • Week 13: Global kinship: transnational families and adoptions
  • Howell, S. (2003), Kinning: the Creation of Life Trajectories in Transnational Adoptive Families. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 9: 465-484. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.00159
Literature
  • see Syllabus
Teaching methods
lectures, class discussion, paper writing, project designing
Assessment methods
four timed essays, individual project, presentation
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
  • Enrolment Statistics (recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/fss/spring2023/GLCb2017