CMA06 Anthropology of Power, (Dis)empowerment, and Resistance

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2025

The course is not taught in Spring 2025

Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. Zuzana Sekeráková Búriková, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
Mgr. Zuzana Sekeráková Búriková, Ph.D.
Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
In this course we will investigate various sources and expressions of power and resistance, as well as the ways in which anthropologists have sought to theorize and study power and resistance in ethnographic and theoretical terms. The first section considers the way anthropologists have rethought the concept of power, influenced by transformations in the societies they studied, changes in the global political economy, and ideas from thinkers outside the field of anthropology. In doing so, it examines both “formal” politics and everyday forms of power, domination and resistance.
The second section will investigate various processes of opposition, resistance, and revolution. We will survey foundational works of theory and examine political practice from an ethnographic perspective with an eye towards the lived experience of political participation and the formation and transformation of resisting subjects.
Learning outcomes
At the end of the course, the students will be aware of ramification of power in various social and cultural contexts. They will be able to identify protagonists of various power relations and use this knowledge reflexively in their own research projects. In this way it builds up on critical awareness of ethical issues students have encountered in Anthropological research methods.
Syllabus
  • 1. Introduction: Power, Agency, and Structure
  • 2. Power of the state: Authority and Bureaucracy
  • 3. Non-coercive and symbolic power
  • 4. The Politics of the Governed and the Ungoverned: governmentality and neoliberal governmentality
  • 5. Biopower and Biopolitics
  • 6. Global Processes and inequalities: Colonial and Postcolonial power, discourses about development
  • 7. Conflicts, violence, and terror
  • 8. Power of People: Resistance, revolution, rebellion
  • 9. Power of People 2: Weapons of the weak
  • 10. Protests, Direct Actions, social movements
  • 11. Final project presentation - part I.
  • 12. Final project presentation - part II.
Literature
    required literature
  • Moon, D. 2013. Powerful emotions: symbolic power and the (productive and punitive) force of collective feeling. Theory in Sociology 42: 261-294.
  • Hull, Matthew S. 2003. The file: agency, authority, and autography in an Islamabad bureaucracy. Language and Communication 23: 287-314.
  • James Ferguson. 2007. Power Topographies. In Nugent, D. and Vincent, J. (eds.) A Companion to Anthropology of Politics. Oxford: Blackwell. 383-399.
  • Zuckerwise, G.M. (2012). Governmentality in Amsterdam's Red Light District. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 16 (1-2): 146-157.
  • Bourdieu, Pierre 1991. On Symbolic Power. In Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. 163-170.
    recommended literature
  • Constable, Nicole. 2007. „Resistance and protest“. In Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press.151 – 180.
  • Šlesingerová, E. 2019. In risk we trust/Editing embryos and mirroring future risks and uncertainties. Medicine Health Care and Philosophy 22(2): 191–200.
  • Nugent, D. 2012. “Democracy, Temporalities of Capitalism, and Dilemmas of Inclusion in Occupy Movements.” American Ethnologist 39(2):280-283.
  • Stoler, A. L. 1989. Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th Century Colonial Culture. American Ethnologist 16(4): 634 - 660.
  • Taussig, M. 2003. Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of Limpieza in Colombia. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Xi – xiii and 1 – 18.
  • Abu-Lughod, Lila. (2012). “Living the ‘revolution’ in an Egyptian village: Moral action in a national space.” American Ethnologist, 39 (1): 21–25.
Teaching methods
Lecture (45 minutes), seminar (45 minutes), class discussions, field observation
Assessment methods
Written assignment (33%), Oral examination (33%), Final Project presentation (34%).
Language of instruction
English
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