Course Details
Country:
South Africa
Institution:
University of the Witwatersrand
Course Title:
Development of Anthropological Thought
Course Number:
ANTH3007A (S1)
Course Description:
This course examines the intellectual and historical development of anthropological ideas and methods from their early roots in the 16th century through to the state of the discipline today. Anthropological concern with the problem of the human and the problem of difference is traced from early colonial contact and European debates around slavery, through Victorian preoccupation with racial categorisation, the development of fundamental concepts such as ‘culture’, ‘kinship’ in the Functionalist turn, and to disciplinary debates about history and ‘political economy’. The course charts the post World War II anti-colonial critiques of the discipline into the ‘representational crisis’ of the 1980s and 90s, and concludes with a survey of current trends in the discipline, including the concern with the ‘post-human’ and the anthropocene.
Language:
English
Approved Equivalent:
ANTH 390
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