Julie Archambault.

Optional for BA Anthropology and Law and BA/BSc Social Anthropology. Also available to General Course students and as an outside option.

Undergraduates taking this course should have completed an introductory course in anthropology unless granted exemption by the course teacher.

This course serves as an introduction to the ethnography of Southern Africa.  Topics to be considered include colonialism and postcolonialism, Christian missionization, labour migration, Apartheid and anti-colonial struggles, changing kinship and gender relations, ethnicity and identity, witchcraft, and the role of performance and expressive culture in social transformation.

The ethnography of South and southern Africa has played a formative role in social anthropology, generating some of the key theoretical issues which underpin the discipline. This course provides students with an opportunity to understand changes in anthropological theory and practice by comparing the classic ethnographic texts with more recent writings from the same regions. Areas covered include South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The course develops students' ethnographic knowledge about specific communities, and also equips them with the skills to address key theoretical issues from the broader corpus of anthropological writings, in the context of data from this particular region.

Lectures AN235 weekly (LT), Classes AN235.A weekly (LT).

Students are expected to prepare discussion material for presentation in the classes and are required to write assessment essays.

Anthropology students taking this course will have an opportunity to submit a tutorial essay for this course to their personal tutors. For non-Anthropology students taking this course, a formative essay may be submitted to the course teacher.

J Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance; J L & J Comaroff, From Revelation to Revolution; J Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity; L White, Magomero; A Ashforth, Madumo: A Man Bewitched; D Lan, Guns and Rain; V Turner, The Forest of Symbols. Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

A two-hour examination in the ST worth 80%. An oral presentation worth 5%. Students who do not give a presentation will receive a mark of 0 (incomplete). A written essay of 2000-2500 words on the topic covered in the presentation worth 15%.