AN253      Half Unit
Politics and Power: Debates in Anthropology

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Dr Yazan Doughan

Availability

This course is compulsory on the BA in Anthropology and Law. This course is available on the BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in Social Anthropology, Erasmus Reciprocal Programme of Study, Exchange Programme for Students from University of California, Berkeley, Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course is freely available to General Course students. It does not require permission.

Requisites

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with AN226 or AN279 or AN379 at any time on the same degree programme.

Course content

This course focuses on the notions of politics and power and their cross-cultural application. Using Marxist, Weberian, and Foucauldian approaches the course explores how power travels through different socio-cultural contexts, and is part of different political arrangements. Sessions focus on issues such as ordered anarchy, leadership, patron-client relations, sovereignty, populism, surveillance, and violence. Processes of state formation and disintegration, nationalism in its various guises, and state-society relations will be reviewed in order to understand how European, post-colonial, and post-socialist societies are governed.

Teaching

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the Winter Term.
1 hours of lectures in the Spring Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

The contact hours listed above are the minimum expected.

Formative assessment

Essay (1500 words)

Students will have the opportunity to submit one formative essay of up to 1500 words during the course.

Students will be informed of their formative submission deadline by email by the end of Week 3 of term.

Indicative reading

Appadurai, A, 2006, Fear of small numbers: an essay on the geography of anger;

Blok, A, 1974, The Mafia of a Sicilian Village 1860-1960: a study of violent peasant entrepreneurs;

Bryant, R, & Reeves, M, 2021, The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty;

Clastres, P, 1987, Society against the state: essays in political anthropology;

Graeber, David, and Marshall Sahlins. 2017. On Kings. Chicago, Illinois: HAU;

Mbembe, A, 2001, On the Postcolony;

Navaro, Y, 2021, The make-believe space: affective geography in a postwar polity; 

Tuckett, A, 2018, Rules, Paper, Status: Migrants and Precarious Bureaucracy in Contemporary Italy.

Assessment

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period


Key facts

Department: Anthropology

Course Study Period: Winter and Spring Term

Unit value: Half unit

FHEQ Level: Level 5

CEFR Level: Null

Total students 2024/25: Unavailable

Average class size 2024/25: Unavailable

Capped 2024/25: No
Guidelines for interpreting course guide information

Course selection videos

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.

Personal development skills

  • Self-management
  • Problem solving
  • Communication
  • Specialist skills