AN451 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 available on the MA in Modern History, MRes in Anthropology, MSc in Anthropology and Development, MSc in China in Comparative Perspective, MSc in Culture, Justice, and Environment, MSc in Political Science (Conflict Studies and Comparative Politics), MSc in Regulation, MSc in Social Anthropology and MSc in Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
How to apply: Priority is given to home department students, followed by those from other departments (based on their statements, and space permitting). Total student numbers on this course will be capped at 60.
Deadline for application: Please apply as soon as possible after the opening of course selection.
For queries contact: Anthro.Admin@lse.ac.uk
Course content
This course focuses on politics and power in their cross-cultural application. Using Marxist, Weberian, and Foucauldian approaches it explores how power travels through different socio-cultural contexts, paying attention to issues such as leadership, ordered anarchy, brokerage, sovereignty, surveillance, spectacle, conspiracy, and violence. A recurring theme throughout the course concerns the state. How should the state be studied anthropologically? 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 15 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.
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 4 of term.
Indicative reading
Anderson, B, 1991 [1983], Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism;
Appadurai, A, 2006, Fear of small numbers: an essay on the geography of anger;
Blok, A, 1988, 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;
Vincent, J, 2002, The Anthropology of Politics.; Wolf, E. 1999. Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis.
Assessment
Essay (100%, 3500 words) in Spring Term Week 4
Key facts
Department: Anthropology
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 41
Average class size 2024/25: 13
Controlled access 2024/25: YesCourse 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
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication