Undergraduate Module Descriptor

ANT2003: Current Debates in Anthropology

This module descriptor refers to the 2016/7 academic year.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

These lectures will focus upon specific themes relevant to the contemporary global era. They will focus upon the role of anthropology in interrogating such themes, and will examine the insights that the discipline can bring to our understanding of how the current globalised world functions. The final lecture will focus upon the course exam and revision.

Possible lecture topics covered by this course, in addition to others not listed here are:

 

1. Time I: The temporal turn
2. Time II: Anthropocene
3. Morality I: The ethical turn
4. Morality II: Everyday morality
5. Being I: The ontological turn
6. Being II: Things
7. Feeling I: The affective turn
8. Feeling II: Social suffering
9. Horizons I: Uncertainty and doubt
10. Horizons II: Creativity and imagination
11. Turning in circles, or moving ahead? Anthropological trajectories 

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching ActivitiesGuided independent studyPlacement / study abroad
221280

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

CategoryHours of study timeDescription
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity11Weekly 1 hour lectures
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity11Weekly 1 hour seminars
Guided independent study33 Reading of the set texts for weekly lectures and the tutorials
Guided independent study33 Additional reading under the guidance of the lecturer
Guided independent study20 Preparation and writing of the essay
Guided independent study30 Recapitulation of reading done throughout the term; preparation of essay plans; mock exam writing, etc.
Guided independent study6 Background research conducted by the student depending on need and interest

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

ELE - http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

Basic reading:
Bear, Laura. 2016. Time as Technique. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 45

Cooper, E & D. Pratten. 2014. Introduction. In Cooper, E & D. Pratten (eds.) Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa (London: Palgrave).

Crapanzano, Vincent. 2004. “Imaginative Horizons” in Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2014. “Anthropology at the Time of the Anthropocene: A Personal View of What Is To Be Studied.” Distinguished lecture, Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, December 6.

Laidlaw, J. 2002. For an anthropology of ethics and freedom. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8(2): 311-332.

Viveiros de Castro, E. 2004. Exchanging Perspectives: The Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies. Common Knowledge, 10(3), 463-484.

Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2012. The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Durham & London: Duke University Press.