Module ANT2112 for 2022/3
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
ANT2112: When Things Fall Apart: Social Infrastructures
This module descriptor refers to the 2022/3 academic year.
Module Aims
The intentions of this module are to understand the importance of infrastructure to societies globally and from there to understand the priorities that infrastructure maintenance indicates. What happens when infrastructure breaks down will be a key focus, as will the systemic inequalities that infrastructure encodes. How are utilities funded, maintained, and repaired? What happens when crises, such as global pandemics, alter infrastructure on a massive scale?
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
---|---|
Module-Specific Skills | 1. Demonstrate familiarity with what infrastructure is and how it is maintained 2. Show an understanding of the impact of infrastructure on equity and marginalisation 3. Display an awareness of the relationship between politics and the provision of public services |
Discipline-Specific Skills | 4. Show an understanding of how qualitative social scientific approaches can be used to study infrastructure 5. Evaluate cross-cultural differences in construction and maintenance of infrastructure from a social scientific standpoint |
Personal and Key Skills | 6. Communicate effectively in written and oral form 7. Conduct research on a topic and organize findings in written form in a compelling manner |
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.
Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox. Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise. Cornell University Press, 2015.
Jason de Leon. Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. University of California Press, 2015.
Susan Leigh Star. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure”. American Behavioural Scientist, 1999.
Huub Dijstelbloem. Borders as Infrastructure. MIT Press, 2021.
Dennis Rodgers, Bruce O'Neill. “Infrastructural Violence”. Ethnography, 2012.