SANb2028 Global Challenges in Social Anthropology

Faculty of Social Studies
Spring 2021
Extent and Intensity
1/1/0. 9 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
doc. Mgr. et Mgr. Adéla Souralová, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Irena Kašparová, M.A., Ph.D. (lecturer)
PhDr. Patrick Laviolette, PhD. (lecturer)
doc. Mgr. Eva Šlesingerová, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. et Mgr. Adéla Souralová, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Contact Person: doc. Mgr. et Mgr. Adéla Souralová, Ph.D.
Supplier department: Department of Sociology – Faculty of Social Studies
Timetable
Wed 10:00–11:40 U35
Prerequisites
none
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 25 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/25, only registered: 0/25, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/25
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The aim of this course is to provide students with the anthropological lenses for seeing contemporary global challenges. The course is divided into three thematic parts that focus on: Global otherness: religion and cosmology, Global medicine and global bodies, and Global kinship and care. In the course, the students will read anthropological and ethnographic texts to gain the knowledge about cross-cultural, local and global variations of particular issues.
Learning outcomes
After successfully completing this course, the students will be able to:
- use relativist perspective upon issues of own and other culture and society.
- understand multiple approaches to cosmology, medicine and kinship across the world as well as inside a single country.
- apply their knowledge about the nature of social relations, social institutions and social acting in all areas of social life.
Syllabus
  • Part 1: Global otherness: religion and cosmology
  • Week 1: Absence of faith? Cosmology, individuality and neoliberal challenge
  • Winzeler, Robert, L. 2012. Anthropology and Religion: What We Know, Think, and Question, 2nd Edition. Plymouth: AltaMira Press. Pp. 1-76.
  • Week 2: Christianity, Islam and other missionaries: challenges of the universal
  • Stein, Rebecca and Philip Stein. 2017.The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft 4th Edition. Oxon: Routledge. Pp. 252-278
  • Week 3: The attractive Other: religious seclusion and the loss of collectivity
  • Stein, Rebecca and Philip Stein. 2017.The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft 4th Edition. Oxon: Routledge. Pp. 279-291
  • Week 4: Posthuman societies and its gods: science fiction reality of today
  • Thweatt-Bates, Jeaninne. 2012. Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman. London: Routledge. (Introduction + chapters 3,4)
  • Part 2: Global medicine and global bodies
  • Week 5: Medicine wo/men, Shamans and … Neurologists_ Multiple medical systems around the world
  • Lock M and Nguyen VK (2010) Anthropology of Biomedicine. Wiley-Blackwell, p. 57 - 74.
  • Week 6: Healthy populations, geno-graphies, and global genetic Odyssey
  • Reardon J (2017) The Postgenomics Condition (Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome). The University of Chicago Press, p. 1-24.
  • Week 7: Reading week
  • Week 8: Everything you wanted to know about global organ and tissue trafficking but were afraid to ask about
  • Scheper-Hughes N (2000) The Global Traffic in Human Organs, In Current Anthropology, 41 (2): 191-224.
  • Week 9: Love, Autism and Emotional Robots
  • Richardson, K (2018) Challenging Sociality/An Anthropology of Robots, Autism, and Attachment. Palgrave MacMillan, Introduction:Challenging Sociality (p. 1-15), Chapter 6: Autism and the Machine (p 103-113).
  • Part 3: Global kinship and care
  • Week 10: Global biological reproduction
  • Chapters "Our Baby, Her Womb" and "My Womb, Their Baby" from Hochschild, A.R. 2012. The outsourced self. New York: Picador.
  • Week 11: Global care chains and stratified reproduction
  • Parrenas, R. (2000). Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers and the International Division of Reproductive Labor. Gender and Society, 14(4), 560-580.
  • Week 12: Global kinship and transnational adoptions
  • Howell, S. (2003), Kinning: the Creation of Life Trajectories in Transnational Adoptive Families. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 9: 465-484. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.00159
  • Week 13: Transnational kinship and families
  • Pribilsky, J. (2004), ‘Aprendemos A Convivir’: Conjugal Relations, Co‐parenting, and Family Life Among Ecuadorian Transnational Migrants in New York and The Ecuadorian Andes. Global Networks, 4: 313-334.
Teaching methods (in Czech)
lectures, class discussion, paper writing, project designing
Assessment methods
three timed essays, individual project, presentation
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught once in two years.
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2025.
  • Enrolment Statistics (recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/fss/spring2021/SANb2028