ANTHRO 742

Contact and Colonialism


Please note: this is archived course information from 2021 for ANTHRO 742.

Description

This course covers some anthropological issues in cross-cultural contact and colonialism during the period of Western European global expansion and domination between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. The emphasis is on developing general understanding in historical anthropology and specific understanding of colonialism as a phenomenon that incorporated and shaped much of the world in which we currently live.

This year we focus on three issues:

  1. Understanding the past as we are able to know and think about it in the present
  2. Early forms of interaction and the different ways in which power or autonomy might play out
  3. Questions of equal or unequal exchange or exploitation and their significance to those concerned

Our key foci include:

  • Domination, agency, resistance and the unintended consequences of political and cultural engagement
  • Colonialism as a field of interaction, involving subtle and overt forms of domination and resistance, interpretation and response from all sides and social and cultural changes that escaped the control of all actors
  • Ideology, hegemony, worldviews and cultural translation
  • Colonialism as transforming both colonised and colonising societies

By the end of the course, you should have a deeper knowledge and understanding of political, economic, cultural, symbolic and ideological phenomena and broad familiarity with some of the key issues in contact and colonialism.

Availability 2021

Not taught in 2021

Lecturer(s)

TBA

Points

ANTHRO 742: 15 points

Restrictions

ANTHRO 720