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Prof Alpa Shah OLD 6.17A

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in Social Anthropology, Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Melbourne) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

Optional for BA/BSc Social Anthropology and BA Anthropology and Law.  Also available to students on other degree programmes as an outside option, and to General Course students.

Unless granted an exemption by the course teacher, students taking this course should have completed an introductory course in anthropology (AN100 Introduction to Social Anthropology).

This course will focus on the study of revolution from an anthropological perspective. It will concentrate on three different types of revolutionary struggle, in three different continents, through three different types of ethnographies: the Zapatista indigenous movement in Mexico, the Zimbabwean anti-colonial struggle, and the Maoist movement in South Asia. In each case, students will be encouraged to critically consider the varying degrees of involvement of the anthropologist in the movements concerned, the theoretical premises of the anthropologists and how these affect the politics and ethics of writing. In this process, students will deepen their understandings of the theoretical debates around production and reproduction, social transformation, religion and secularism, activism and anthropology, and violence and ethics in radical social change. The course will demonstrate that although anthropologists were once criticised for ‘missing the revolution’ on their doorstep, in fact their long term engagement with communities who come to be affected by revolutionary struggles has much to offer to the theoretical and practical work of radical social transformation.  

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the LT.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of LT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the LT.

This course will be based on the close reading of the following three ethnographic monographs:

Earle, Duncan, & Simonelli, Jeanne. (2005). Uprising of Hope: Sharing the Zapatista Journey to Alternative Development. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.

Lan, David. (1985). Guns and Rain: guerrillas and spirit mediums in Zimbabwe. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Shah, Alpa (2018) Nightmarch: Among India's Revolutionary Guerillas. London: Hurst Publishers

Take-home assessment (100%) in the LT.

The take home exam will be held the week following the end of the LT.