Social Conflict and Environmental Challenges (Winter 2024 Intensive course)

2024

Social Conflict and Environmental Challenges (Spring 2024 Asynchorous course)

2024

Available here as part of new program at ANU called Master of Global Securities and Strategy

Social Conflict and Environmental Challenges in Asia and the Pacific.
(Offered for the 3rd time)

2023-2024

The course introduces students to multiple drivers of past, present, and future societal and environmental challenges in Asia and the Pacific. Such challenges and conflicts emerge out of historical, social, economic, political, religious, and cultural movements and debates, and are often linked to wider global forces. Topics include: the impact of colonialism, nationalism and the environment, plantation crises, land grabs, deforestation, decolonization, and the potential role of the postcolonial state in conflict and environmental degradation. Developing on anthropological approaches, the course explores how indigenous knowledge and cultural traditions give rise to multispecies ethics and the kind of ideologies and activities that have inspired environmental activism.

Anthropology and Technology in India

2020

What do we mean by technology? What is the relationship between technology and social order and cultural values? How has technology, as part of India’s embrace of economic reforms, reshaped society and the politics of identity? What is the role of the state and private enterprise in promoting technological innovations? Looking at the remarkable impact of technology on Indian culture and society, from infrastructure to digital media, the course uses the anthropological lens to bring technology alive as it is encountered in everyday life by people and institutions.

Culture and Modernity in Asia: Anthropological Perspectives

2019

The remarkable economic emergence of Asia in recent decades has transformed many impoverished and largely agriculturally based societies into the most dynamic region of the contemporary world. Asia’s burgeoning aspirational middle classes, rapid urbanisation, the expansion of participatory democracy and the shift from command economies to de-regulated markets have had profound effects on people’s everyday lives and the diverse cultural practices that have long shaped local livelihoods and community expectations. This course offers an introduction into anthropological approaches to the study of culture, modernity and globalisation in Asia. Drawing on a rich corpus of social theory and ethnographic research from anthropologists past and present, the course provides students with conceptual and analytical tools to appreciate adaptive cultural practices in comparative terms.

The Making of South Asia

2018

This course introduces students to the myriad visions of South Asia that have been expressed through historical, social, economic, political, religious and cultural movements and debates over the past three centuries. It focuses on the crucial question: what is South Asia? In the multiplicity of dynamic and often ephemeral answers, the course discusses the critical period of the British Raj and survey the complex processes, events and ideologies that went into the shaping of the nations and regions of South Asia.