ANTH 358 - Anthropology of Violence

Faced with the escalation of political and ethnic violence in the modern world, anthropologists have become increasingly aware of the need to address these realities which have forced a rethinking of the meaning of violence as a social and cultural phenomenon. This course interrogates the slippery concept of violence in the light of theoretical approaches from different disciplines. The course will begin with a discussion of how anthropologists have reexamined the concept of violence within the context of complex and large-scale societies. It will then address the preponderate weight that the concept of the state has played within the social sciences in interpretation of violence, followed by a consideration of how notions of community and cultural difference figure prominently in the ideology of conflict. Prerequisite(s):

ANTH 101

ANTH 111

Alternate years. (4 Credits)