AANB18009U The Anthropology of Global (Dis) Connections

Volume 2024/2025
Education

Obligatorisk kursus på 4. semester på antropologiuddannelsen.

OBS!
Kurset er ikke åbent for hverken meritstuderende eller Exchange studerende.

Content

This course examines the social, economic and cultural dynamics of global connections and disconnections, drawing on anthropological theory and ethnographic studies from around the world. Globalization is often seen as bringing with it new opportunities, and as a promise of cosmopolitanism and transnationalism; yet, it has also widened social and economic inequality, and decreased the possibilities for human migration and social mobility in both industrialized nations and the developing world. The phenomenon is usually understood as the rapid movement of capital, people, ideas, goods and services, creating new networks of global connections and cultural exchange. More recently, anthropologists have also tried to capture globalization in terms of assemblages, frictions and conjunctures, exploring the ways in which the global is articulated and scaled in different cultural contexts, and exploring more complex material and discursive relationships between the local, the global and ‘the glocal’. Throughout the course we will interrogate how the study of local encounters with processes of globalization have been reshaping anthropological concepts of regions and fields, and how these processes continue to reorient anthropologist’s fieldwork methods and frames of vision.

Learning Outcome

Skills:

  • Identify key processes of global connections and disconnections.
  • Examine the impact of uneven economic globalization from an anthropological perspective.
  • Analyze the causes and effects of globalization in the context of wider socio-economic debates, political responses and social movements.

 

Knowledge:

  • Describe anthropological theories of globalization and global flows.
  • Understand how globalization creates new political, social, cultural processes and agendas, institutions and identities as well as the relationship between global connections and disconnections.
  • Grasp cross-cultural perspectives on the meaning and manifestation of economic globalization and neoliberalism across space, and how communities negotiate and cope with these transformations.

 

Competences:

  • Creatively apply theories about the politics of globalization in multiple anthropological contexts.
  • Assess ethnographic data and apply methods and theory in the analysis of processes of global connection and disconnection.
  • Create analytical connections between key regional analytical debates and debates about global connections and disconnections.

Textbook: Anna Tsing (2011): Friction-An Ethnography of Global Connections

Other litterature will be avalaible through Absalon.

Lectures, seminars, films, rapid-reading exercises.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 42
  • Preparation
  • 60
  • Project work
  • 60
  • Exam
  • 45
  • Total
  • 207
Written
Oral
Peer feedback (Students give each other feedback)

The students will receive feedback (a) from the tutors (oral feedback) during the course of the semester on short writing exercises, including a synopsis for the essay (b) from tutors (written feedback) on the final portfolio (c) from students (oral feedback) during peer-group feedback sessions during the semester.

Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment
Type of assessment details
Individual assignment (essay)

Essay length: 21,600–26,400 keystrokes for an individual submission.
Aid
All aids allowed

Policy on the Use of Generative AI Software and Large Language Models in Exams

The Department of Anthropology allows the use of generative AI software and large language models (AI/LLMs), such as ChatGPT, in written exams, provided that the use of AI/LLMs is disclosed and specified (i.e., how it was used and for what purpose) in an appendix that does not count towards the page limit of the exam.

 

If AI/LLMs are used as source, the same requirements apply for using quotation marks and source referencing as with all other sources. Otherwise, it will be a case of plagiarism.

Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
No external censorship
Re-exam

1. re-exam:

An essay with a revised problem statement must be submitted at the announced re-exams date. The students must sign up for the 1. re-exam.

 

2. re-exam:

A new essay with a revised problem statement must be submitted next time the exam is offered. The students must sign up for the 2. re-exam.

Criteria for exam assesment

See description of learning outcome. Formalities for Written Works must be fulfilled, read more: BA students (in Danish)/ exchange and credit students