AANB11066U Contemporary South Asia: Reason and Religion

This course introduces students to recent anthropological debates about contemporary identity politics that define the study of society, religion and politics in modern South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives). It begins with an investigation into what constitutes anthropological knowledge and ethnographic fieldwork in representing cultural realities in the region. The course will then critically explore traditional caste depictions and discriminations through the lens of changing social hierarchies in South Asia. It will move on to consider various manifestations of identity politics in the region, including gender and kinship, queer sexualities and homosociality, colonial and post-colonial masculinities, minority religious identities, love, kinship, marriage and childhoods, and show how they are shaped by current nationalist movements, communal violence, migration, globalisation, tourism and ‘westoxification’, visual cultures of commercial cinema, material consumption and religious traditions. The course unit will finally highlight the power negotiations, problems and possibilities of aging in the context of modernity in South Asia. The module will also consider how ethnographic representations of social transformations will equip students to review assumptions about hierarchy, cohesion and oppression in non-western societies. Course materials will include documentaries, ‘Bollywood’ films, web-based resources, literature, and newspaper articles in addition to scholarly books and research-based articles.