AANK13503U Medical anthropology, advanced course; Violence and Global Health: Anthropological Perspectives

This course is only for master students. Please note that there are special admission criteria’s for this course for students not enrolled at the master in anthropology.

Across the world, violence pervades human lives. Some forms of violence – such as injuries inflicted within intimate relations – are relatively invisible socially, while others are all too visible, marking entire societies during war and conflict. Taking a global perspective, this course traces the human health consequences of different kinds of violence, focusing on topics such as armed conflict, state violence, environmental violence, domestic violence, and sexual violence. We will discuss how political and economic forces of globalization (re)produce violence in specific social locations, and how violence – exercised or endured – becomes an integral part of day-to-day lives. Violence challenges coherence and comprehension, and situations of violence therefore offer privileged sites for the study of human struggles to maintain health and to fashion lives and subjectivities. In terms of theory, the course invites students to critically consider the consequences of the “moral turn” that has taken place in anthropology over the past two decades: How has the increasing focus on the study of human suffering and victimhood affected the discipline and its capacities to reflect on the human condition?