AP/ANTH 2210 6.00 Advocate and Educate for Change: Applying Anthropology
What should be the role of anthropology in the contemporary world? How can anthropology apply its methods and insights to local and global problems of inequality, injustice, and human suffering? This course looks at the development of a publicly engaged anthropology that combines academic and applied anthropology in order to illuminate the larger social issues and problems of our times, encourage broad public conversations about them, and ultimately, affect social change.
We begin by tracing the ways that anthropologists have historically engaged with public issues and examine the implications of anthropology's critical rethinking of its theory and methods since the 1980s. We then examine key issues and case studies in Public Anthropology including: the impact of anthropological representations on the people they study; questions of cultural ownership and appropriation; debates around the repatriation of native artifacts and human remains held in museums; anthropologists' roles as advocates for indigenous peoples' political goals (such as land claims), and anthropologists' contributions to humanitarian and health crises (such as HIV/AIDS and TB).
Course Director (Fall/Winter 24-25): E. Feltes - erfeltes@yorku.ca