Issues and Debates in Contemporary Anthropology

Description

The theory course will address theorizing as itself a form of social praxis. Dominant strands of contemporary anthropology see theory as reflexive and (self-)critical, as interactive and evolving, and as implicated in constructivist–deconstructivist moves. This entails putting the interpretive and agentive faculties of social actors centre-stage. The course will in particularly address the central paradox of modern theoretical reflection, which on the one hand sees theory directly implicated in (and not outside of) its subject matter, while on the other hand it puts emphasis on the constitutive break with social praxis, and the effects of this break on the mode of theorizing. The course will look into constitutive premises of anthropological discourse and will in an exemplary manner question central conceptual tools of the discipline, which are too easily taken for granted. The course will also address representational biases inscribed into approaches informing the discipline, and will point out limitations of what we can legitimately attempt to understand.