ANTH 2036 - Anthropology of Violence and Crime

This course introduces students to core themes in the anthropology of violence and crime that include, violence and identity/subjectivity; terror, pain and suffering; war, technology and visual culture; fear, threat and sorcery; and organised crime. It addresses issues, instances and everyday lived experiences of violence and crime in human societies from a comparative anthropological perspective. The course draws on a wide variety of examples, including global conflicts and state violence, virtual and technologically mediated warfare, gang violence, processes and politics of criminalisation, human trafficking and organised crime, intimacies of violence including gendered, family/ domestic and sexual violence, migration and displacement, terrorism, the politics of legitimate and illegitimate violence, collective memories of suffering, and transitional justice. Case studies are drawn from various regions and countries, including but not limited to, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Latin America, North America, Rwanda, the Pacific, Southeast Asia, Denmark, and Nepal.