ANTH40G15: Advanced Studies in Anthropolgies of Knowledge

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• To understand and critically assess key anthropological approaches to knowledge
• To understand how knowing happens as a social practice
• To comparatively assess how ethnography helps illuminate the creation and contestation of knowledge in different domains
• To critically interrogate how the authority of expertise is shaped and contested through wider assumptions, cultural contexts and social practices.

• Key theoretical approaches to knowledge in social anthropology (including relevant insights from cognate disciplines including STS), including Foucaultian, Actor-network-theory and practice-based approaches.
• Shifts in wider orientations to expertise, from mid-twentieth century scientific and technological rationalism to post-structuralism, post-truth and decolonial perspectives.
• Enlightenment and post-enlightenment approaches
• The social life of expertise
• Contemporary ethnographic studies of knowledge as ways to understand the politics of expertise.
• Critical reflections on anthropology and ethnography as a forms of knowledge.
• Case studies of knowledge as social practice, including in relation to Science, Art, Architecture and Creativity, Heritage, Policy and Planning and International Development.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Understand key theoretical paradigms in the anthropology of knowledge
• Appreciate how the authority of specific regimes of knowledge is constructed and contested in particular social and historical contexts
• Demonstrate critical awareness of anthropology and ethnography as specific forms of knowledge, associated with particular forms of authority.
• Apply anthropological approaches to contemporary questions regarding the problems and possibilities of expertise.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Link conceptual frameworks to specific ethnographic cases, and appreciate how conceptual possibilities expand from these examples.
• Demonstrate reflexive awareness of the ways in which students own knowledge is situated and shaped by their own individual circumstances and the social contexts they inhabit.
• Competence in accessing and assimilating specialised research literature.
• Reflect on the socially contingent nature of knowledge, including the forms of knowledge that shape their own experiences of the world
• Link anthropological theories of knowledge to contemporary contexts beyond the classroom.

Key Skills:

• Demonstrate competence in the preparation and effective communication of different conceptual approaches
• Demonstrate ability to synthesize, describe and critically assess the merits of different approaches. Interpret different theories in light of other competing theories and understand the assumptions that underpin these differences.
• Link ideas to the social contexts in which these developed.
• Demonstrate competence in appropriate bibliographic referencing
• Demonstrate competence in ability to structure narratives in a clear and logical way.

• Lectures introduce key approaches, debates and ethnographies in the anthropology of knowledge and cognate disciplines.
• Seminars explore ideas introduced in lectures through key ethnographic and conceptual readings, and reflect on their relevance to contemporary situations.
• Preparation for seminars and reading time will allow students to develop their understanding of material prior to seminars and written assignments.

A summary and critical reflection on one key ethnographic reading in the anthropology of knowledge. Students will be encouraged to choose a reading that is relevant to their essay topics, in to use this as an opportunity to develop initial reflections on the topic. (750 words).

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