Challenges of the 21st Century

Course Objective
The aim of the course is to make students familiar with the anthropological discipline, its key issues, the various conceptual approaches, the theoretical discussions and efforts to understand a contemporary world in turmoil. We engage with basic concepts, such as culture, socialisation, resistance, embodiment, and power, how they developed throughout the history of anthropology and how they can help to understand and explain contemporary societal issues.

There are six central themes that will be revisited implicitly and explicitly: 1) the nature of cultures, 2) the individual and society, 3) beliefs and belonging, 4) structure and agency, 5) the body and materiality, and 6) language and categorisations. Anthropologists have time and again addressed these themes in different ways and under different circumstances. They constitute the basis for theoretical disagreements and methodological reflections, but also for assessing contemporary societal issues. They should however in no way be treated as disciplinary straightjackets. Far from that, the themes only help us to draw some lines in the enormous complexity of human activities and human lifeworlds. Students obtain knowledge and insights in the specific ways in which anthropology addresses contemporary topical issues and urgent societal problems.
Learning objectives:
Knowledge and understanding.
(1) Students obtain knowledge of and insights into how key anthropological concepts and theories can be applied in order to address, assess and analyze contemporary societal issues.

Application:
(2) Students learn how to apply these analytical insights and how anthropologists can contribute to the explanation and possible solution of pressing societal issues. They learn about the specific problem definitions, conceptual frameworks, and paradigmatic approaches typical for anthropology.

Attitude:
(3) After having completed this course, students demonstrate the ability to critically observe, describe and analyze urgent societal problems from an anthropological perspective and consider the contingencies and limits of their own cultural routines.

Course Content
Each era faces societal challenges that keep politicians, the public and academia busy. Our 21st century is no exception. Contemporary anthropologists nowadays assess urgent issues and formulate questions to understand their significance and consequence, such as new forms of urbanisation and mobility, far-reaching technological and digital developments, ongoing destructions of habitats due to large-scale economic activity, the over-use of natural resources and transnational violent conflicts, which force people to migrate or turn to local strategies that adapt or contest these processes of accelerated change. These pressing socio-political developments in some parts of the world are complex issues that pose a challenge for local, national and international governmental bodies. Behind the technical administrative challenges there are the much more fundamental questions about who the real victims are and who benefits from crises and emergencies. Knowledge and its application in policies all depend on the perspective we take in assessing these urgent issues. The task for anthropologists - in and outside academia - is to demonstrate that there simply is no universal definition of what a contemporary challenge or problem is and that governance is always a deeply political practice and full of competing interests. Anthropology may be not unique in recognising a multitude of perspectives, but it definitely is the most outspoken discipline in exposing diversity in challenges around climate change and global warming, migration and health, urbanisation and economic transformation, the role of religion in global affairs, social movements against poverty, and exclusion or diversity in society, and analysing how all these urgent societal issues have winners and losers.

Teaching Methods
Lectures, guest lectures, workgroups, viewing and analysing documentaries and other audio-visual illustrations, text analysis, in-class debates.

Type of Assessment
written assignments (e.g. exam and essays)

Remarks
This course is the last of a series of three courses: Core Themes in Anthropology; b) History and Theory of Anthropology; and c) Challenges of the 21st Century. In these three courses, the focus of anthropology will be introduced, explained and discussed.

Recommended background knowledge
Active participation in "Core Themes in Anthropology" and "History and Theory of Anthropology".