ANTHR 3516 - [Power, Society, and Culture in Southeast Asia]

(GB) (CA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015.

M. Welker.

Southeast Asia is a region where anthropologists have played great attention to the symbolic within cultural and social processes. While this intellectual orientation has produced contextually rich accounts of cultural uniqueness, there has been a tendency within “interpretive” ethnographies to downplay the role of power and domination within culture and society. This course aims to utilize the traditional strengths of symbolic anthropology by examining the roles of ritual, art, religion, and “traditional” values within contemporary Southeast Asian societies. In doing so, however, we examine how these practices and ideas can also structure ethnic, class, and gender inequalities. Understanding how “traditional” cultural practices and ideologies fit within contemporary nation-states requires that we also examine the effects of colonialism, war, and nationalism throughout the region. In addition to providing a broad and comparative ethnographic survey of Southeast Asia, this course also investigates how culturally-specific forms of power and domination are reflected in national politics, and in local and regional responses to the economic and cultural forces of globalization.