This module is not currently running in 2022 to 2023.
Throughout the five hundred years of contact between Europe and the Americas, Amazonia has captivated the political, scientific and popular imagination of industrialized nations. To many people in our society, "the Amazon" epitomizes the mysterious, the wild, the uncivilized - an image that anthropologists have variously exploited and criticized. Either way, they usually describe Amazonian societies as being either isolated from or opposed to "civilization" (i.e. the capitalist state). As Amazonians are incorporated into the nation-state and the global economy, however, it has become impossible to view them as either isolated or silent. Today, there is increased interest and concern relating to the place of humans in the environment and the future of indigenous peoples and the areas in which they dwell.
This course will employ several classic ethnographic studies of South America – by anthropologists, such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Pierre Clastres, Philippe Descola, William Fisher, Neil Whitehead and Michael Taussig – to examine how the Amazon has inscribed itself on the imagination of anthropologists, as well as how anthropologists have used their experiences in non-Western societies to contribute to broad debates in Western philosophy. Ethnographic case-studies will provide the basis for discussing issues of theoretical and topical importance, such as environmentalism; political ecology, ethnogenesis, gender relations, kinship and exchange. Ultimately, this engagement challenges some of the most basic categories of our discipline: "the state," "society," and "culture."
Total contact hours: 30
Private study hours: 120
Total study hours: 150
MA Social Anthropology and associated programmes
Essay (2500 words) (80%)
Seminar Participation (20%)
Reassessment methods: 100% coursework
Reading list (Indicative list, current at time of publication. Reading lists will be published annually)
Clastres, Pierre 1987 [1974] Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology. NY: Zone Books.
Descola, Phillippe 1996 In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology). Cambridge University Press.
Fisher, William H. 2000 Rain Forest Exchanges: Industry and Community on an Amazonian Frontier. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Levi-Strauss, Claude 1984 Tristes Tropiques. New York: Penguin.
Overing, Joanna y Alan Passes. (eds) 2000 The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia. London: Routledge.
Taussig, Michael 1987 Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wolf, Eric 1982 Europe and the People without History. Berkeley, University of California Press.
The intended subject specific learning outcomes. On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
8.1 understand the cultural diversity of Lowland South America;
8.2 know the countries of the region and their important ecological and geographical features;
8.3 know the principal ethnic groups and their livelihoods, kinship organisation, gender relations, and epistemologies;
8.4 appreciate how ethnography contributes to theory;
8.5 discuss key issues and debates in the Lowland South American ethnographic literature;
8.6 critically discuss these groups and their communities in terms of social changes in the region;
8.7 rethink some of their own cultural assumptions in terms of the experience of native peoples of South America;
8.8 understand how anthropologists form questions about ethnographic material.
The intended generic learning outcomes. On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
9.1 Think critically in anthropological terms about social phenomena
9.2 Use (and combine effectively) written, oral and visual modes of communication
9.3 Read, comprehend and assimilate texts written for a professional audience
9.4 Present their ideas systematically and cogently both orally and in writing
9.5 Work effectively within a small group
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