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| Semester | spring semester 2021 |
| Course frequency | Irregular |
| Lecturers | Rita Kesselring (rita.kesselring@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | This course introduces students to the ethnography of Southern Africa (including but not limited to Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zambia), a region that has made a unique contribution to social anthropology and has been profoundly shaped by settler colonialism, dispossession, institutionalized apartheid as well as mining capital and its disruptive effect on local forms of social organization. The course will be divided into four main parts. The first part will offer a historical overview of the region with a focus on relevant pre-colonial societies and global exchanges. The second part will identify key features of the region that attracted anthropological interest, namely the existence of hunter and gatherer societies, the integration of local societies into specific forms of the cash economy and wage labour and as the emergence and growth of indigenous religious forms in articulation with European Mission Societies. This will pave the way for the third part which will focus on influential anthropological schools that emerged from the region, namely Structural-Functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown in Cape Town) and the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Zambia. The final part will deal with current issues in the study of the region, i.e. conflicts over land, xenophobia, political stability and religion. Particular attention will be given to demands for decoloniality and new scholarly approaches in the study of pre-colonial practices. |
| Learning objectives | Participants will have general knowledge of Southern Africa from an anthropological perspective, including a critical understanding of the role of anthropology in producing a specific kind of knowledge of the peoples and their natural environments. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Wednesday | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz - |
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday 03.03.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 10.03.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 17.03.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 24.03.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 31.03.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 07.04.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 14.04.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 21.04.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 28.04.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 05.05.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 12.05.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 19.05.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 26.05.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Wednesday 02.06.2021 | 08.15-12.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Modules |
Modul: Basics: Social Anthropology (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Einführung in die Ethnographie einer Grossregion (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology) Modul: Vertiefung Landschaft und Umwelt (Bachelor's degree subject: Geography) |
| Assessment format | record of achievement |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | one repetition, repetition counts |
| Scale | 1-6 0,5 |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Ethnologie |