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| Semester | spring semester 2023 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | George-Paul Meiu (gp.meiu@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | With late capitalism, across the world, the spectacular rise of various kinds of mobility—migration, humanitarianism, and tourism, among others—has fueled a seemingly opposite trend: a growing preoccupation with autochthony, a desire to distinguish between those who belong and those who do not—to secure citizens and polities from the threats of the “foreign.” Intimacy has played a central role in the ensuing dilemmas. On the one hand, it has fueled mobility. People migrate in search for the means to build and support relations of love, care, and kinship; they claim family reunification rights or invoke discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity to obtain residency or asylum in different countries; or, as NGO workers and tourists do, travel to reform or consume intimacies, sexual or otherwise, in different places. On the other hand, intimacy has also become an important criterion of belonging and exclusion. Anxieties over the proliferation of “foreign” sexual and kinship mores, fears that private life may undermine national being, have permeate preoccupations with citizenship. This seminar explores intersections of intimacy, mobility, and belonging in late capitalism. Drawing on ethnographic studies that map various mobilities in and between Africa and Europe, the seminar examines such intersections give rise new conundrums about money, wealth, and wellbeing; youth, age, and generation; ritual and religion; morality and respectability; nationalism and terrorism; among other things. We ask: Why is intimacy so central to mobility and belonging in the present? What forms of subjecthood, value, or political organization have emerged in these contexts? And what do such emergent phenomena reveal about the contemporary world order? |
| Bibliography | Cole, Jennifer and Christian Groes (eds). 2016. Affective Circuits: African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cvajner, Martina. 2019. Soviet Signoras: Personal and Collective Transformations in Eastern European Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mai, Nicola. 2018. Mobile Orientations: An Intimate Autoethnography of Migration, Sex Work, and Humanitarian Borders. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. |
| Admission requirements | The number of participants is limited to 25 people. The places are assigned according to date of enrollment and subject of study. Priority will be given to the subjects listed under "modules". |
| Course application | This course is only open to MA and PhD students. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Monday | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Monday 20.02.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 27.02.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Fasnachstferien |
| Monday 06.03.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 13.03.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 20.03.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 27.03.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 03.04.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 10.04.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ostern |
| Monday 17.04.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 24.04.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 01.05.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Tag der Arbeit |
| Monday 08.05.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 15.05.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 22.05.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Monday 29.05.2023 | 16.15-18.00 | Pfingstmontag |
| Modules |
Doktorat Urban Studies: Empfehlungen (PhD subject: Urban Studies) Modul: Fields: Governance and Politics (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Fields: Media and Imagination (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Fields: Public Health and Social Life (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Research Skills in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Master's degree subject: Anthropology) Modul: Vertiefung Themenfelder der Geschlechterforschung (Master's degree subject: Gender Studies) Module: Migration, Mobility and Transnationalism (Master's degree program: Changing Societies: Migration – Conflicts – Resources) Module: The Urban across Disciplines (Master's degree program: Critical Urbanisms) Vertiefungsmodul Global Europe: Arbeit, Migration und Gesellschaft (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | Assessment is based on: (1) short weekly response questions on the readings; (2) in-class presentations on the readings; and (3) a book review essay. |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Ethnologie |