Anthropology 164A
Offered Winter Quarter
This course utilizes contemporary ethnographies, films and novels in order to explore current events, politics, and cultural/social theories of Sub-Saharan Africa. Readings will provide students with an understanding of the colonial legacies of the African nation-state via texts that theorize crisis to creativity. Topics include the study of the colonial encounter; urban culture and post-colonialism; humanitarianism and development aid; economic extraction; war and conflict; health politics; music and culture. The emphasis is on grasping local, social and cultural structures in order to illuminate larger-scale political and economic processes. Material will be drawn from all regions of Africa.