Indigenous peoples, development and anthropology

Description

The course provides a critical view of the contemporary and historical situation of indigenous people and the ways in which anthropologists have studied them. The course pays attention especially to the wider socio-political and economic contexts that indigenous people have experienced and continue to live in. This includes questions relevant to colonial and post-colonial contexts, the relationship between indigenous people and the modern nation-state, and their position within a globalized world. It deals with issues relating to sustainable development, self-determination and indigenous rights, drawing on fields such as the anthropology of development, environmental and ecological anthropology, and political anthropology. The question of cultural survival is also addressed through anthropological analyses of genocide and ethnocide, constructions of identity involving the objectification of culture, and the nature and extent of appropriation and modification of culture by both indigenous peoples and those with whom they have political and economic relationships. The nature and effects of hegemonic rule, accommodation of new cultural elements, subaltern resistance and the development of new identities and movements, are also included. These are all topics on which there has been extensive anthropological research and publication. Anthropological advocacy is discussed in relation to indigenous rights and the preservation of cultural knowledge and diversity.

Course goals
The course is intended to provide extensive knowledge about the past and present of indigenous people, about their ways of life and the problems they have faced and still face in the contemporary world; it also aims to illustrate that indigenous people are not simply victims of oppression and marginalization pursued in the name of progress, but self-conscious actors who in all periods of history and with different means have – more or less successfully – resisted structures of power and domination and fought for their rights.