Documenti di Didattica
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Spring 2005 Tuesday 10
12
Thursday 35 William James Hall
384
William James Hall 474 subram@fas.harvard.edu
6174963462
CULTURE AND CITIZENSHIP
Anthropology 2780
*Syllabus is subject to change*
We begin this course with the presupposition that there is no abstract form of citizenship
unmediated by cultural particularity. Rather than treat citizenship as a modular
relationship between state and individual that is uniformly practiced the world over, we
will consider it as a form of political belonging that is lived collectively and culturally
through the particularistic identifications of, among others, religion, race, class, gender,
and sexuality. Second, we will understand citizenship, not through the
legal/constitutional ideal of formal equality but as one modality for the elaboration of
social inequality. We will explore how, despite promises to the contrary, forms of
unequal political belonging are produced in putatively democratic nationstates through
institutions such as, the prison, the scientific establishment, the military, the free trade
zone, the development project, and the law. In exploring the dynamics of political
belonging in a number of national contexts, we will address the impact of historical
forces such as slavery, colonialism, war, settler nationalism, and patriarchy on the
constitution of citizenship. Finally, we will consider the possibilities and limitations of a
politics of citizenship by looking at how demands for recognition and rights have played
out, and at how other claims to belonging and sovereignty – e.g. of indigenous and
diasporic groups challenge the privileged place of citizenship as the endgoal of
politics.
Some of the questions that will guide us through the semester include: How are political
subjects produced? How do we understand the relationship between citizenship as a
practice of everyday life and citizenship as a legal formation? How do we think of
citizenship, not as a onetime achievement, but as an ongoing political process? How do
we put into dialogue different practices of citizenship, e.g. citizenship as a disciplinary
force, an affective identification, and a political aspiration? Can a politics of rights
express historical particularity as well as universal principles? What does it mean to
think of citizenship, not as an identity, but as an articulating principle through which
different identifications and allegiances are made possible? Is a politics of citizenship
necessarily addressed to the state? We will address these and other questions through
close readings of a variety of texts from anthropology, history, cultural studies, political
theory, queer theory, critical race theory, and gender studies.
REQUIREMENTS
The course grade will be determined by a final paper (50%) and class participation
(50%). The final paper should be no longer than 20 pages. You should discuss your
paper topic with me by Week VII (March 17). Class participation includes regular
attendance and contribution to discussion, the circulation of a question for class
discussion on Wednesday nights, and leading class discussion once. In addition to the
Thursday class meetings, we will be scheduling times for film screenings that you are
required to attend.
READINGS
Books at the Coop or on reserve at Tozzer
Required
Teresa Caldeira, City of Walls: crime, segregation, and citizenship in Sao Paulo,
University of California Press, 2000.
Nadia Abu el Haj, Facts on the Ground: archaeological practice and territorial self
fashioning in Israeli society, University of Chicago, 2001.
Catherine Lutz, Homefront: a military city and the American twentieth century, Beacon
Press, 2001.
Pnina Werbner, Imagined diasporas among Manchester Muslims: the public
performance of Pakistani transnational identity politics, James Currey, 2002.
Recommended
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, The scandal of the state: women, law, and citizenship in
postcolonial India, Duke University Press, 2003.
Articles
Unless stated otherwise, all articles and book chapters are found on the course website
http://my.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?course=fasca4769.
SCHEDULE OF READINGS
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Week I
Feb. 3 Introduction
Universalism and particularism
Week II
Feb. 10 Ernesto Laclau, “Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of
Identity,” October, no. 61, 1992.
Nivedita Menon, “Rights: Putting History Back In,” in Recovering
Subversion: Feminist practice beyond the law, Permanent Black, 2004.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Subject of Law and the Subject of Narratives”
in Habitations of Modernity: essays in the wake of Subaltern Studies,
University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Sally Merry, “Changing rights, changing culture" in Jane Cowan, Marie
Benedicte Dembour, and Richard A. Wilson, eds. Culture and Rights:
Anthropological Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Inequality and Difference
Week III
Feb. 17 Mahmood Mamdani, “Introduction” Citizen and Subject: contemporary
Africa and the legacy of late colonialism, Princeton University Press, 1996.
Partha Chatterjee, “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?” Social Text, No. 56
(Autumn 1998), 5769.
Stuart Hall and David Held, "Citizens and Citizenship," in Stuart Hall and
Martin Jacques, eds., New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the
1990s, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1989, pp. 173188.
Jean and John Comaroff, “Introduction,” Civil Society and the Political
Imagination in Africa, University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Two of the following articles in Jean and John Comaroff, eds. Civil Society
and the Political Imagination in Africa, University of Chicago Press, 1999:
Mikael Karlstrom, “Civil Society and Its Presuppositions: Lessons from
Uganda,.”
3
Adeline Masquelier, “Debating Muslims, Disputed Practices: Struggles for
the Realization of an Alternative Moral Order in Niger.”
William Cunningham Bissell, “Colonial Constructions: Historicizing
Debates on Civil Society in Africa.”
Mariane Ferme, “Staging Politisi: The Dialogics of Publicity and Secrecy
in Sierra Leone.”
Spatialized inequality
Week IV
Feb. 24 Teresa Caldeira, City of Walls.
Film: Bombay Our City
Racial privilege
Week V
Mar. 3 Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property.” In Kimberle Crenshaw et al.
eds. Critical Race Theory: the key writings that formed the movement.
New Press, 1995.
George Lipsitz, “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness.” In G. Lipsitz,
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from
Identity Politics. Temple University Press, 1998, Ch. 1, pp. 123.
Laurent Dubois, “’The Price of Liberty’: Victor Hugues and the
Administration of Freedom in Guadeloupe, 17941798,” William and Mary
Quarterly, Vol. LVI, No. 2, April 1999.
Rebecca J. Scott, “Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Cuba: A View from the
Sugar District of Cienfuegos, 18861909,” Hispanic American Historical
Review 78: 4, 1998.
Film: City of God
Gendering citizenship
Week VI
Mar. 10 Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, The scandal of the state, Introduction and
Chs. 2&5.
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Nivedita Menon, "State/Gender/Community: Citizenship in
Contemporary India" Economic and Political Weekly, January 31, 1996.
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, “Transgressing the NationState: The Partial
Citizenship and ‘Imagined Global Community’ of Migrant Filipina
Domestic Workers.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 26(4):
11291154, 2001.
Pnina Werbner, “Political Motherhood and the Feminization of
Citizenship: Women’s Activisms and the Transformation of the Public
Sphere” in Nira YuvalDavis and Pnina Werbner eds. Women, Citizenship
and Difference, Zed Press, 1999.
The citizensoldier
Week VII
Mar. 17 Catherine Lutz, Homefront.
Film: Rabbitproof Fence (Fri, March 11 and Mon, March 14)
Scientific imaginaries
Week VIII
Mar. 24 Nadia Abu el Haj, Facts on the Ground.
Film: Arna’s Children (Fri, March 18 and Mon, Mar 21)
**Spring Recess**
Diasporic belonging
Week IX
Apr. 7 Pnina Werbner, Imagined diasporas among Manchester Muslims.
Parvathi Raman, “Yusuf Dadoo: Transnational Politics, South African
Belonging,” South African Historical Journal, April 2004.
Film: Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music
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Beyond national frames
Week X
Apr. 14 Yasemin N. Soysal, “Towards a Postnational Model of Membership” in
Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe,
University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 119167
David Eng, “Out Here and Over There: Queerness and Diaspora in Asian
American Studies.” Social Text 52/53 (AutumnWinter 1997): 3152.
Engseng Ho, “Empire through Diasporic Eyes: A View from the Other
Boat,” Comparative Study of Society and History, May 2004.
Maria Anna JaimesGuerrero, "Civil Rights versus Sovereignty: Native
American Women in Life and Land Struggles." In M. Jacqui Alexander
and Chandra Talpade Mohanty eds, Feminist Genealogies, Colonial
Legacies, Democratic Futures. Routledge, New York, 1997.
Film: Dirty Pretty Things (Fri, Apr 8 and Mon, Apr 11)
Neoliberalism’s spaces and subjectivities
Week XI
Apr. 21 Naomi Klein, “Baghdad Year Zero: pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon
utopia,” Harper’s Magazine, September 24, 2004.
http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html
Anna Tsing, “The Forest of Collaborations” in A. Tsing, Friction: an
ethnography of global connection, Princeton University Press 2005.
James Ferguson, “Of Mimicry and Membership: Africans and the ‘New
World Society,’” Cultural Anthropology Vol. 17, No. 4, 2002.
William Mazzarella, “'Citizens have sex, consumers make love': marketing
KamaSutra condoms in Bombay,” in B. Moeran, ed., Asian Media
Productions, University of Hawai'i Press 2001.
Harry G. West and Todd Sanders eds. Transparency and conspiracy:
ethnographies of suspicion in the new world order, Duke University
Press, 2003. Selection.
Film: Life and Debt (Fri, Apr 15 and Mon, Apr 18)
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New Gulags
Week XII
Apr. 28 Kath Weston, “Families in Queer States: the rule of law and the politics of
recognition,” in Radical History Review “Homeland Security” issue 93 (Fall
2005).
Giorgio Agamben, "We Refugees," European Graduate School, Media and
Communications Division, 1994.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/agamben/agambenwerefugees.html
Jacques Ranciere, "Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?" South
Atlantic Quarterly 103: 2/3, Spring/Summer 2004.
Judith Butler, "Guantanamo Limbo," The Nation, 1 April 2002
http://www.anarchitektur.com/aa04Guantanamo/Butler.html
Scott Michael and Scott Shershow. "The Guantánamo "Black Hole": The
Law of War and the Sovereign Exception," Middle East Report, 11 January
2004
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero011104.html
Recommended:
Giorgio Agamben, "The State of Emergency as a World Order," FAZ, May
2003
http://www.muslimlawyers.net/news/index.php3?aktion=show&number=204
Giorgio Agamben, Lecture at Uni Paris VII, 2002.
http://www.neuralyte.org/~joey/generationonline/p/fpagambenschmitt.htm
Week XIII
May 5 Wrapup