ANT 370 DECOLONIZING PLACE AND NATURE

How do human beings define themselves in regards to non-human beings, space, and nature? This course explores the importance of place and nature in anthropological thinking and people’s experience of their environment. The course examines how the discipline has come to question the classical Western oppositions between human beings/non-human beings, nature/culture, and space/place. Students will be introduced to current debates regarding the decolonization of social sciences by exploring non-western systems of knowledge, as well as critical approaches to Western hierarchies and power structures in the development of a scholarly “universal knowledge.” Topics include epistemology, decolonization, ecology, ontologies, and French anthropology.