Prerequisites

None required.

Content (Syllabus outline)

1. Anthropology of space and place:

• Spatial turn;
• Concepts: space, place, location, landscape, environment.

2. Spatial anthropology – key thinkers:

• Production of space;
• Space and everyday life;
• Landscape and senses;
• Dwelling and environment.

3. Social spaces:

• Space and body;
• Space and religion;
• Space and gender;
• Space and language.

4. Place, territory, power, identity:

• Power relations and geopolitical hierarchy;
• Identity processes;
• Relocations;
• Borders and boundaries.

5. Migrations, (non)movements, (im)mobility:

• Migrations;
• Non)movements;
• (Im)mobility;
• Returning;
• Home.

6. Anthropology of infrastructure:

• Material culture;
• Infrastructure;
• Anthropology of roads.

7. Environmental anthropology

• Nature/culture dualism;
• Anthropocene;
• sustainability;
• water and water environments.

Readings

• Brightman, Marc & Jerome Lewis (eds.). 2017. The Anthropology of Sustainability. Beyond Development and Progress. Palgrave MacMillan.
• de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Descola, Philippe. 2013). Beyond Nature and Culture. Janet Lloyd (trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Feld, Steven and Keith Basso (ur.). 1996. Senses of Place. Santa Fe: School of American Research (izbrana poglavja).
• Green, Sarah F. 2005. Notes from the Balkans. Locating Marginality and Ambiguity on the Greek-Albanian Border. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Gregorič Bon, Nataša and Jaka Repič. 2016 (ur., v tisku). Moving Places. Return, Relations and Belonging. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books (izbrana poglavja).
• Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson (ur.) 2001 [1997]. Culture, Power and Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
• Haenn, Nora, Richard R. Wilk & Allison Harnish (eds.). 2016. The Environment in Anthropology. A Reader in Ecology, Culture, and Sustainable Living. Washington, New York: New York University Press (izbrana poglavja).
• Hastrup, Kirsten &Karen F. Olwig. 2012. Climate Change and Human Mobility. Challenges to the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ingold, Tim. 2011. Being Alive. Essays on Movements, Knowledge and Description. London and New York: Routledge.
• Larkin, Brian. 2013. “The politics and poetics of infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42:327-43.
• Lefebvre, Henri. 1991[1974]. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Low, Setha M. and Denise Lawrence-Zuñiga (ur.). 2003. Anthropology of Space and Place. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell (izbrana poglavja).
• Moore, A. 2015. Anthropocene anthropology: reconceptualizing contemporary global change.
• Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22(1): 27–46.
• Rapport, Nigel and Angela Dawson (ur.). 1998. Migrants of Identity. Perceptions of Home in a World of Movement. Oxford: Berg (izbrana poglavja).
• Tilley, Christopher (1994). A Phenomenology of Landscape. Places, Paths and Monuments. Oxford: Berg (izbrana poglavja).

Objectives and competences

Space along with time is one of the important dimensions of human “being in the world”. This course attends to spatial concepts, such as space, place, landscape, location, environment and their interrelation to social and cultural realms. The late 1970s announced a more critical approach towards Eurocentric conceptualisations of space and place was established, first in human geography, archaeology and later in anthropology. Places and locations were no longer conceived as passive concepts and static positions on the geopolitical maps, but rather as active processes, strongly related to various ways of dwelling in and moving through /within/from them. This course aims to critically engage with how rhe study of spatial concepts, mobility and immobility can be approached in the period of fast-developing information technology. Numerous contemporary studies drawing on spatial anthropology focus on movement as one of the immanent processes of human life in contrast to more traditional and static notions of space and place. Movements not only relate to the individual modes of dwelling but are also part of the spatial production. Indeed, location is generated precisely through mobility, movements and migration that engender relations between people and their places. Thus places, locations along with paths are important for understanding of worldmaking practices. In adition to spatial conceprts the course will also explore environmental anthropology. In particular it will question the multitude of entanglements between humans and their gephysical and social environments.

Intended learning outcomes:

Students will learn basic concepts, conceptualisations and theoretical approaches on spatial anthropology which will help them to think and analyse the meanings of space, place, location in a particular social and cultural environment. They will attend to spatial concepts through different processes such as migration, border dynamics; material and environmental ways of being.

Learning and teaching methods:

Types of learning/teaching:

• Frontal teaching
• Independent students work
• e-learning

Teaching methods:

• Explanation
• Conversation/discussion/debate
• Work with texts
• Case studies
• Different presentation
• Field work (e.g. company visits)

Assessment

• Short written assignment (20 %),
• presentation (20 %),
• final examination (written/oral) (60 %).