240519 SE MM3 Cosmology - Ideology - Ontology: Anthropological Approaches and Debates (2024S)

The course is dedicated to three concepts that have different histories in anthropology. Whereas “cosmology” and “ideology” have been part of anthropology's tool kit for quite some time, the concept of “ontology” has only been discovered more recently by anthropologists. In fact, it has become one of the most fashionable subjects of debate in the discipline in the last two decades or so, provoking some colleagues to speak of an “ontological turn” in anthropology. Rather than merely focusing on this proposed turn, the course places emphasis on historical depth, linking contemporary ontological approaches to earlier discussions about cosmology and ideology. One of the aims of the course is to identify similarities and differences between the concepts, searching for overlappings and incommensurabilities. Another aim is to asses the analytical depth and breadth of the three concepts by looking at their theoretical trajectories and the empirical contexts to which they have been applied. In order to accomplish this, a variety of texts will be read ranging from articles and book chapters that are occupied with (one or more of) the concepts per se to work that introduces the reader to particular ethnographic settings through the concepts. The reading list includes “classic” texts by Marshall Sahlins, Eric Wolf and Louis Dumont as well as more contemporary contributions to the debate, such as by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, David Graeber, Naomi Haynes and Jason Hickel. Moreover, topics that are analysed in the texts comprise, among others, pre-colonial political systems, anti-colonial movements, nationalism, gender orders, hierarchy and inequality, plantation economies.

After a general introduction into the topic by the lecturer, in the individual sessions of the course the students will present the texts that are on the reading list. For every text, there are at least two discussants that will start the debate. After around one third of the course, the students will submit a brainstorming text that will give them the opportunity to express first ideas about the topic that they have chosen for their seminar paper. This means that in the remaining sessions of the course the conceptualization of their seminar papers will become a recurrent topic.