FALL 2001
This information effective for Fall 2001.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
TTh 8:00 - 9.45 A.M.
Instructor: Hugh Raffles
In this lecture course we take our cue from Claude Lévi-Strauss' very non-vegetarian observation that animals are not just good to eat, but more importantly, "good to think." We examine the history and politics of relations between humans and other animals, thinking about animals themselves as well as how humans have used them to develop ideas of race, class, gender, and nation. Topics covered include classification, pets, zoos, and cloning.
Th 5:00 - 8:00 P.M.
Instructor: Hugh Raffles
What makes something or someone global? And what consigns other things and people to different spatial conditions, such as the local? How do these categories come into existence and what political and human effects do they have?
In this senior seminar we will explore current debates on what we have only recently learned to call globalization. Rather than taking this phenomenon as an established fact, we will ask what aspects of contemporary life the term describes and what are some of the implications of using it.
In order to examine the accelerated movement of people and objects that is often claimed to characterize contemporary life, we will read a series of innovative recent ethnographies that focus on the moving target of spatial scale. Each week we will be studying a particular "global project" and trying to understand what it has meant for the lives of those who have--willingly or not--found themselves enrolled in its unfolding.