The Anthropology of Politics: Persuasion and Power
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this introduction to the ethnographic study of politics, covering how anthropologists define the political across small-scale societies and liberal democratic states. The course examines three contemporary arenas: electoral politics, public spheres, and bureaucracies and humanitarian governance. Readings and discussion topics address how authority, coercion, and violence have been theorized in relation to political life, and how certain social practices are organized to appear explicitly non-political. Materials include the full syllabus, weekly reading assignments, and discussion questions drawn from anthropological case studies spanning small-scale kinship societies to modern nation-states. There are no video lectures, but the reading list and assignment structure give a full semester's worth of material for independent study. Free to access through MIT OpenCourseWare, with no certificate offered.