This course can be followed as part of the BA specialisation Global Connections
(onderdeel BA Culturele Antropologie en Ontwikkelingssociologie)
Course Description
Social movements and collective action have emerged in close connection with the development of structural inequalities, marginalization and exclusion on the one hand and the ideas of rights, social justice and entitlements, on the other. Different groups and organizations have built platforms of solidarity and mobilization to make claims and express their grievances targeting either the state or capital or international institutions. If in the past social movements or collective action have emerged and concentrated protest within nation-states or colonial states, with the increasing interconnectedness of different locations and social spaces, hierarchically or vertically, currently social movements have attained global dimensions.
This course will therefore examine and discuss social movements as part of global processes but also as being locally embedded. It will look at how local action is ‘externalized’ or become part of global action; and how global social movements are internalized; and how meanings change as politics of contention experience shifts in scale. By concentrating on specific cases we will look at the cultural, political and social dimensions of social movements. Theoretical debates generated within different disciplines in the social sciences and the contribution of anthropology to these debates will be discussed.
Specific themes will be as follows:
Ethnographic/historic examples: 1960s movements, ‘identity’ movements, and the contemporary alterglobalization movements.
Upscaling and downscaling – linking the global and the local: UN Conventions, International Organizations and local movements
Commodity chains and the nodes of social protest – linking consumers and the producers: Fair Trade Coffee and the politics of coffee planters, peasants and workers. Anti Smoking Lobby and cigarette production
The politics of representation – the leaders and the masses: Indigenous peoples and the tribal slot
Trade unions, labour activism and factory workers
Cultures of protest – (the framing): Symbols, embodiment and emotions; appropriation and contestation
Sexuality and social protest – (the issue): Feminist, Gay and lesbian movements
Coördinators
Dr. Marianne Maeckelbergh: [mmaeckelbergh@fsw.leidenuniv.nl](mailto:mmaeckelbergh@fsw.leidenuniv.nl ;) room nr. 3A29A (P. de la Court)
Dr. Ratna Saptari: [rsaptari@fsw.leidenuniv.nl](mailto:rsaptari@fsw.leidenuniv.nl ;room) nr.3A33 (Pieter de la Court Building)
Methods of Instruction
Lectures and class discussion: 12 weeks, 3 hours per week; weekly readings and written assignments, and one research project with paper
12 hrs Lecture = 18 sbu
24 hrs Seminar = 48 sbu
600 pages of literature (and the corresponding AQCI’s) = 100 sbu
10 pages of written asignment (research project) = 80 sbu
presentation by students = 34 sbu (equivalent to 4½ pages of written assignement)
Total: 280 sbu = 10 ECTS
Literature
Selection of journal articles.
Examination
active participation in class discussion,
AQCI assignments,
research project.
Time table
Time: Thursdays 10 September – 26 November 2009, 15-18 h
Place: Room 5A42, Pieter de la Court building
Registration
Only the following categories of students can register for this course:
Students enrolled for the BA programme “Culturele antropologie en ontwikkelingssociologie”:
Inschrijving mogelijk van 1 juli t/m 25 augustus 2009 via het secretariaat CA-OS, kamer 3A19, tel. 5273469, e-mail: secrcaos@fsw.leidenuniv.nlInternational exchange students:
For application please follow regular procedure through International Office, or contact the departmental coordinator N. Osterhaus-Simic.