ANTH 371 - Race and Caste

This course examines caste and race together across three axes: as enduring but shifting forms of social hierarchy, as grounds of political mobilization, and as potent metaphors for each other. Drawing on historical, sociological, and anthropological work from South Asia, the Caribbean, and the United States, we will examine the incorporation and transformation of these forms of hierarchy through imperialism, settler-colonialism, capitalist development, and democratic politics. We will also trace a parallel history, through which observers and activists have sought to think caste in terms of race and race in terms of caste, from European colonists to twentieth-century anti-caste activists in India and anti-racist activists in the United States. We ask what these forms of comparison have made visible and what they have erased, what solidarities and politics they have enabled, and what the stakes have been of refusing to think of them together.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 211
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): CRES 300, CRES 391
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.