ANTH 346 - Property: Owning the world

This class studies property and its influence on the modern world. Property undergirds multiple ways in which we relate to one another and the world around us, and yet it is often hard to see. It is naturalized in everyday life, and it falls outside or in between the analytic frames of many disciplines. This course attempts to bring it into focus by looking at four broad categories over which property claims have been asserted: property in land, property in other people, property in the self, and property in possible futures. The course will analyze the legal, political, and cultural forms through which these claims are made, legitimated, and contested. We will also analyze modes of relating to the world that do not fit neatly into property regimes and their interactions with law and the state.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 211 or ANTH 201
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
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.