Knowledge, Power and Resistance (822L6)
30 credits, Level 7 (Masters)
Spring teaching
The purpose of this module is to reflect on the various ways in which power and knowledge interact within contexts of development and economic change. The module will provide you with the conceptual ideas to theorise concepts of discourse, power and resistance. It also deals with the historically and culturally contingent nature of the various meanings given to 'development', 'modernity' and 'tradition', and how these are linked to different forms of knowledge.
This module covers:
- the theoretical framework provided by the concepts of ideology, hegemony and discourse, looking at the work of Gramsci and Foucault.
- the implications of concepts from these thinkers in analyses of development, particularly discourse theory
- the concept of resistance and what it means for development practice
- the domain of developmental knowledge 'women in development', and the ways it has been contested both by activists and academics
- the environment and the role of anthropologists who refuse to take for granted categories such as 'indigenous knowledge'
- analyses of power and culture in relation to modernity
- bureaucracies, governance, and work on neoliberal ideas of freedom, power and knowledge in the production of policy and bureaucratic structures
- how Foucault's work directs anthropological attention to the production of the