The course examines various anthropological and multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of violence, poverty, development, and humanitarian intervention worldwide. It looks critically at the theoretical, methodological, and ethical questions raised in studies of violence and development through ethnographic case studies from Mainland Southeast Asia and many other regions. The course gives particular emphasis to the structural reasons for poverty and the efforts of local populations to transform conflict, build peace, engage in the reconstruction of livelihood, health care, and education, and to repair the environment. Therefore, the course gives particular attention to the voices, the social suffering, the agency, the resilience, and the resistance of the poor and their grassroots social movements, networks, and organizations. The course provides a deep understanding of continuous dependency and global inequality, as well as a glimpse into decolonizing strategies.
The course is thus divided into three themes: The first part introduces the concepts of peace and development. This includes an introduction to the methodology to carry out ethnographic fieldwork in conflict situations. The second part concerns grassroots and top-down approaches to development and poverty eradication. In the third part, the course provides a theoretical framework and practical applications of resistance, peacebuilding, environmental repair, indigenous responses to climate change, and conflict transformation. In all parts, the course combines and brings together a critique of peace and development with concrete resistance to harmful development and practices for building a better world.
- Professor/a: Birgit Allerstorfer
- Professor/a: Alexander Klaus Erich Horstmann
- Professor/a: Sonia París Albert