DA4780 Political Anthropology: War and Society

War is a generative force in world politics and culture. Events at the frontline can affect life back at the home front. This course explores how cultural narratives of war (war stories) are affected by the events of war and how national/group identities respond to war—especially when things don't go as expected. This class appropriates the globalization concept and redefines it as a general property of the “international,” as relations of interconnection and mutual constitution. It looks at armed force and war through the lens of globalization, arguing that by means of the interconnections it occasions, war is transformative of world politics and of the people and places it reaches out and touches. Throughout, it underlies the interconnection and the play of relations across often widely divergent spaces and populations. In these ways, the course opens up the international as a distinct social space of connection and constitution and anatomizes the place of war and the military in this space. Students will present material on particular regional examples as developed in the course of the class. Prerequisites: None.

Lecture Hours

Lab Hours

Course Learning Outcomes

Describe the difference between the symptoms (e.g., state sponsorship of terrorism, US sanctions, threats of military engagement, Stuxnet, assassination of Gen. Suleimani, etc.) in the ongoing conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the US and the root causes (i.e., Dynamic change in the client/patron relationship, the US-led regional security framework/order since WWII, etc.)
Explain why this conflict has persisted, across four decades—including the particulars of why when one side wants to engage in meaningful dialogue, the other often hazards.
Describe the complex and mosaic relationship of Iran and Israel across time—including why the two enjoyed a covert relationship that continued for some time after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Derive lessons from long-standing and in many ways consistent foreign policy of Iran, both before and after its 1979 revolution, and explain how this might better inform US strategy today.

Conduct and present a 60-minute research project on a subject relevant to interstate relations in the region.