2022/2023
Anthropology of belief and knowledge
Category 'Best Course for Broadening Horizons and Diversity of Knowledge and Skills'
Category 'Best Course for New Knowledge and Skills'
Type:
Minor
Delivered by:
Department of History
When:
3, 4 module
Open to:
students of all HSE University campuses
Language:
English
ECTS credits:
5
Contact hours:
60
Course Syllabus
Abstract
Anthropology of belief and knowledge seek an understanding of an understanding: it aims at grasping what people across cultures admit to be true. How various systems of knowledge and belief distinguish the rational and the irrational? What is sense and senselessness? How are knowledge, belief, intuition and revelation distinguished in different social and cultural contexts? How are epistemologies related to aesthetics, ethics, moral order and everyday knowledge practices, and how are they embedded in forms of society that that articulate and constitute? We consider these questions by drawing on detailed ethnographies of science and religion. Cases that we explore range from studies of witchcraft and shamanism to laboratory and computer science, from conspiracy theories to knowledge about climate change and different religions.
Learning Objectives
- be able not only read key ethnographies, but also make an individual research, based on the unique ethnographic experience, applying the skills learnt through the course.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- A student knows the history of the discipline and subfields
- Able to solve professional problems based on synthesis and analysis
- A student can critically evaluate and rethink the accumulated experience (one's own and another's), think about professional and social activities.
Bibliography
Recommended Core Bibliography
- E. E. Evans-Pritchard. (1960). The Organization of a Zande Kingdom. Cahiers d’études Africaines, (4), 5. https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1960.3678
Recommended Additional Bibliography
- Bielo, J. S. (2016). A companion to the anthropology of religion. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 24(1), 103–106. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12247