Dr Rebecca Bowers

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in Social Anthropology, Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Melbourne) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

You are required to be enrolled in a degree programme at LSE in which you are trained to write essays and read qualitative research. You may be asked to submit written work to determine your ability for this course.

This course will aim to address issues of citizenship, inequality and social justice, religious faith and practices, migration and labour and consumption patterns in rural and urban South Asia. The course will cover both classic and current literature and weekly sessions will be organised thematically. South Asia is an ideal setting to examine many paradoxes that exist elsewhere - alongside some of the highest rates of economic growth there is growing inequality, there is a growing middle class but high rates of precarious poverty, the countries remain largely rural yet they will hold the largest urban population in the world in less than ten years and so on. In order to understand these paradoxes, it is essential that issues of macro economic policy, social inequality, infrastructural development, political mobilisation and popular culture,  mobilisation along religious lines in each country and the rise of the 'threatened majorities' that behave like minority populations - be examined in greater detail.  Using a rich body of anthropological research on South Asia, this course will examine several of these issues and more in this course. The literature on India is the largest available but every attempt will be made to cover the anthropological literature on Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh alongside.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the MT.

This course will have a series of optional online film screenings in the MT. The course has a reading week in Week 6 of the MT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the MT.

Please read at least TWO of the following background readings before the start of the course and certainly by the end of the second week of the course: Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India; Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi; Corbridge, S. and Harris, J., Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Politics and Popular Democracy; Rana Dasgupta, Capital: The Eruption of Delhi; Ammara Maqsood, The New Pakistani Middle class; Delwar Hussain, Boundaries Undermined: The ruins of progress on Bangladesh-India Border

Fiction: Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy; Rohington Mistry, A Fine Balance; Bapsi Sidhwa, Ice Candy Man; Neel Mukherjee, The Lives of Others; Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders; Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things; Saadat Hasan Manto, Toba Tek Singh: Stories  

You will required to present your thoughts on the background readings you have done in Week 2 class/seminar.

Take-home assessment (100%) in the MT.

The take home exam will be held the week following the end of the MT.

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.