Dr Harry Walker

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.

Unless granted an exemption by the course teacher, students taking this course should have completed an introductory course in anthropology.

The course will introduce students to selected themes in the anthropology of Amazonia. It will provide a grounding in the ethnographic literature of the region while seeking to engage with current theoretical debates, highlighting their potential importance to the discipline of anthropology. Topics to be covered include history, indigenous social movements; sexuality and gender; trade and inter-ethnic relations; politics and power; illness, well-being and death. Students will be encouraged to reflect on the broader relationship between ethnography and theory, to challenge common stereotypes of Amazonia and its inhabitants, and to explore ways in which the region has inscribed itself on the imagination of anthropologists and laypersons alike.

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

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of AT.

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

Overing, Joanna. & Alan Passes (eds). 2000. The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia.

Penfield, Amy. 2024. Predatory Economies: The Sanema and the Socialist State in Contemporary Amazonia. 

Walker, Harry. 2012. Under a Watchful Eye: Self, Power and Intimacy in Amazonia.

Campbell, Jeremy. 2015. Conjuring Property: Speculation and Environmental Futures in the Brazilian Amazon. 

Costa, Luiz. 2017. The Owners of Kinship: Asymmetrical Relations in Indigenous Amazonia. 

Seeger, Anthony. 2004. Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People.

Take-home assessment (100%) in the period between AT and WT.