Poverty, Welfare and Marginalisation: An Ethnographic Approach to Modern Urban Life

Studienivå (studiesyklus)

Bachelor level

Undervisningssemester

Spring

Mål og innhald

Today, the majority of the world's population live in cities, and the share is predicted to grow to two-thirds over the next few decades. Many have criticised modern cities as sites of homogenisation, but cities have also been places for creating new forms of diversity. Modern cities have produced new social groups and subcultures with their own distinctive beliefs and values, with different groups seeking their own identity and place in urban areas.

The course will use ethnography to study: changing forms of poverty, the global growth of slums and ghettos, the racial-ethnic forms that class relations can assume, the welfare state and new forms of policing and social control. The curriculum will include ethnographic studies of the homeless, unemployed, drug addicts, migrant-ethnic groups, and youth subcultures. The course will not just study the poor and marginalised but also dominant institutions.

The changing affluent lifestyle of urban elites has produced new ways of privatising and fortifying urban spaces, new militarised forms of policing have emerged in response to growing class-racial inequalities. Modern cities have also involved the growth of new institutions (bureaucracies, schools, hospitals, prisons, mental asylums, police forces, factories) and these have their own internal life; their own ideologies, forms of knowledge, informal practices and policing regimes which can generate conformity, resistance and marginalisation.

Læringsutbyte

A student who has completed the course should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

• trace the historical development of ideas concerning the city, as reflected in anthropological literature
• critically evaluate theoretical approaches to understanding urban problems and related issues, such as poverty and migration

Skills

• discuss how urban spaces and institutions can shape identities and communities
• analyse how urban spaces are shaped by sociocultural, political and economic processes

General competence

• analyse the culture and social relations that can develop within cities and institutional environments
• critically engage with academic texts and relate scientific theories to ongoing social processes
• apply key concepts and perspectives from anthropology in an independently written work using empirical case materials

Krav til forkunnskapar

None

Krav til studierett

This course is open to students at UiB

Arbeids- og undervisningsformer

Lectures and workshops

4 hours per week

7 weeks, approx. 26 hours in total

Obligatorisk undervisningsaktivitet

Submission of one essay (1500 words +/- 10%). Only with an approved assignment will students be allowed to take the exam. Approved compulsory assignment is valid for 2 semesters.

Vurderingsformer

8 hours written exam

Karakterskala

Grading A-F

Fagleg overlapp

SANT230 (10 ECTS)

Vurderingssemester

Assessment in teaching semester and the following semester.

Emneevaluering

All courses are regularly evaluated according to UiB's quality assurance system.

Institutt

Department of Social Anthropology