A&S 263 Latin American Ethnography

This course explores the complexity, persistence, and the multifaceted nature of violence in Latin America by considering a broader range of ordinary forms of harm, conflict, exclusion, and neglect. Over the course of the semester, we will grapple with the notion of “violence” and look not only at its extraordinary manifestations but also the significance of and continuities with its everyday and attenuated expressions. To this end, we will cover topics ranging from the routinized and bureaucratized violence of economic indebtedness and precariousness, of illness and disease in zones of abandonment and pollution, and of gendered forms of social control to the more overt violent ruptures involving urban lynchings, policing, and border crossings. [GM1, GM2, SS]