Global Cultures of Dissent

How can dissent be a catalyst for change? What motivates people to challenge power and authority in all their myriad forms? Can acts of dissent be at once political and intimate, public and personal? What do ethnographic methods and anthropology as a discipline bring to the study of dissent? In this course we will examine these questions through an immersion in the multifaceted ways in which people dissent. We will investigate the social and historical underpinnings of dissent vis-à-vis a range of oppressive forces, be they authoritarian states, colonial power, patriarchal orders, or regimes of caste and religion.