Anthropology Question

The instructor will provide discussion questions for the readings, films, and lectures 4 times during the quarter. Students are required to write response papers to these questions and turn them in by the assigned date. The response papers should seek to answer the discussion questions by providing a concise overview and critical appraisal of the relevant readings, films, and lectures. Each comment should be at least 600 words in length (maximum 1,000 words). The response papers should not be asummary of the readings or lecture materials but a thoughtful engagement with issues raised in the lecture and the readings through critical analyses and integration. A grading rubric is at the end of this syllabus. Please note that there will typically be a choice of two to three questions provided for each assignment. You should pick ONE of these questions to address in your response paper. Please note that if attendance in lecture is high and students are writing their response papers WITHOUT relying on AI technologies, then your lowest score on the response papers will be dropped. If instructor has the sense that students are using AI technologies to write these response papers, then the instructor will switch them from take-home to in-class essays. In this eventuality, the instructor will announce the dates and times of the in-class essays.

Response Question:

Imagine that our society is shifting from largely disciplinary power to more sovereign forms of power. Please describe what this shift would look like by discussing AT MINIMUM THREE of the following domains: 1) bureaucracies, 2) norms, standards, and ideals, 3) visibility of the sovereign or state, 4) visibility of the average civilian, 5) forms of punishment instituted by the state, 6) peoples sense of personal choice, 7) surveillance, 8) ones soul (as Foucault referenced it), 9) the ambivalence of state violence and suffering bodies, and 10) rituals of truth.