UCL - Anthropology of politics and religion: power and beliefs

[SOC2065]

[30h] 5 credits

This course is taught in the 1st semester.

Teacher(s): Pierre-Joseph Laurent

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

This course will allow, on the basis of participating observation (ethnological investigation), to seize the collec-tive organization modes (power, bonds, coercion spaces) of groups located in the North as well as in the South with or without central governmental authorities. A particular interest will be laid on the organisational methods of new religious movements.
On the basis of theories developed in political anthropology and religion anthropology, the course will expose the main theories concerning operations and transformations of the main political systems. This will unable the student to apprehend the organisational bases of instituted groups in order to facilitate the setting of research and intervention approaches. It will develop students critical approach of power: its nature, its access conditions and its organization modes.

Main themes

The main theoretical debates, controversies and research orientations concerning political anthropology and religion anthropology will be presented through three great themes that structure this research field.
The course will present the organisation modes of instituted groups, situated between family and Nation States.

1) The political nature of custom societies; nature of power, access to power, constraint practices, domina-tion, power organization and nature of the political bonds.
2) Political structuring modes of trans-nationalised groups (power sources, network organisations, domina-tion, control);

Structuring modes of new religious movements (pentecotists, neo-pentecotists and Moslems) We will analyze the systems of thinking, the conversion forms, the normative production (religious forbidden acts), the confron-tation of various sources of rules, the relation between the religious and the States, the meaning crisis and iden-tity respond, the cure propositions, the relations between these movements and the transnationalisation (of which migrations).

Content and teaching methods

In order to present these deifferent themes we will relate on the professor's three main ethnographic experi-ences, the thorough knowledge of the traditional mossi society of Burkina Faso, thorough contacts with the religious movements (Moslem, pentecotists, neo-pentecotists), as well as the knowledge of capverdian society and of its diaspora located at the convergence of the influences of the Black Africa, Europe, Brazil and United States.
The theoretical presentations of political and religion anthropology, as well as the epistemological outline con-cerning participating observation, will be founded on the lecturers following researches :
- local political powers and the decentralization of the State in Burkina Faso.
- Pentecotists of Burkina Faso. Marriage, capacity and cure.
- the Universal Church of the Reign of God of Cape Verde. Urban Growth, poverty and neo pentecotists' movements.
The course pedagogy will be inductive and interactive. Each period will have two presentations : presentation of ethnographic date, theoretical synthesis, followed by questions and a debate.
The course will be summarized on a powerpoint presentation accessible on I-campus. The professor's pictures as well as ethnographic movie shortage will also be presented.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Oral exam based on notes and syllabus

Syllabus,