![A wide interior view of three large, circular mechanical art installations mounted on a high wall. Each circular display features a different landscape photograph—a coastal cliff, a lush forest, and a mountain lake—and is connected to a separate wall-mounted motor by a long, slender mechanical arm [gen AI description].](/media/zweig_clocks.jpg "A wide interior view of three large, circular mechanical art installations mounted on a high wall. Each circular display features a different landscape photograph—a coastal cliff, a lush forest, and a mountain lake—and is connected to a separate wall-mounted motor by a long, slender mechanical arm [gen AI description].")
Climate Clocks (Abstraction Devices), Janet Zweig 2018, San Diego, Calif. Three paintings on the faces of three 4' diameter rolls of paper are driven by motors and attached to empty hubs. They unroll over 50 years onto the hubs, based on the pace of climate change projections. Each unrolls according to the data that the image represents: sea level rise (the ocean nearest the library), yearly maximum temperature (a wooded canyon nearby), and dry periods in the county (the water reservoir that feeds the area.) As climate change progresses, figuration turns into abstraction. Hillcrest / Mission Hills Branch Library, San Diego Commissioned by The City of San Diego 4' X 80' X 9'.
Course description
As the global dominance of liberal norms fades, authoritarian populism and nationalism has returned. Yet many other societies have instead turned to values of sovereignty, solidarity, and vulnerability to imagine visions of freedom based on interdependence. Anthropologists have always promoted pluralism, yet remain embedded in Western ideas of humanism. What role should anthropology play at a time when ideas of justice are in dispute? This class examines cases of radical social, ethical, and political reimagination—including postconflict transition, truth-telling, abolitionism, and reparative justice, as well as reactionary new nationalisms—to ask what anthropology we need for a just world.
Here’s some more about this class…
Teaching staff
Coordinator:
Ryan Schram
ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au
Social Sciences Building, Room 410
Assignments summary
| Title | Due date | Points | Weight | Length | Hurdle task |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reflective “quiz” on personal values | March 13 | 100 | 10% | 250 | |
| Weekly writing assignments | weekly | 100 | 10% | 1000 | |
| Critical essay: What does your anthropology want? | April 3 | 100 | 25% | 1000 | |
| Preliminary research exercise: Brainstorming research questions | May 1 | 100 | 10% | 500 | |
| Research essay: Anthropology as a science of human possibilities | May 29 | 100 | 35% | 2500 | Yes |
| Oral “examination” (Interactive presentation) | May 29 | 100 | 10% | 750 | Yes |
Weekly schedule
| Week | Date | Topic and reading(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | February 23 | What would a new anthropology look like? / Antrosio (2013); Wheeler (2017) |
| 2 | March 2 | Anthropology before and after the liberal settlement / Evans-Pritchard (1940); Bohannan (2018) / Mazzarella (2019) |
| 3 | March 9 | The anthropology of anarchy / Graeber (2007b); Overing (2003) / Graeber (2004); Kropotkin et al. (2021) |
| 4 | March 16 | Do humans have rights? / Holcombe (2015); Levitt and Merry (2009); Merry (2006); Riles (2006) |
| 5 | March 23 | Human rights and human relations / Demian (2011); Robbins (2009); Sarma Bhagabati (2025) |
| 6 | March 30 | The new abolitionists / Lloyd (2025); Terwiel (2025) / Heynen (2021); Luke and Heynen (2020); Vega León (2025); Marx ([1843] 1978) |
| B | April 6 | Mandatory school closure in honor of Judeo-Christian festivals |
| 7 | April 13 | The opposite of rights / Lino e Silva (2025) |
| 8 | April 20 | Prefiguring alternative futures / Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua (2017); Ramones (2024) / Davis (2021); Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua and Kuwada (2018) |
| 9 | April 27 | Alternatives to egalitarianism / Haruyama (2024) / Ferguson (2013); Graeber (2007a) |
| 10 | May 4 | Repugnant others / Rosa and Bonilla (2017); Rosa and Díaz (2020) / da Silva and Larkins (2019) |
| 11 | May 11 | Does everyone deserve sympathy, empathy, loyalty? / Teitelbaum (2019); Açıksöz (2024) / Harding (1991); Harding (2021); Pasieka (2017); Gusterson (2017); Pinheiro-Machado and Scalco (2021); Salem (2024) |
| 12 | May 18 | Who is innocent? / Ticktin (2017) / Edmonds (2024); Hussain (2022) |
| 13 | May 25 | Student presentations |
| 14 | June 1 | Reading week |
| 15 | June 8 | Final exam period |
References
Açıksöz, Salih Can. 2024. “Ethnographic Betrayals.”
Current Anthropology 65 (S26): 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1086/732089.
Antrosio, Jason. 2013. “Anthropology Will Only Matter If It Evokes
a Purpose Outside of Itself.” Living Anthropologically
(blog). September 5, 2013. https://www.livinganthropologically.com/purpose-of-anthropology/.
Bohannan, Paul. 2018. Justice and Judgment Among the Tiv.
London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351037303.
Davis, Sasha. 2021. “Beyond Obstruction: Blockades as Productive
Reorientations.” Antipode, March, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12722.
Demian, Melissa. 2011. “`Hybrid Custom’ and Legal Description in
Papua New Guinea.” In Recasting Anthropological Knowledge:
Inspiration and Social Science, edited by Jeanette Edwards and Maja
Petrović-Šteger, 49–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edmonds, Alexander. 2024. “Anthropology and Complicated
People.” American Ethnologist 51 (1): 57–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13248.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. “The Nuer of Southern Sudan.”
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Press.
Ferguson, James. 2013. “Declarations of Dependence: Labour,
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Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, Noelani. 2017. “Protectors of the Future, Not
Protestors of the Past: Indigenous Pacific Activism and Mauna a
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Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, Noelani, and Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada. 2018. “Making
‘Aha: Independent Hawaiian Pasts, Presents & Futures.”
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Graeber, David. 2004. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology.
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———. 2007a. “Oppression.” In Possibilities: essays on
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———. 2007b. “Provisional Autonomous Zone: Or, the Ghost-State in
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and desire, 157–80. Edinburgh: AK Press.
Gusterson, Hugh. 2017. “From Brexit to Trump: Anthropology and the
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Haruyama, Justin. 2024. “Anti-Blackness and Moral Repair: The
Curse of Ham, Biblical Kinship, and the Limits of Liberalism.”
Cultural Anthropology 39 (1): 118–45. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca39.1.06.
Heynen, Nik. 2021. ““A Plantation Can Be a Commons”: Re-Earthing
Sapelo Island Through Abolition Ecology.” Antipode 53
(1): 95–114. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12631.
Holcombe, Sarah. 2015. “The Revealing Processes of Interpretation:
Translating Human Rights Principles into Pintupi-Luritja.”
The Australian Journal of Anthropology 26 (3): 428–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12152.
Hussain, Salman. 2022. “Witnessing “Imperfect Victims”.”
American Ethnologist 49 (1): 92–103. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13054.
Kropotkin, Peter, N. O. Bonzo, David Graeber, Andrej Grubačić, Ruth
Kinna, Allan Antliff, and GATS. 2021. Mutual Aid: An Illuminated
Factor of Evolution. Oakland, UNITED STATES: PM Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=6645883.
Levitt, Peggy, and Sally Merry. 2009. “Vernacularization on the
Ground: Local Uses of Global Women’s Rights in Peru, China, India and
the United States.” Global Networks 9 (4): 441–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2009.00263.x.
Lino e Silva, Moises. 2025. “Post-Liberalism and the Politics of
Liberation: Brazilian Favelas as Emergent Territories of
Freedom.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
31 (4): 1023–40. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.14319.
Lloyd, Vincent. 2025. “Abolition, Destruction,
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Luke, Nikki, and Nik Heynen. 2020. “Community Solar as Energy
Reparations: Abolishing Petro-Racial Capitalism in New Orleans.”
American Quarterly 72 (3): 603–25. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/765825.
Marx, Karl. (1843) 1978. “On the Jewish question.” In
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Mazzarella, William. 2019. “The Anthropology of Populism: Beyond
the Liberal Settlement.” Annual Review of Anthropology
48 (Volume 48, 2019): 45–60. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011412.
Merry, Sally Engle. 2006. “Transnational Human Rights and Local
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Overing, Joanna. 2003. “In Praise of the Everyday: Trust and the
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Pasieka, Agnieszka. 2017. “Taking Far-Right Claims Seriously and
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Pinheiro-Machado, Rosana, and Lucia Scalco. 2021. “Humanising
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Social Anthropology 29 (2): 329–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.13048.
Ramones, Ikaika. 2024. “‘Insurgent Indigeneity’: A
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Riles, Annelise. 2006. “Anthropology, Human Rights, and Legal
Knowledge: Culture in the Iron Cage.” Cornell Law Faculty
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Robbins, Joel. 2009. “Recognition, Reciprocity, and Justice:
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Rosa, Jonathan, and Vanessa Díaz. 2020. “Raciontologies:
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Silva, Antonio José Bacelar da, and Erika Robb Larkins. 2019. “The
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Terwiel, Anna. 2025. “Alligator Alcatraz and the Environmental
Politics of Prison Abolition.” Social Research: An
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Ticktin, Miriam. 2017. “A World Without Innocence.”
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Vega León, Ricardo. 2025. “The Tensions of Abolitionism and Racial
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