ANT6018H: Approaches to Nature and Culture

This course adopts the nature-society distinction as a central problematic and explores some of the ways in which this dualism has been critiqued, contested, rejected and re-fashioned in social theory. Through readings that encompass often quite substantially different approaches to "nature," this course seeks to engender discussion and debate about "nature" and its relation to social theory. Although the course adopts a roughly chronological and thematic framework, the readings have been specifically selected to draw out and investigate the contributions and limitations of different theorists, and, consequently, to draw students into substantive conversations about them. The analytical emphasis of the course builds on the notion of interfaces — points of interconnection and/or disjuncture among the various agendas and "natured" projects being developed by different authors.

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