Course Syllabus
GEN/ASC2111
PDF
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Code
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GEN/ASC2111
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Title
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Description
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The course is designed to introduce students into the process of how
society and culture were historically connected in Central Asia and
politically constructed. The course will start with the historical
introduction into how present day societies in the region emerged,
with major emphasis on sedentary and nomadic legacies of societies and
culture with colonial and soviet interludes. The central focus of the
course is how traditional societies and cultures strive to survive
under the pressure of state/nation building processes,
ethno-nationalization, globalization and modernization. How political
elites employ traditions and cultures to construct new nations and
define the role and place of their country in the regional and global
contexts? The course combines analytic approaches of social sciences
with approaches of the Humanities, anthropological and sociological
perspectives with cultural history. This course is an introductory
interdisciplinary by approach to the topics that will focus on
socio-cultural methods of analyzing and interpreting Central Asian
cultures and societies. The study of kinship, social organization,
ethnic group relations, identity, and other cultural phenomena are
fundamental to the understanding the modern day processes and their
impact on making a new history and geopolitics of the region. These
subjects are rarely covered in many other classes from social and
cultural prisms. Special attention will be paid to widely ignored but
underlying problems of clans and tribal affiliations: their origin,
nature, evolution, changing concepts through time. Another sensitive
hot issues is identity that will viewed through evolution in history,
nature and current concepts, contested identities will be discussed.
Special attention is given to assessment of the soviet times and post
1991 stages.
The course will explore varied dimensions of Central Asian
cultures in this course, from the basis of tribal and ethnic
identities to food and gender relations. The students will combine
theoretical readings, in-class discussions and consider
anthropological, cultural, sociological case studies and limited
fieldwork that would allow them to see how empirical observational
research can allow us to better understand people from different
cultures. An aim of this course is to help you understand Central
Asian societies as an “insider” with cultural understandings that a
person raised in the region would have.
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Objectives
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1. How historically societies and cultures were formed in Central
Asia, and evolved under domestic and external pressure
2. How governance systems shaped social and cultural processes
3. How and why societies adopted /rejected cultural intrusions and
set a platform for cultural exchanges: food, family practices, sports
and entertainment, music, literature, popular culture, etc.
4. Critically analyze political documents on social and cultural
policies administration after 1991, and how they construct new faces
of countries and the region
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Assessment
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60 % -first and second assessments
40 % -final assessment