- You are able to analyse and explain a range of topical issues emerging from the debate about growing diversity and polarization in postcolonial nation-states.
- You are able to critically apply and discuss the comparative merits of a variety of theoretical concepts and approaches.
- You are able to develop your own critical viewpoints on dilemmas regarding diversity in relation to concrete events, cases and social situations.
- You are able to communicate a thorough understanding of contemporary dilemmas regarding diversity, both orally and in writing.
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In an increasingly diverse and polarized world, belonging and inequality have become the object of intense debate and concern. On the one hand, we see an intensified construction or rearticulation of boundaries, such as in border regimes aimed at migrants and refugees in Europe and beyond, in government algorithms implicitly focused on specific categories of citizens, but also in new authoritarian reproductive politics of abortion. On the other hand, we view new emancipation movements and projects that strive to deconstruct, decolonize and fight against previously taken-for-granted boundaries and that imagine alternative social relations and social orders, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, queer or Muslim feminist platforms, and local citizen initiatives aimed at conviviality or inclusive solidarity. These discussions and movements invoke multiple and intersecting indexes of perceived difference: of race and ethnicity, class and sustainable lifelihoods, gender and sexuality, mobility, legal status and indigeneity, and religion and the secular.
In this course, we study how these new politics of belonging and battles for justice take shape in highly diverse and polarized societies. We critically deconstruct the way in which dominant discourses, moral notions, and governance practices order and fix heterogenous and fluid life worlds and differentiate the value of human beings. But we are especially interested in new imaginations of relations across boundaries in governance, everyday encounters, social movements and in cutting edge theories. How are diversity and social justice imagined, limited and produced by governance actors, institutions, and organisations? How do people create a new sense of belonging in diverse and polarized societies, and how is this shaped, or not, by dominant discourses? Where and when can new forms of conviviality and equity across boundaries emerge? In order to re-imagine taken-for-granted boundaries, we apply a postcolonial perspective and find inspiration in decolonial studies, critical whiteness studies, affect theory, queer theory, postsecular critiques, Science and Technology Studies, humanitarianism and anthropology of morality, and populism studies.
This course connects to SDG 1: No poverty; SDG 5: Gender Equality; and SDG 10: Reduced inequalities.
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Assessment will be based on participation, a presentation about your research plans, and the writing of an essay.
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The course begins with an introductory lecture. Subsequently, seminars will be organised over a five week period. During the entire course you will be required to thoroughly prepare all meetings by reading the literature and preparing questions for discussion.
This course is open to Master students from other programs, pending approval by the course coordinator. Please email the course coordinator for more information.
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