Content

How do political, social and cultural changes affect the most basic of human relationships? How does, for instance, technology impact gender relationships? Does friendship mean the same wherever you go? How does economic hardship affect intimacy? What effect did colonialism have on sexual relations? Can you marry a ghost? Is love universal? Is sex cultural?

It may sound as a paradox, but the most intimate (gender relations, reproduction, fertility, marriage, kinship, sexuality, relatedness, …) has always been the primary focus of collective concern. Often they function as a canvas on which power structures, social tensions and anxieties are projected. Conversely, these anxieties, tensions and structures do not exist in and of themselves: they are incorporated in how people feel and think about relationships. This also means that these thoughts and feelings are subject to change and that, depending on time and space, they may vary considerably.

This course starts with an introduction to kinship and kinship terminology. Inspired by social phenomenology and ‘the anthropology of the body’ it then moves to a discussion of relatedness and intimacy (including topics such as friendship and care). The vantage point herein is that the person only exists as a set of relationships.

This course follows an extended case study approach. This means that, after a brief introduction to some basic concepts, the different chapters explore different facets of human relatedness and sexuality writ large on the basis of examples from around the globe. The aim, however, is not to provide an overview of sexual practices in different cultures and times. It does however, among others, want to place question marks behind our common, but ethnocentric understandings and assumptions..Via this detour, the case studies also hope to contribute to a more empirically sound understanding of crucial processes (with regard to, for instance, gender identification and practices, with regard to the role and place of IVF and its influence on the family, …) that take place in our own society.

Course material

Both mandatory and additional learning materials are available via Toledo

Format: more information

The lectures introduce and discuss the texts students find on Toledo, and places them in a wider analytical and theoretical framework.