ASS329 - Anthropology of Crime and Violence

Unit details

Content

Violence and crime, their forms and controls, are fundamental to human social existence and are central to theories regarding the nature of humanity, society and the state. The anthropology of crime and violence addresses these points from a comparative cross-cultural perspective. Emphasis is given to the situational nature of violence and human conflict with case studies of warfare, state-based violence, sexual violence, genocide and ethnic conflict.

A key proposition in this subject is that attempts to define human violence as an aspect of a transcendental human nature -- an element of humanity as a whole -- tend to conflate specific instances with laboratory-like definitions. Instead, the unique social, cultural and historical situations must be grasped in all their complexity before we can generalise about the nature of human types. In the same way, the issue of what constitutes crime in a cross-cultural framework must commence with a broad grasp of the social and cultural context.

Assessment

Seminar participation and presentation (campus) or CloudDeakin discussion board participation (Cloud (online) mode) (20%) Short writing exercise (20%) cloud based quizzes (20%) Essay (40%)

Unit Fee Information

* Rate for all CSP students, except for those who commenced Education and Nursing units pre 2010
** Rate for CSP students who commenced Education and Nursing units pre 2010
Please note: Unit fees listed do not apply to Deakin Prime students.