The anthropology of politics: u.s. presidential election edition

Seminars: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

There are no prerequisites for this course.

This course introduces students to the ethnographic study of politics, with an emphasis on elections. During the semester, we will follow the American Presidential race with anthropological questions in mind. Rather than probing the effectiveness of our electoral system ("do elections work"), or of our candidates ("do campaigns work"), we will take a step back to examine the cultural processes animating our versions of a good democracy, and the cultural ideals shaping the techniques that campaigns use to reach voters. For example, why do campaigns rely on marketing techniques to reach voters? What versions of consensus and autonomy lie behind the use of these techniques?

Few anthropologists have written about elections in the United States. For this reason, we will read across disciplines (mainly Social History, Political Communication and Journalism), and contrast these readings to ethnographic works exploring similar themes in other contexts. The readings are organized in three thematic blocks.

After taking this course, students will be able to:

Students will turn in two assignments, and a final research paper.

For further detail on these, see the Assignments section.

There are two required books for this class:

Schudson, Michael. The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life. Free Press, 2011. ISBN: 9781451631623.

Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis. Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns. Princeton University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780691153056. [Preview with Google Books]

Other readings for the class can be found in the table in the Readings section.

Plagiarism is a serious offense. If you're borrowing exact words from an author, use quotation marks, and include the source in parentheses thereafter (author's last name, year: page number). If you're paraphrasing, include the source you're borrowing ideas from in parentheses (author's last name, year). For more information on citation formats, check out the Chicago Manual of Style Online.

If you need writing assistance, the Writing and Communication Center at MIT offers MIT students free one-on-one professional advice from communication experts.

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