Power and Counter-Power: Anti-Elite Politics in Contemporary Times

We live in politically turbulent times, and so much of the confounding social and political movements of our times seem to position themselves against 'the elite': feminist movements against patriarchal states, autonomists against neoliberal capitalism and the police, White nationalists, nativists and populist strongmen against 'liberals', etc. These expressions of social and political discontent stand oddly at their political opposites (Left v. Right), share common grievances around the lack of structural responses by the states and the international community towards climate change, neoliberalism, racism and the like. They also all use decentralized, global networks and mediascapes to make themselves present. This course looks at social formations that emerge at the absence, or in opposition to, state and elite control. We will begin by delving into the anthropological record to understand how people throughout history have developed forms of counter-power that delegitimized or put the elites in check. Then, we will look into contemporary ethnographic studies of social and political mobilization that might adopt such strategies of counter-power for different and often contradictory and antagonistic goals. Case-studies will be drawn from Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.