#  Anthro 2802 - Anthropology and the Geopolitical: China and Africa entanglements in ethnographic perspective 

 





 Semester:   Spring 

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 Year offered:  2025 

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 Link: [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-225834/2024/spring/21190) 

 

 

 

 Dr. Elisa Tamburo

 W 3-5:45pm

 The course interrogates the engagement of China on the African continent in the past century, mostly through ethnographic writing. We will critically evaluate the involvement of China in the region through various analytical lenses. The course is divided in three parts. Part 1 will explore the history of China’s involvement in Africa starting from the 1950s up to the emergence of the New Silk Roads with the ‘One Belt, One Road Initiative’ in 2013. It will focus on the debates that have framed this engagement, from the denunciation of new forms of colonialism, to debates on African agency. Part 2 will delve into aspects of political economy and economic cooperation by discussing some of the sectors in which Chinese capital has been prominent in Africa: mining and the extractive industry, agriculture, and infrastructural building will be taken as a case. Part 3 will be descending to the dimension of the everyday and zoom into people’s ordinary lives. Migration, labor, marriage, and new landscapes of morality will be some of the central themes. The course is structured for students to consider various scale of analysis, from the macro-perspectives of government-to-government relations to the everyday interactions among ordinary people. Such a transversal focus will allow students to reflect on the ways in which ethnography can contribute to the study of the geo-political from a multiscalar perspective.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Graduate ](/course-area/graduate)
- [ Social Anthropology ](/course-area/social-anthropology)
- [ 2025 ](/course-year/2025)
- [ Spring ](/season/spring)