Unit convenor and teaching staff |
Unit convenor and teaching staff
Lecturer
Jaap Timmer
Jaap Timmer
Payel Ray
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Credit points |
Credit points
3
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Prerequisites |
Prerequisites
(39cp at 100 level or above) or admission to GDipArts
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Corequisites |
Corequisites
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Co-badged status |
Co-badged status
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Unit description |
Unit description
How might we think about the relationships between the built environment, culture, and individual or collective identity? What makes a city socialist, Islamic or modern? What impact do these varied forms of urban organisation and architecture have on the inhabitants that dwell in them? This unit introduces students to the anthropology of the city through focusing on the organisation of space and the politics of architectural forms and urban planning. It explores how space and its design are intimately connected to particular modernist projects such as nationalism, colonialism, socialism and apartheid. Students consider a variety of anthropological perspectives that seek to explain the amazing diversity and surprising similarity of urban cultures and their spatial forms, as well as ways that the built environment might both express and generate culture, power and individual or collective identities.
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Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
Name | Weighting | Hurdle | Due |
---|---|---|---|
Minor Essay | 15% | No | 2nd September 2016 |
Major Essay | 40% | No | 21 October 2016 |
Take Home Test | 25% | No | 8 November 2016 |
Tutorial | 20% | No | n/a |
Due: 2nd September 2016
Weighting: 15%
Using the materials covered in the first four weeks of lectures and tutorials, write a short commentary on the organization of space in the Cathedral.
Preliminary references include the tutorial and secondary readings
Due: 21 October 2016
Weighting: 40%
This essay is a maximum of 1500 words. It is due Friday 21st October (end of Week 10). Choose your topic from one of the questions below.
Further references will be given out nearer to the second essay date.
1. Using Low’s distinction between the social production and social construction of space, discuss either indigenous urbanity in Australia or urbanization in Africa.
2. Compare and contrast ecological, cultural and social production perspectives on the built environment.
3. Discuss the similarities and differences between any two forms of modernist city i.e. apartheid, colonial, Islamic, socialist, nationalist, settler colonialist etc, concentrating on connections between their built environments, politics, culture, and inhabitants’ urban experience and identity. You are encouraged to use case studies of specific cities.
4. “One of the social effects of modernist master planning is the de-politicization of those who are not planners, since their political organization becomes irrelevant if not obstructive in decisions about urban development” (Holston). Discuss in relation to selected city examples.
5.Write your own question that incorporates the main themes of the course and readings (please draft your question and email it to me, or meet with me for discussion before proceeding).
This may include topics on the organization of the built environment exploring issues such as design and security, health, sustainability and the environment (i.e. the sick building syndrome), interior design, ethnicity and the city, architecture and urban planning issues, monuments and urban landscapes, the use of space, strategies of place-making, urbicide, landscapes of clearances, conservation struggles, heritage processes, consumption, housing and property, spatial interventions etc.
Due: 8 November 2016
Weighting: 25%
A take-home exam will be distributed at the Tuesday seminar on 1st November and will be due back at the Tuesday seminar on 8th November. No extensions will be allowed and any late returns will be penalized. The exam will consist of a combination of short answers to questions that link together topics and themes covered in lectures, tutorials and practical activities throughout the course. More information will be distributed nearer the due date.
Due: n/a
Weighting: 20%
Tutorial preparation involves a couple of hours of pleasurable (!) reading a week. To facilitate tutorial discussion, you are required to submit a one-page typed answer to the tutorial question for that week (see lecture and tutorial programme below).
The format of this answer is quite specific and you must address the following criteria:
There are ten tutorial questions. The tutorial mark will be awarded both on the basis of the written work, as well as on tutorial participation.
Tutorial papers are to be done every week and they can only be submitted at the tutorial in which the reading is to be discussed.
Anth 303 involves a two-hour seminar starting at 9.00 pm and finishing at 11.00 pm on Tuesday, in W5A203. This weekly meeting will be used for lectures, discussion and for films. Attendance at seminars is compulsory.
Students are also required to attend one of three weekly tutorials on Tuesdays: the first and second are scheduled in C5C 240 at 11.00 am and 12.00 noon respectively; the third is in W5A201 at 2.00pm.
REQUIRED TEXTS
TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGY
Tuesday Lecture: Each week, the course convener will use the two hours of the Tuesday meeting to sketch out and address the key issues under discussion and to situate the tutorial readings. The class will also view and interpret a number of significant films.
Tutorial: Tutorial readings are intimately connected to the topics under discussion in the two-hour lecture session. Sometimes the tutorial material approaches the issues explored in the lecture from a contrary direction; sometimes it places those issues in a different context or summarizes key themes. Students are expected to attend all tutorials and to be familiar with the assigned material, as well as participate in small group discussion or larger tutorial activities.
Week One: Relations between Built Form, Society and Experience/Consciousness
1. The Tower of Babel: Introduction to Selected Dimensions of the Built Environment
2. Built Form, Culture, Subjectivity
Week Two: Anthropological Approaches to Urban Form & Built Environment (1)
1. Ecological & Social Organization Approaches
2. Symbolic or Semiotic Approaches
Week Three: Excursion to St Mary’s Cathedral
Meet at 9.55am (for 10.00am start) at the middle door, next to organ console, for the guided tour.
No Tutorial this week.
Week Four: Anthropological Approaches to Urban Form & Built Environment (2)
1. Social Production Approaches
2. Film: The Architecture of Mud
Part Two: Historical Background to Urban Anthropology
Week Five: Representing the Heart of Darkness: Imperial Urban Ethnography at Home and Abroad
1. Urban Ethnographic Representation at Home: Karl Marx, Charles Dickens and Metropolitan Urban Ethnography.
2. Urban Ethnographic Representation Abroad: International Fairs, Native Villages, Picture Postcards and Photograph
Week Six: Urban Anthropology and Case Study 1: Dependent Colonialism and Urbanization in Africa
1. Anthropology of the Urban: Anthropology’s Missing Link?
2. Settler & Dependent Colonialisms: Introduction to World Systems Theory in the African Context
Film: Songs of the Adventurers
Part Three: Urban Modernities, Imagined Communities
Week Seven: The Colonial City as Exemplar of Modernist Cities
1. Modernity & Planning
2. The Colonial City: Laboratories of Modernity
Term break
Week Eight: Anti-Colonialism and the Struggle for Urban Space
1. Space and Resistance
2. Film: Battle of Algiers
Week Nine: Post-Colonialism and the Nationalist City: Monumentalism and Identity
1. Nationalism and Identity
2. Nationalism and Urban Form
Part Four: Exit State Developmentalism, Enter Neoliberal Globalisation?
Week Ten: Istanbul: History, Experience and Politics of Place (1)
1. Republican Turkey
2. Film: Ekumenopolis
Week Eleven: Istanbul: History, Experience and Politics of Place (2)
1. Neoliberal Globalization and the Politics ofCulture and Public Space
2. Film: Crossing the Bridge
Week Twelve: The End of Modernism & State Developmentalism?
1. Imagining the City: Metaphors and Images
2. Built Environment, Culture, Consciousness
Week Thirteen: Course Overview and Last Thoughts
1. Reckoning with Architecture, the City, Place and Identity.
There is no tutorial scheduled for this week, but students are encouraged to look at:
Dovey, K. (1999) ‘Liberty and Complicity’ (Chapter 13) in Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form.
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Undergraduate students seeking more policy resources can visit the Student Policy Gateway (https://students.mq.edu.au/support/study/student-policy-gateway). It is your one-stop-shop for the key policies you need to know about throughout your undergraduate student journey.
If you would like to see all the policies relevant to Learning and Teaching visit Policy Central (https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policy-central).
Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/study/getting-started/student-conduct
Results shown in iLearn, or released directly by your Unit Convenor, are not confirmed as they are subject to final approval by the University. Once approved, final results will be sent to your student email address and will be made available in eStudent. For more information visit ask.mq.edu.au.
Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/
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