ANTR-2101 Colombian Ethnology
The purpose of this course is to present the status of ethnological research in Colombia, particularly the historic, linguistic and socio-cultural situation, and the tendencies of contemporaneous indigenous populations. The first stage reviews the ethnological studies in Colombia and the situation of American Indians from the second half of the 19th Century, when the free trade reforms, slave manumission and the division of reservations took place, up to the institutionalization of anthropology as a university program in the 70s of the 20th Century. The second part offers a current panorama of the American Indian ethnic groups in Colombia: location, demography, inter-ethnic situation, state policies and native responses thereto, as well as the situation of armed conflict and how it affects them today. After that, the course discusses socio-cultural adaptations of three major regions, indicating their complexity as well as the sub-regional and ethnic specialization, as applicable. These regions are: Andean, Lowlands and Desert. The adaptations include cultural aspects, such as economy, social and political organization and their systems of representation. In addition, it discusses new indigenous identities and their formation processes, where deterritorialization, emergency and the invention of tradition are very common in the contemporaneous world and in Colombia in particular.
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