121-060 Power, Ideology and Inequality

This subject is a comparative ethnology of the distribution and organisation of power and status in societies of the Asia-Pacific region. Students who complete this subject should have a thorough understanding of the way in which anthropologists have approached political organisation in non-Western societies; have acquired a knowledge of the ethnographic literature on the dynamics of political organisation in societies categorised in the literature as 'egalitarian' and 'hierarchical' in Australia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific; and have critically examined anthropological theories about the distribution of power in societies in relation to issues of colonialism and gender.