240514 SE The Social Life of (Rail-)Roads (P4) (2020W)
Continuous assessment of course work
Labels
Participation at first session is obligatory!The lecturer can invite students to a grade-relevant discussion about partial achievements. Partial achievements that are obtained by fraud or plagiarized result in the non-evaluation of the course (entry 'X' in certificate). The plagiarism software 'Turnitin' will be used for courses with continuous assessment.
Registration/Deregistration
Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).
- Registration is open from Tu 01.09.2020 00:01 to We 23.09.2020 23:59
- Deregistration possible until Mo 19.10.2020 23:59
Details
max. 20 participants
Language: English
Lecturers
Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N
Update 11.12.2020: Due to the current Covid-19 Situation the course will change to digital till the end of the semester.
Update 3.11.2020: Due to the current Covid-19 Situation the course will change to digital till the end of the year.Attendance at the first meeting is mandatory. We plan to hold all meetings in person but COVID-19 might necessitate changes mid-stream.- Monday 12.10. 11:30 - 14:45 Übungsraum (A414) NIG 4. Stock
- Monday 16.11. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
- Monday 30.11. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
- Monday 14.12. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
- Monday 11.01. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
- Monday 25.01. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
Information
Aims, contents and method of the course
Assessment and permitted materials
A mandatory seminar paper will count for 50% of the grade. The rest of the grade will be determined by short oral presentations and data collection and analysis assignments, as well as by course participation.
Minimum requirements and assessment criteria
In order to receive a passing grade, you need at least 60 points. A 'sehr gut' requires at least 90 out of 100 points (a 'gut' at least 80 points, etc.). Attendance is required throughout the semester.
Examination topics
There will be no exams.
Reading list
A few relevant books and articlesAguiar, Marian. 2011. Tracking Modernity: India’s Railway and the Culture of Mobility. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Anderson, Ryan. 2017. Roads, Value, and Dispossession in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Economic Anthropology 4(1):7-21.Argounova-Low, Tatiana, and Mikhail Prisyazhnyi. 2015. Biography of a Road: Past and Present of the Siberian Doroga Lena. Development and Change 47(2):367387.Bear, Laura. 2007. Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy, and the Intimate Historical Self. New York: Columbia University Press.Beaumont, Matthew, and Michael Freeman, eds. 2007. The Railway and Modernity: Time, Space, and the Machine Ensemble. Bern: Peter Lang.Beck, Kurt, Gabriel Klaeger, and Michael Stasik, eds. 2017. The Making of the African Road. Leiden: Brill.Dalakoglou, Dimitris. 2017. The Road: An Ethnography of (Im)mobility, Space, and Cross-Border Infrastructures in the Balkans. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Edelman, Birgitta. 1997. Shunters at Work: Creating a World in a Railway Yard. Stockholm: Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University.Harvey, Penny, and Hannah Knox, eds. 2015. Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Jia, Fanqi, and Mia M. Bennett. 2018. Chinese Infrastructure Diplomacy in Russia: The Geopolitics of Project Type, Location, and Scale. Eurasian Geography and Economics 59(3-4):340-377.Karuka, Manu. 2019. Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad. Oakland: University of California Press.Lin, Weiqiang. 2019. Transport Geography and Geopolitics: Visions, Rules and Militarism in China's Belt and Road Initiative and Beyond. Journal of Transport Geography 81.McCallum, Stephanie. 2019. Railroad Revolution: Infrastructural Decay and Modernization in Argentina. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 2(1):540-559.Minn, Michael. 2013. The Political Economy of High Speed Rail in the United States. Mobilities 8(2):185-200.Pedersen, Morten Axel, and Mikkel Bunkenborg. 2012. Roads that Separate: Sino-Mongolian Relations in the Inner Asian Desert. Mobilities 7(4):555-569.Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. 2000[1977]. Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise. Zur Industrialisierung von Raum und Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer.Schweitzer, Peter, and Olga Povoroznyuk. 2019. A Right to Remoteness? A Missing Bridge and Articulations of Indigeneity along an East Siberian Railroad. Social Anthropology 27(2):236-252.
Association in the course directory
Last modified: Fr 12.05.2023 00:21
Both instructors are involved in international research projects focusing on the role of transportation infrastructure (and particularly, on roads and railways) for local communities in the Circumpolar North. While the seminar will refer to empirical examples stemming from this ongoing research, the seminar’s scope will cover a variety of topics and regions. Thus, comparative case studies of other transportation infrastructures might be brought into the discussion as well. Likewise, while literature and approaches from social anthropology will be predominating, the seminar will aim at broader disciplinary perspectives on roads and railways, including but not limited to historical and ethnographic studies, socio-ecological systems approach, actor-network theory and material semiotics.