ANT 258 - Topics: Futurecasting and Speculative Anthropology (1)

Trying to imagine or even predict the future has been a preoccupation of human beings as far back as we can tell and maintains its importance in our everyday lives–both as individuals and as a society. In this course, we will explore current and predicted issues of societal concern or excitement, such as artificial intelligence, gene editing, media disinformation, surveillance capitalism, platform labor, digital activism, and climate change. We will examine these and other issues from an anthropological perspective and contextualize them with ethnographic cases, but we will also draw on other domains, including public health, ethics of technology, environmental science, speculative film, humanistic literature, and cultural adaptation. In our final work for the class, each student will develop a practical but ambitious policy suggestion on an issue of future importance, and they will contribute to building a speculative future of their own. This course may count toward the SOC/SAN/ANT majors. Prerequisite: ANT 101 or SOC 101
(Social Science)