SAST2715 - Beyond Race: a Conceptual Framework for the 21st Century

This course will visit some of the existing studies that contradict, facilitate and challenge the extant discourses on hierarchies and status observed through the conceptualisation of race and caste. These two concepts have overlapped throughout the past two hundred years. The concept of caste is as old as the nineteenth century, seen through public policy interventions led by Boston Senator Charles Sumner. Similarly, race is studied through the South Asian topography by colonialists such as Herbert Risely, emphasizing the racial dimensions of societies. These studies were influential for the next one hundred years. But they were also challenged and critiqued. These studies aid us in informing the contemporary scales of societies that weigh oppression and control through antecedent-held concepts of race and caste, which can be effectively understood through colour-castes, a term popularized by Du Bois. In this course, we will study cross-national historical, anthropological, and political debates to make sense of our times. Students will learn about the twenty-first century’s new concepts and what they mean to our times and near future.