CIIS, Department of Anthropology and Social Change

Anthropology and Social Change MA and PhD Programs
ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT

The Anthropology and Social Change is unique among graduate programs in the United States due to its focus on activist anthropology. We believe that anthropologists should analyze, discuss, and explore the possible; that they should research alternative institutions; that they need to collectively reflect and debate the dilemmas of other possible worlds. This collective effort of understanding "real utopias" takes the form of analytic and ethnographic study of existing alternatives in the present.

Food sovereignty in California, environmental/climate justice models in Latin America, worker cooperatives in Oakland, social centers in Italy, autonomous systems of justice in Guerrero, community gardens in Detroit, self-managed factories in Argentina, "good government" of the Zapatistas, buen vivir (good life) and plurinationalism in indigenous Bolivia, participatory democracy in Kerala, solidarity economics of Mondra