This course explores the conceptual and methodological tools anthropologists employ to study the ways social groups enact, resist, and transform social relations that involve the production and distribution of power. It studies how anthropologists theorize politics in relation to power, authority, coercion, and consent. Topics explored in this class include political cultures in state and statelessness societies, political affect and the politics of everyday life, hegemony and resistance, governmentality and bio-politics, violence and militarization, social movements and citizenship, and the difficulties of anthropological research in conflict zones.