Current Anthropological Research: New Technologies and the Future of the Human

This course gives a comprehensive introduction to a specific area of contemporary anthropological investigation. Current research trends and recent theoretical developments are explored through critical discussions with emphasis on anthropology's evolving engagement with the selected field. The course offers a unique opportunity to be acquainted with diverse aspects - methodological, epistemological and theoretical - of the research process, aspects that lie at the very basis of anthropological analysis and practice, and of ethnographic production.

Technological innovation in human-computer interfaces, medical breakthroughs in biotechnology, and an emerging notion that ageing is a disease seriously challenge established understandings of what a human being is, what aging is and what the process of dying is. Augmented realities (AR), virtual realties (VR) and innovations in AI technology (such as the ChatGPT) also fundamentally challenge our understanding of what the human mind is, what consciousness is, and perhaps also what reality is.

In this course we will look at a range of ethnographies on these new technologies of the body and of the mind. We will look at the nature of human (transhumanism, posthumanism), the nature of death and dying (technoscientific immorality, cryonics, mind-upload), the nature of the social (AI companions, avatars etc) and the nature of the real (the "reality crises", deep fakes, simulation hypothesis, etc).

Although the technology we will look at is new, the questions we will grapple with have been around for a long time: how does the specific notion of what the human is (mind/body) reflect specific ideas of what the world is; what the real is? These questions are discussed in theories of religion, mythology, psychology and more. In this course we will employ new anthropological ethnographies to open new questions and new perspectives on key questions in anthropological theory.

A student who has completed the course should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence.

The student will be able to:

Knowledge

• provide in-depth knowledge of the topic addressed in the course, with particular reference to its history and associated theoretical and methodological debates in social anthropology

Skills

• explain the current state-of-art of research in the field of study addressed in the course
• assess critically the various methodological and theoretical considerations that must be taken in order to further develop the field of study

General competence

• apply key concepts and perspectives from the course and its field of study independently, in the understanding and analysis of local and global processes
• apply an understanding of and critically analyze the correlation and difference between observation, empirical data, interpretation, theory and analysis in text production
• discuss the potential for applying perspectives from the course in their own research project