This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
Students will be expected to read a series of texts in relation to their investigation of how social anthropology has drawn on other disciplines (such as sociology, psychoanalytic theory, philosophy, and the history of science) to aid its understanding of gender as a basis for human social organisation. Most of these texts are theoretical in orientation and aimed at postgraduates or professional readers (see Indicative Reading List), and are intended to complement the more ethnographic readings of Anthropology of Gender. Each reading addresses a particular problem in the impact of gender studies on anthropological thought, such as academic and political feminisms, sexuality, kinship, economics, and the distinction between what is 'natural' and what 'artificial' in the human experience. Students will be required to relate these themes to ethnographic data in both the co-requisite module and in their other modules. The module will be an optional one within the programmes to which it contributes, and as such will provide the opportunity for students in different Master's programmes to identify issues which they share in relation to the problem of gender as an arbiter of theoretical difference and ethnographic description.
Total contact hours: 20
Private study hours: 130
Total study hours: 150
MA Social Anthropology and associated programmes
Essay (4000 words) (70%)
Case Study Presentation (30%)
Reassessment methods: Like for Like
Reading list (Indicative list, current at time of publication. Reading lists will be published annually)
M. di Leonardo (ed), 1991 Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era. Berkeley: University of California Press.
P.L. Geller and M.K. Stockett (eds), 2007 Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present, and Future. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
H.L. Moore, 1994 A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
M. Strathern, 1989 The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
D.J. Haraway, 1991 Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books.
J. Butler, 2006 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
M. Foucault, 1990 The History of Sexuality Vol. III: The Care of the Self. 3rd ed. London: Penguin.
The intended subject specific learning outcomes. On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
8.1 develop a command of the key theoretical schools or movements in the anthropology of gender
8.2 relate these theories to the changing ways in which gender has been documented and analysed ethnographically
8.3 be conversant in the multi-disciplinary origins of the theories of gender upon which social anthropology in particular has drawn
8.4 understand how the ways in which changes in scholarly ideas about sex in gender are also a product of the political and economic climate in which these ideas emerge
8.5 understand that analyses of gender throughout the history of anthropology have been some of the most fruitful 'lenses' through which anthropologists documented and theorised local-level understandings of difference between kinds of persons and how that difference is organised socially, politically, economically or ritually.
The intended generic learning outcomes. On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
9.1 think critically in anthropological terms about social and cultural phenomena
9.2 present their ideas systematically and cogently both in speech and in writing
9.3 engage actively with their peers and tutors in the exchange of ideas
9.4 summarise complex material clearly and succinctly
9.5 draw upon a wide variety of sources and forms of evidence to formulate compelling arguments in written work.
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