Social Anthropology - BA (Hons)

This module is an introduction to biological anthropology and human prehistory. It provides an exciting introduction to humans as the product of evolutionary processes. We will explore primates and primate behaviour, human growth and development, elementary genetics, prehistoric archaeology, the evolution of our species, origins of agriculture and cities, perceptions of race, forensic anthropology, and current research into human reproduction and sexuality. Students will develop skills in synthesising information from a range of sources and learn to critically evaluate various hypotheses about primate and human evolution, culture, and behaviour. This module is required for all BSc and BA Anthropology students. The module is also suitable for students in other disciplines who want to understand human evolution, and the history, biology, and behaviour of our species. A background in science is not assumed or required, neither are there any preferred A-levels or other qualifications

This module introduces students to the major figures, theories and approaches that have shaped Anthropology, both Sociocultural and Biological, over the past two centuries. It presents an historical outline of the major schools of thought and discusses the historical relationship between social, cultural and biological anthropology. It focuses on two major figures (Charles Darwin and Émile Durkheim) and on their theoretical legacies, namely the central notions of "evolution" and “structure” that dominated thinking on human sociality throughout the twentieth century.

This module introduces ethnography and the ethnographic/documentary film as ways of understanding individual and social lives. The focus is both critical and practical investigation of the research methods, production and communicative methods underlying them. Students will therefore acquire both critical and practical training in these key ethnographic methodologies. The parallel histories of the development of ethnographic writing, ethnographic media making and visual anthropology will be explored to facilitate greater integration between written and visual media. Indicative areas in the reading, analysis and practice of ethnography might include: (1) Critical and Historical Contextualisation and Evaluation, (2) How to evaluate its contribution to particular issues and topics within Social Anthropology; (3) Theoretical contributions; (4) Methodology and research methods; (5) The evaluation of the relationship between description and analysis (6) Examination of its structure, presentation and ability to communicate an understanding of a social and cultural group through the written word; (7) Ethnographies, Photography and Multi-Media. Indicative areas in visual anthropology covered by the module might include: (1) Collaborative and Participatory Media Production (2) Photography, Soundscapes and the Senses (3) Cinema Verite and Ethnographic Film (4) Indigenous Media, Reception and Publics (5) The Transformative Efficacy of Video.

You will study some of the key themes that have preoccupied social anthropologists through the history of the discipline, such as kinship, power, economic relations and religion. The module introduces these issues through theoretical approaches, but also through relevant ethnographic case studies. There will often be opportunities to understand the ways in which a social anthropological approach, grounded in ethnographic research, provides a different perspective on some of universal concerns that are shared by social science disciplines such as economics, politics and sociology.

This module is focused on a diverse range of approaches deployed by anthropologists to the study of religion, and belief and symbolic systems. It introduces a range of anthropological insights to the ongoing transformations of religious traditions and belief systems vis-à-vis colonial encounters, post-colonial settings, as well as globalisation. The aim of the module is to familiarize students with the complex interactions between lived religious practice, religious traditions, and the ways in which these are intertwined with other domains of social life, politics, economics and ideology. The key topics covered in this module focus on ritual and sacrifice; witchcraft and sorcery; secularisation and fundamentalism; millennialism and conversion; cosmology and ideology; human and non-human relationships; modes of religiosity, rationality and belief; mediation and ethics. This module will develop students' awareness of the strengths and limitations of anthropological insights compared to other disciplinary perspectives on religion such as theology, cognitive science or sociology.

This module builds on Ethnographies I, and its focus is to further investigate the canonical form in which research in social anthropology has been disseminated, the ethnography. The reading list for the module therefore consists exclusively of professional ethnographic monographs of varying thematic and regional focus.

Students will be expected to come to seminars with notes from their reading and will be encouraged to discuss that reading and to relate it to wider anthropological issues raised or implied by the authors of the ethnographies.

Considerable time will be spent, particularly in the earlier seminars, on instruction about how to read an ethnography and what goes into writing it. This might include how to examine its implicit (as opposed to explicit) theoretical assumptions; how to place it within the historical development of the discipline; how to evaluate its empirical investigation of particular theoretical problems; how to evaluate the relationship between description and analysis; how to evaluate its contribution to particular issues and topics within social anthropology; and the examination of its structure, presentation and ability to communicate an understanding of a social and cultural group through the written word.

What has Anthropology had to say about Europe and what role has Europe played in Anthropology? In the heyday of empire, Anthropology looked overseas for its classic subjects of study; but immediately after WWII, a new Anthropology of Europe emerged that reflected the divide between a rich and democratic north and an impoverished and politically turbulent south, with a focus on the periphery. Finally, in the 1980s, as the European Union expanded, a new Anthropology of Europe arose that threw off the shackles of primitivism and turned to face the contemporary world in all its complexity. Our School is one of the first places in Britain where European anthropology thrived. Building on this tradition, this module focuses on both classic and key contemporary themes, such as: conflict, nationalism, and terror; tourism and heritage; religion and migration (e.g. Islam); the EU and BREXIT; and the Euroscepticism of the past decade, in particular the rise of populism and the impact of 'austerity' politics. In this way, we explore ethnographic vantage points from which students may creatively rethink the idea of ‘Europe’ and its meaning for the future.

For a very long time it was difficult or impossible for outsiders to observe life in China directly in a systematic way, and as a result our accustomed ways of thinking about China are based on macro-level economic and political phenomena, stereotypes and icons --- when we think of China, we think of Confucianism and Communism, kung fu and feng shui, Mao and Chiang Kai Shek, trouble in Tibet and tension with Taiwan. These things are all important, but they leave us with little understanding of what ordinary life is like in China, and so Chinese society can appear mysterious and sometimes contradictory.

Fortunately, it has become progressively easier to conduct social scientific research in China and since the mid-1990s and there is now a substantial ethnographic literature that allows us to begin to see contemporary China as a flesh-and-blood society.

Studying this module, you will use ethnographic studies to explore key topics in the anthropology of China, such as ethnicity, religion, the role of the Communist Party, and the development of capitalism—and the purported 'moral crisis' that has occupied Chinese officials and China watchers since the beginning of the Reform & Opening Up Period in the 1970s.

To what extent is Southeast Asia a field of anthropological enquiry? Can we identify distinctive cultural similarities in this region diverse in politics and religion? How have historical, economic, political and ecological changes affected different Southeast Asian societies? With a strong emphasis on Austronesian-speaking peoples of island Southeast Asia, this course covers a selected range of key topics in anthropology. These include the differences between lowland and upland societies, the impact of colonial encounters, kinship and social organisation, power, hierarchy and the state, as well as gender, religion, ethnicity and nationalism, conflict, death, modernity, history and social change.

Law is often assumed to stand 'outside' of society, either because it is ‘above’ us or even ‘behind’ us, as in ‘society changes too fast for the law to keep up’. This module proposes law as an ethnographic subject, that is, a field of action governed by rather than governing social and cultural sensibilities. If, according to a classic cliché, anthropologists look for relationships while lawyers look for rules, the module will examine how social relationships can come to appear rule-like to legal and anthropological studies alike. Since lawyers in fact contributed to the early formation of the discipline of anthropology, anthropology itself may be seen as the product of a legalistic classification of human relations. The curriculum will therefore proceed through the history of the relationship between anthropology and law as disciplines and through ethnographic material from different legal environments. In doing so it will consider subjects such as language, gender, class, and religion and their effects upon the experiences of people involved in processes of dispute and its resolution. Finally the module will investigate how well law ‘travels’ between societies, and between different levels of the same society: for instance, how do concepts such as legal pluralism, the cultural defence, and universal human rights affect the theory and practice of law?

This module seeks to engage directly with the central provocation of the Anthropocene: that the speed, scope and scale of human industrial activities are having unparalleled, unintended and poorly understood impacts on the earth as a system, thus contributing to and significantly expanding the scale and risks associated with the crisis of modernity and its multiple dimensions: environmental, social, political, and cultural. In response to this crisis, and especially in light of the fact that human activities are so profoundly entangled with biological, ecological, geographical and geological process, a number of academic disciplines are reconsidering many of their core categories, boundaries and approaches. The Anthropocene constitutes an important, novel and challenging problem and a unique case study to attempt a more careful and effective integration of the different intellectual traditions and methods as exemplified in SAC: social and biological anthropology, geography, human ecology and conservation. Some of the main areas covered in the module include: 1) A review of the key problems and issues signalled by the Anthropocene, including the evidence and the debates and areas of disagreement 2) The Anthropocene in relation to earth system science and the planetary, with a particular emphasis in the relationship between the history of the earth, the history of life and the history of humans 3) Some of implications of the incoming period of heightened risk, uncertainty and cascading crises 4) To consider the consequences of the changes and challenges signalled by the Anthropocene upon core categories and assumptions underlying the humanities and sciences, with particular attention to such key binaries as human-nature, living-non-living, and technology-biology 5) The need and challenge of simultaneously considering multiple and apparently incommensurable scales, both in time and space 6) The Anthropocene dilemma: humans as agents or victims? 7) Considering some of the challenges the Anthropocene raises for the practice of science, politics, law, governance, etc. 8) What do these problems, questions and debates mean in terms of our own individual and collective futures, both professionally and personally? An integral part of the module is research and practice-based, and focussed around a project that encourages students to work collaboratively and in a way that promotes practice-based learning, for example by working closely with the School's Sustainability Working Group and the University of Kent Sustainability Team and contributing to some aspect of the School and University Sustainability Strategy.

Ethnicity' and 'nationalism’ are matters of contemporary urgency (as we are daily reminded by the media), but while the meanings of these terms are taken for granted, what actually constitutes ethnicity and nationalism, and how they have been historically constituted, is neither clear nor self-evident. This module begins with a consideration of the major theories of nationalism and ethnicity, and then moves on to a series of case studies taken from various societies around the world., and then moves on to examine a number of other important concepts—indigeneity, ‘race’, hybridity, authenticity, ‘invention of tradition’, multiculturalism, globalization—that can help us appreciate the complexity and dynamics of ethnic identities. The general aim of the module is to enable and encourage students to think critically beyond established, homogenous and static ethnic categories.

This module is an introduction to ethnopharmacology, a multidisciplinary field of study that employs chemistry, ecology, biology, pharmacology and anthropology to evaluate and understand the use of plants (and other substances) in non-western medical systems. While students will be introduced to all of the disciplines involved in ethnopharmacological research, this module will have a heavy anthropological focus. Lecture and reading materials will address questions related to the actions of natural products in the human body, the ecological and evolutionary basis of medicinal plants use, the epistemology of non-western medical systems, the efficacy of medicinal plants and the development of pharmaceuticals based on traditional medicines. Topics discussed in class will provide ideas and models for student research projects. This module should appeal to students with interests in anthropology and/or medical care/research.

Primarily intended to offer a critical analysis of the concept of development, particularly as it is used to talk about economic and social change in the developing world, the module shows how anthropological knowledge and understanding can illuminate 'development issues' such as rural poverty, environmental degradation, international aid and humanitarian assistance, climate change and the globalization of trade. Topics discussed include the role of anthropology in development practice, by examining some of the methods being used to either study or participate in current development projects, whether at local, national or international levels of intervention.

Anthropology has an important role to play in the examination of our own organizational lives as embedded in various forms of capitalism. This module will allow students to gain anthropological perspectives on business formations, structures, practices and ideologies. Businesses – be they individuals, families, corporations, nation-states or multi-lateral corporations - have identities that are invariably distinct from one another and which are forged upon and promote particular social relationships. Ethnographic case-studies, with a strong emphasis on the stock market in the last third of the course will provide the basis for discussing how these social relationships that enact power, are embedded in broader cultural processes such as ethnicity, nationalism, migration, and kinship as well as ideologies of gender, aesthetics and religion among others. Acknowledging the multiple dynamic relationships between businesses, people and marketplaces will allow us to evaluate their roles as reactive producers, consumers and disseminators of cultural processes within our surrounding environments, extending from the local to the global.

Anthropology has an important role to play in the examination of our own organizational lives as embedded in various forms of capitalism. This module will allow students to gain anthropological perspectives on business formations, structures, practices and ideologies. Businesses – be they individuals, families, corporations, nation-states or multi-lateral corporations - have identities that are invariably distinct from one another and which are forged upon and promote particular social relationships. Ethnographic case-studies, with a strong emphasis on the stock market in the last third of the course will provide the basis for discussing how these social relationships that enact power, are embedded in broader cultural processes such as ethnicity, nationalism, migration, and kinship as well as ideologies of gender, aesthetics and religion among others. Acknowledging the multiple dynamic relationships between businesses, people and marketplaces will allow us to evaluate their roles as reactive producers, consumers and disseminators of cultural processes within our surrounding environments, extending from the local to the global.

Ethnicity' and 'nationalism’ are matters of contemporary urgency (as we are daily reminded by the media), but while the meanings of these terms are taken for granted, what actually constitutes ethnicity and nationalism, and how they have been historically constituted, is neither clear nor self-evident. This module begins with a consideration of the major theories of nationalism and ethnicity, and then moves on to a series of case studies taken from various societies around the world., and then moves on to examine a number of other important concepts—indigeneity, ‘race’, hybridity, authenticity, ‘invention of tradition’, multiculturalism, globalization—that can help us appreciate the complexity and dynamics of ethnic identities. The general aim of the module is to enable and encourage students to think critically beyond established, homogenous and static ethnic categories.