ANTHROPOLOGY

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Professor T Ingold

Pre-requisites

None

Overview

Anthropology is the comparative study of human ways of life. In this course we introduce some of the key questions of contemporary anthropological debate. Does human nature exist and, if so, how does it relate to cultural variation? How do human beings differ from other animals? How do they make a living? Why do people differ in the ways in which they perceive their environments? What is the relation between the ways people talk and the ways they think? How do they grow up to become knowledgeable members of their communities? How, if at all, does traditional knowledge differ from modern science? Can anthropology itself be scientific, or is it more like an art?

2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

1 two-hour examination (60%), continuous assessment (30%) and tutorial participation (10%).

Credit Points

20

Course Coordinator

Dr N Wachowich

Pre-requisites

None

Overview

This course continues the exploration of key questions of contemporary anthropological debate already begun in ‘Introduction to Anthropology 1’. How do societies define their kin and what do we mean by ‘blood relations’? How does culture affect the way we think about sex and gender? Do economic systems shape our perceptions of the world? How do symbols, rituals, and religious systems regulate our daily lives? How has colonialism affected social relations between peoples and structured our notions of racial differences? What are the causes of ethnicity and nationalism? Does development aid or abet the plight of third-world or indigenous peoples? These themes will be illustrated through readings and films.

2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour tutorial per week..

1 two-hour examination (60%), continuous assessment (30%) and tutorial participation (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A King

Pre-requisites

Either AT 1002 or AT 1501

Overview

This course looks at the anthropological encounter with other worlds, both near and far, and considers the idea of seeing the familiar in the strange and the strange in the familiar. We will be concerned with how anthropologists seek to understand the ways in which people classify the world, with understanding rituals (both religious and secular), with symbols and symbolism, gift-giving, exchange and possessions, with systems of thought and cosmology, and with understanding social relatedness. We will also look at what anthropologists do in the field, and at the politics and ethics of writing ethnography. One of the course aims is to develop skills in the critical reading of ethnography, and in the application of anthropological insights and techniques to analyse familiar practices.

2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.

1 two-hour examination (60%), continuous assessment (30%) and tutorial participation (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr E Hallam

Pre-requisites

Either AT 1002 or AT 1501

Overview

The course explores key social, cultural and political issues in an anthropological and historical framework. Focusing on Europe from the sixteenth Century to the present day, the following themes will be examined through case studies and cross-cultural comparison: travel and cultural encounters; emotion, sexuality and identity; gender and the body; ritual and belief; power and protest; popular culture and festivity; museums, art and material culture. An important aspect of the course will be the use and interpretation of textual and visual materials – printed images, material artefacts and photographs, including those held in local collections.
2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour seminar per week.
1 two-hour examination (60%), continuous assessment (30%) and tutorial participation (10%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

To be arranged

Pre-requisites

AT 2507

Notes

This course will only be available to Single Honours Anthropology students.

Overview

This course provides an introduction to the formulation of anthropological research questions and research design, discusses anthropological practice in the context of current issues in the philosophy of social science and language, deals with key questions surrounding fieldwork and participant observation, reviews a range of auxiliary study methods and practical techniques of data collection – including audio-recording and ethnographic film – and examines some of the gender implications and political and ethical issues raised by anthropological research.

2 one-hour lectures and 1 hour tutorial per week.

1 three-hour examination (40%), research proposal (10%), research assignment (30%), essay (20%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr D G Anderson

Pre-requisites

AT 2507 or by permission of the Head of Department.

Overview

This course examines how the guiding ideas of Western thought and science have emerged historically out of European encounters with the indigenous inhabitants of other lands, and how these ideas have, in turn, influenced contemporary anthropological understandings of ‘other cultures’. We will focus, in particular, on ways of describing and analysing the relations between people and their environment, and between human beings and non-human animals. Through a review of the ways in which the concept of society has been set against that of nature in the work of several prominent anthropologists, the course will lay foundations for subsequent study of history of anthropological thought, while also introducing students to basic techniques of genealogical inquiry, library research and ethnographical writing.
2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.
1 three-hour examination (60%) and continuous assessment: one essay (40%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor T Ingold

Pre-requisites

AT 3018 or by permission of the Head of Department.

Overview

This course explores the development and contemporary significance of the theoretical debate surrounding the nature of culture and social life, through a critical review of the work of three major figures in the history of anthropology: Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Along the way, we shall introduce the writings of many other pioneers of anthropological thought of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Herbert Spencer, Franz Boas, Ferdinand de Saussure, A R Radcliffe-Brown, Bronislaw Malinowski, Louis Dumont, Edmund Leach, Meyer Fortes and Mary Douglas. The course will be organised thematically rather than chronologically, with the emphasis on society and social life in earlier sections, and on culture and systems of thought in later ones. This division is not absolute, however, and the transition from one focus to the other is gradual.
2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.
1 three-hour examination (60%) and continuous assessment (40%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr A King

Pre-requisites

Available only to Junior Single Honours Students

Overview

This course deals with some of the issues involved in writing up the results of an original project of anthropological research. We will consider the relative merits of alternative styles of writing for the presentation of qualitative material derived from informal interviews and participant observation, including issues of narrative and representation, tense and voice, and reflexivity. We shall also look at techniques of drafting and editing, including the preparation of abstracts and bibliographies, and the use of footnotes, references, figures and diagrams. The course will also introduce students to the workings of the peer review process, and to the steps that lead from writing to publication.

1 one hour lecture followed by 1 one hour tutorial or practical per week.

Continuous assessment(100%).

Credit Points

15

Course Coordinator

Dr. Tatiana Argounova-Low

Pre-requisites

AT 3006

Notes

This course will only be available Single Honours Anthropology students.

Overview

Under close supervision of a member of staff, students will develop a research project involving the collection and analysis of original material. In this part of the project, students will clarify the problem to be addressed, placing it in its wider comparative and theoretical context. They will review the literature relevant to the project and consider the approach and techniques to be adopted in carrying it out.
1 tutorial per fortnight and a number of ad hoc workshops.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr N Wachowich

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4.

Overview

This course critically examines representations of indigenous peoples as they occur through such media as: ethnographic films, museums, art, photography and the Internet. It will address the history and politics of colonial representations as well as the contemporary, politicised efforts of indigenous peoples to gain control over their own cultural productions. Students will critically analyse anthropological issues related to visual anthropology, performance theory, ethnographic film and museum studies. They will explore how visual representations of indigenous cultures emerge in particular contexts and political economics. Questions raised in the course will relate to social theory, to anthropological knowledge construction, to ethical and political concerns raised by cross-cultural representation, and to the role that visual media play in facilitating, mediating, but also complicating intercultural encounters.

1 one-hour lecture and 2 hour lab per week.

1 three-hour examination (60%) and continuous assessment (40%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr. Tatiana Argounova-Low

Pre-requisites

AT 3517

Notes

This course will only be available Single Honours Anthropology students.

Overview

In this part of the project, students will analyse the material collected and, under the guidance of a member of staff, will write the final report. The techniques of analysis will vary with the nature of the research problem; however all students will be guided in the arts of critical analysis, report planning and report writing. As in Part 1, particular emphasis will be placed on helping students develop their own skills.
1 tutorial per fortnight.
Continuous assessment (100%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr E Hallam

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4.

Notes

Not available in session 2003/2004.

Overview

This course will focus upon anthropological and historical studies of carnival. It will explore the experience and interpretation of carnival and the carnivalesque in different social and cultural contexts including Europe, Africa and South America. There are several central themes: festivity, cultural performance and display; the body and sexuality; disguise and identity; gender relations; power, resistance and subversion; order and disorder; ritual and symbolism; violence and abuse. The course will draw upon a range of media including film, visual images and texts.
1 one-hour lecture and 1 one-hour seminar per week.
1 three-hour examination (60%) and essays (40%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr D G Anderson

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4.

Overview

This course will examine the concept of aboriginal rights as understood and practised in places colonised by the British, the Russians and the Spanish. Examples will be drawn from Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Brazil and Peru. In seminars and written work, students will be asked to draw comparisons between these regions. Through examining concrete political struggles, the seminar will focus upon symbolic and cross-cultural understandings of legal ideas within various colonial situations. This comparative approach will lead to a critical understanding of fourth world politics, human rights, land tenure, symbolic resistance, religious syncretism and national identity.

1 one-hour lecture and 1 one-hour seminar per week.

1 three-hour examination (60%) and one essay (40%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Professor T Ingold

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4.

Overview

This course will explore the connections between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture, conceived as alternative approaches to understanding and shaping how people perceive and relate to their surroundings, in currents of space, time and movement. It focuses on: issues of perception, design and construction; on the generation and reproduction of form in natural and 'built' environments; the relation between bodily movements and lived time/space; the significance of craft and skill; activities of depiction and description, and impacts of old and new technologies. The course will explore these issues through readings, practical exercises and site visits.
1 one-hour lecture and 1 one-hour seminar per week.
1 three-hour examination (60%) and 2 essays (40%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr A King

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4.

Overview

Ever since the pioneering work of Malinowski and Boas, anthropologists have paid particular attention to how people talk, and how they use language in a range of different contexts. This course surveys the subdiscipline of linguistic anthropology, drawing on case material from indigenous North American and Siberian societies, as well as from Europe, South-East Asia and South America. Topics to be covered include the ethnography of speaking, sociolinguistic variation, language ideologies, language shift and "endangered" languages, historical reconstruction, semiotics, linguistic description, and the relationship between language and culture.

1 one-hour lecture and 1 one-hour seminar per week.

1 three-hour examination (60%) and continuous assessment: essays (40%).

Credit Points

30

Course Coordinator

Dr E Hallam

Pre-requisites

Available only to students in Programme Year 4.

Overview

This course examines material culture and anthropological perspectives. It explores the role of collectors and museums in the cultural history of Europe and their place in contemporary societies. Central to the course will be an examination of the meanings attributed to objects; aspects of curiosity, obsession and the ‘fetish’; the representation of ‘others’ in museums; colonialism and cultural encounters; systems of classification; the question of ‘authenticity’ and the ‘heritage industry’; the relationships between museums and European visual culture. Issues of museum conservation, documentation and display will also be addressed.

1 one-hour lecture and 1 one-hour seminar per week.

Continuous assessment (100%).