MA Social Anthropology / Course details

Year of entry: 2024

Course unit details:
Key Approaches in Social Anthropology

Course unit fact file
Unit code SOAN70811
Credit rating 15
Unit level FHEQ level 7 – master's degree or fourth year of an integrated master's degree
Teaching period(s) Semester 1
Available as a free choice unit? Yes

Aims

This course aims to give students a broad and advanced grounding in the major theoretical approaches in social anthropology and at the same time place social anthropology as a discipline and a practice in its intellectual and social context. The aim is to enable you to see what anthropology is, what it has tried to achieve and how it has developed, and thus to enable you to proceed to further, more specialised study in anthropology.

Learning outcomes

The specific objectives of the module are that, on completion of it, you will be able to: 

  1. identify and critically analyse the frameworks anthropologists have used to explain human cultural diversity;
  2. explain why these frameworks emerged when they did
  3. contrast and compare their strengths and weaknesses;
  4. illustrate how anthropology has grown and changed in an interactive, if unequal, encounter with its ‘objects’ of study;
  5. evaluate the challenges facing anthropology today.

Teaching and learning methods

The course consists of 10 topics, delivered in two modes: a) “lectures” will be online and asynchronous and consist of texts, videos and learning activities delivered through Blackboard for students to work through in their own time during the week; b) “seminars” will be synchronous and consist of interactions either on campus in the classroom and/or virtually (e.g. via Zoom) or a combination of the two. “Seminars” may not happen every week and may be replaced by an asynchronous activity. Students are required to participate in all the “lectures” and “seminars”.

Assessment methods

3000 word essay - worth 100%

Feedback methods

Students will get feedback continuously throughout the course during the online learning activities and during the “seminars” components. Written formative feedback will be provided on non-assessed work. Written formative and summative feedback will be given on the assessed essay at the end of the course.

 

Recommended reading

Overview texts:

 Barnard, Alan. 2000. History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 Barth, Fredrik, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silverman. 2010. One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 Gay y Blasco, Paloma, and Huon Wardle. 2007. How to Read Ethnography. London and New York: Routledge. (available as an e-book via JRUL)

 Ingold, Tim, ed. 1995. Companion encyclopaedia of anthropology: humanity, culture and social life (London: Routledge). [This is a collection of long essays on different aspects of anthropology.]

 McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2000. Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. 2nd edition. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.

 Ortner, Sherry B. 1984. Theory of Anthropology Since the Sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26[1]: 126-166.

 Rapport, Nigel and Joanna Overing, eds. 2006 (2nd ed.). Social and Cultural Anthropology: the Key Concepts. London: Routledge. (available as an e-book via JRUL; referred to below as ‘Rapport and Overing’)

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Meghan Rose Donnelly Unit coordinator

Additional notes

The course consists of 10 topics, delivered in two modes: a) “lectures” will be online and asynchronous and consist of texts, videos and learning activities delivered through Blackboard for students to work through in their own time during the week; b) “seminars” will be synchronous and consist of interactions either on campus in the classroom and/or virtually (e.g. via Zoom) or a combination of the two. “Seminars” may not happen every week and may be replaced by an asynchronous activity. Students are required to participate in all the “lectures” and “seminars”.

 

 

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