MA Anthropological Research / Course details

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. 

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;

This course uses the Melbourne method of seminar discussion, in which small groups take turns questioning, answering, and critiquing key texts and discipline-defining arguments. 

Each week we will work through material on a major conceptual approach in anthropology, starting with older approaches and moving on to more recent ones. When dealing with the older approaches, we also assess their current relevance for anthropology and whether the issues that they confronted are now resolved or still pertinent. 

This is an intensive introduction to anthropology, executed through critical group discussions. As you work your way through the key approaches, you will also begin to think like an anthropologist.
 

3,000 word essay - worth 100%

Students will receive feedback continuously throughout the course during classroom discussions. Oral formative feedback will be provided on non-assessed work. Written feedback will be given on the assessed essay at the end of the course. 

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. 2 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');
 

Students are required to participate in all classes and to collaborate in groupwork outside of class.