
- UCAS course code
- L600
- UCAS institution code
- M20
Course unit details:
Anthropological Theory
Unit code | SOAN20830 |
---|---|
Credit rating | 20 |
Unit level | Level 2 |
Teaching period(s) | Full year |
Offered by | School of Social Sciences |
Available as a free choice unit? | No |
Overview
Aims
Learning outcomes
On completion of this unit successful students will be able to:
- Understand what it means to think and argue anthropologically.
- Each section focuses on one or more major theoretical approaches in anthropology, and enables students to understand the differences between them.
- Understand the historical and regional differences in theoretical approaches.
- Use the material in this course to develop more subtle arguments in their written work, and use anthropological theory themselves to develop their own intellectual arguments (e.g. in a dissertation)
- Identify the distinctive contributions made by the Manchester School.
Teaching and learning methods
This module is team-taught in four blocks of five weeks each. Each week will have a two-hour session consisting of lectures, group discussions and perhaps other tasks as set by the lecturer. For the duration of each block, the relevant lecturer will have a dedicated drop-in office hour reserved for students on this module. All the module details will be available in the modules Blackboard zone.
Assessment methods
Feedback methods
Electronic and personalised feedback
Recommended reading
This list is only indicative of the type of literature that will be used for the course: the lecturer who will be running each block will, in consultation with the course convenor, be free to use the literature that they feel is most appropriate.
Abram, S. & J. Waldren (eds) 1998. Anthropological perspectives on local development: knowledge and sentiments in conflict. London: Routledge.
Austin, J L (1962) How to do things with words: The William James Lecstures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Besnier, N (2009) Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics, University of Hawaii Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1995 (1990). The Logic of Practice (trans.) R. Nice. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Cameron, D (2001), Working with Spoken Discourse. London: Sage.
Das, Veena. 2006. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary
Douglas, M. (ed.) 1973. Rules and meanings: the anthropology of everyday knowledge - selected readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin Education.
Duranti, A (2009) Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell
Durkheim. E. 2008 [1912]. Elementary forms of Religious Life. Oxford. Trans. Cosman. C.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1992. Theories of Primitive Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evens, T.M.S. & D. Handelman. 2006. The Manchester School: practice and ethnographic praxis in anthropology. New York ; Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Evens, T M S and D Handelman,(2006), The Manchester School: practic and ethnographic praxis in anthropology. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Fardon, R. (ed.) 1995. Counterworks: managing the diversity of knowledge. London; New York: Routledge.
Fischer, M.M.J. 1999. Emergent forms of life: Anthropologies of late or postmodernities. Annual Review of Anthropology 28, 455-478.
Foucault, M. 1974. The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. (tr. anon.) London: Tavistock.
Geertz, C. 1983. Local Knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books.
Gluckman, M. 1965. Politics, law and ritual in tribal society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hanks, W (1996) Language and Communicative practice. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Ingold, T. (ed.) 1996. Key debates in anthropology. London, New York: Routledge.
Kapferer. B and Meinert. L (eds.). In the event. Towards an anthropology of generic moments. Social Analysis, 54(3)
Kuklick, H. (ed.) 2008. A new history of anthropology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Leonardo, M.d. (ed.) 1991. Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Levi-Strauss, C. 1977. Structural Anthropology 1 and 2. London: Peregrine Books.
Lewis, I.M. 1999. Arguments with ethnography: comparative approaches to history, politics & religion. London; New Brunswick, N.J.: Athlone Press.
Marcus, G.E. & M.M. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mauss, M. 1990. The Gift: the form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. (tr. W.D. Halls) London: Routledge.
Study hours
Scheduled activity hours | |
---|---|
Assessment written exam | 3 |
Lectures | 40 |
Tutorials | 20 |
Independent study hours | |
---|---|
Independent study | 137 |
Teaching staff
Staff member | Role |
---|---|
Caroline Parker | Unit coordinator |
Sonja Dobroski | Unit coordinator |
Chloe Nahum-Claudel | Unit coordinator |
Alysa Ghose | Unit coordinator |
Additional notes
Information