BSocSc Social Anthropology

This course introduces you to the visual as a field of anthropological study and is the partner course to Art Sound and Images. It will provide a historical perspective on this subfield and look at its place in the Granada Centre of Anthropology at the University of Manchester. It will deal with a variety of kinds of images from photography and film to art woks including drawing and painting. The course will introduce you to the ways in which anthropologists make as well as analyse images and ends by asking what lies beyong the visual by dealing with sound. 
 

The organisation of this course is broadly historical but focuses on key themes which cross over with other courses you will come across in Anthropology about 'Method, Proof, Spectacle, Documentary, Aesthetics, Surrealism, Experiment, Collaboration, Sound and the Senses. 
 

Students will develop skills in written and visual outputs. These skills will stand students in good stead to approach the practical activities in the second semester partner course, Art Sound and Images. The course will provide a distinctive anthropological perspective on themes which bridge common interests between images and anthropology. These skills will be useful outside of this anthropology course. Writing essays, analysing visual material and communicating ideas are transferable skills and important parts of many careers such as media work, the arts, academia, government and third sector organisations etc. Students will develop an anthropological perspective on media literacies. 
 

10 week course. Weekly 2 hour lectures and one hour small group tutorials. 

• Describe the key features of visual anthropology;
• Explain the main developments in the discipline of visual anthropology;

• Gain an introductory knowledge of the main debates on the use of media in anthropology; 
• Gain insight into key debates on authorship and ethics;
• Understand the specific contributions that audiovisual media can bring to anthropology;
   

• Write in a complementary way to audiovisual components;

• Present arguments effectively in written format;

1,500 word final essay (worth 100%)

• Written feedback - 15 working days after submission;

Banks, Marcus. 2001. Visual Methods in Social Research. London. SAGE;

Banks, Marcus & Howard Morphy ed. 1997 Rethinking Visual Anthropology. New Haven: Yale University Press;

Banks, Marcus and Jay Ruby ed. 2011. Made to Be Seen Perspectivs On the History of Visual Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press;

Chaplin, Elizabeth. 1994. Sociology and Visual Representation. London; New York: Routledge;

Grimshaw, Anna. 2001. The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology. Cambridge UK; New York: Cambridge University Press;

MacDougall, David. 2006. The Coropreal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press;

Pink, Sarah. 2007. Doing Visual Ethnography. 2nd Edition. London: SAGE;

Rose, Gillian. 2012. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. Los Angeles: SAGE;  

Only available to students on the BSocSc Social Anthropology