BA (Hons) Anthropology

ANT4001
Introduction to Anthropology 20 credits

This introductory module provides students new to anthropology to the core topics, goals, theories, and methods of the discipline. Students will learn foundational skills related to how to understand and analyse forms of human life socially, culturally, and morally different from their own. They will also learn how to compare different societies in order to produce solid arguments about the human condition.

ANT4004
Fieldwork and Ethnography 20 credits

In this module, students will learn how to conduct an ethnographic project from inception to completion. We will focus on training methodological skills, familiarising ourselves with anthropological ethics, and producing anthropological arguments using the ethnographic evidence we ourselves collect.

ANT4005
Cultural Practices in Context 20 credits

This module is geared toward fieldwork and independent study in a museum and/or gallery context. Following a Fieldtrip to public collections in London and/or the Southwest students complete an Object Report on an object of their choice seen in situ. This module will include 2, 2 hour talks that introduce our School and programme level employability related opportunities and support, including details of the optional placement year.

SOC4002
Social Identities and Inequalities 20 credits

This module explores how and why social inequalities influence lived experience and social identities. It focuses on a range of substantive issues, such as poverty, social class and hierarchies, health, gender and sexuality, family and kinship, neo-colonialism and 'race', and violence and ethnicity. This module explores how these influence culture, social identities and lived experience throughout the life-course.

SOC4003IE
Body Relatedness and Identity 20 credits

This module draws on a range of sociological and anthropological sources to examine how societies across the world perceive, transform, control and use the human body. The module's themes are designed to help students appreciate the body as central to the way humans experience the world. Seminars explore the disciplining and surveillance of bodies, the development of "habitus", bodily adornment and transformation, gender and sexuality, biopolitics, the commercialisation of the human body, and the body as a window on wider symbolic-cultural orders. In discussing these topics, first-year students will learn important social science skills, namely the ability to compare different socio-cultural contexts and engage in productive, multidisciplinary discussions.

ANT4007
Becoming Human

This module introduces students to interdisciplinary approaches concerned with ‘how we became human’. The module examines the unique characteristics of Homo Sapiens, focusing on evolutionary changes, tool use, mythology, social organisation, equality and inequality, intersubjectivity and symbolic culture (art, ritual, language and myth). Students will be introduced to key theories on human evolution, the evolution of language and its relationship with symbolic thought, while investigating social structures, behaviour, and gender dynamics. Practically, the students will be taught key study skills in bibliographic research, interdisciplinary methods, academic research, writing and presentations.

ANT5003
Applying Anthropology 20 credits

In this module, students are acquainted with advanced ethnographic research techniques, including reflexivity, netnography, multi-species relations, narrative analysis and multi-sensory ethnography. They also explore the interplay between methods and writing. Building on their existing skills, students develop a research project that applies these advanced concepts and methods.

ARH5001
Collecting and Exhibiting Cultures in the 19th and 20th Centuries 20 credits

This module examines historical and contemporary cultures of collection, exhibition, and display. Drawing on interdisciplinary debates, students will learn to discuss and analyse the politics and ethics of art ownership, theft, looting, and repatriation.

SOC5009
Contemporary Theories of Society and Culture

The module introduces contemporary theoretical disputes framed within the context of classical and early modern theories of society and culture. These debates are linked to historical events and social and cultural research that reciprocally influenced contemporary theoretical change. Foundational disciplinary questions are broached, and formative critical workshops assist in developing theoretical argument, analysis and evaluation.

HIS5005
Research Methods in Visual, Material and Oral History 20 credits

This module investigates the use of oral, material & visual sources as a means of investigating the past. Also, the contextualisation of historical sources and questions in the wider historiographical literature.

SSC500
Stage 2 Professional Development, Placement Preparation and Identifying Opportunities 0 credits

This module is for students in the School of Society and Culture who are interested in undertaking an optional placement in the third year of their programme. It supports students in their search, application, and preparation for the placement, including developing interview techniques and effective application materials (e.g. CVs , portfolios, and cover letters).

ANT5008MX
Brave New Worlds: Ethnography of/on Online and Digital Worlds 20 credits

This module teaches students how to use ethnographic methods to make sense of the internet, which we now increasingly inhabit. Students learn how to navigate and analyse platforms such as Facebook or TikTok. They study how these technologies transform our relationships, identities, and ideas of truth. The module also examines the socio-cultural and ethical aspects of digital worlds (e.g. Second life).

ANT5009
Medical Anthropology

By systematically comparing ethnographic data from across the globe, this module shows how shared ideas of wellness and illness/affliction develop, and how individuals work to maintain their wellbeing by transforming, training, inscribing, feeding and thinking about their bodies. Medical Anthropology studies how illness, disease and death are locally explained, experienced, and acted upon, and examines how western and non-western medical traditions interact with bio-medical institutions

SOC5006
Gender, Sex and Sexuality

This module introduces students to the sociology of gender, sex and sexuality. It interrogates these concepts with particular reference to identity, activism, social justice and social change. It develops an understanding of the similarities, differences and intersections between gender, sex, sexuality and other social signifiers of difference/diversity including ‘race’, ethnicity, dis/ability, class and age.

SOC5007
Race, Nation, Empire: Understanding Identity and Belonging

This module explores how intersecting ideologies of racism, nationalism, and imperialism relate to contemporary struggles over identity and belonging. In doing so, the module seeks to provide students with a critical understanding of the ideological bases of some of the most urgent issues facing contemporary societies, including: the fracturing of nation states after loss of empire; the racist backlash against postcolonial migration; and the rise of neo-nationalism.

SSC601
School of Society and Culture Placement Year

Students have the opportunity to gain work experience that will set them apart in the job market when they graduate by undertaking an optional flexible placement year. The placement must be a minimum of 24-weeks (which can be split between a maximum of two different placement providers) and up to a maximum of 48-weeks over the course of the academic year. The placement is flexible and can be undertaken virtually, part or full time and either paid or voluntary. Students will have the option to undertake their placement year abroad. This year allows them to apply and hone the knowledge and skills acquired from the previous years of their programme in the real world.

ANT6006
Anthropology on the Ground 20 credits

In this module students take on the role of a live consultant in a professional setting. Working with partners in industry, governance, or civil society, students will apply anthropology to solve a particular problem, ideally in an area in which they wish to work or pursue further study.

SOC6005
Dissertation

This module provides students with the opportunity to undertake their own sociological, criminological or anthropological research project, working independently but under the supervision of an academic member of staff.

SOC6001
Media, State and Society 20 credits

The media occupy key arenas whereby various social groups compete with one another to set public, political, commercial and cultural agendas. This module examines the relationship between media, state and society. It covers a number of substantive topic areas such as environmental issues, terrorism, war reporting, gender, crime and violence.

SOC6002
Food, Culture and Society 20 credits

This module aims to provide a critical understanding of sociological issues relating to food and foodways, (the beliefs and behaviours surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of food both on an individual and collective level). The module encourages critical reflection and practical experience of research in the area of food and foodways, with a focus on lived experience.

ANT6008MX
Coastal Cultures: Marine Anthropology in the age of climate change and mass extinction. 20 credits

Using ethnography, we analyse how coastal communities use the sea – not only as a source of livelihood, but as a key ingredient in the construction of their identity and place in world. Drawing on a range of cases from across the world – from Polynesian sorcerers, to Japanese whale mourners, to Cornish surfers – we study how coastal communities are responding to climate change, sea level rise, pollution, and extinction.

ANT6002
Different Ways of Knowing: The Anthropology of truth, post-truth and conspiracy 20 credits

This module explores the nature of knowledge and truth from a cross-cultural perspective. How do ideas of truth differ culturally, and change over time? How do people produce, guard, and destroy knowledge? After an introduction to phenomenology and ontology, students will be able to engage with different systems of truth and knowledge - from oral history, to scientific debate, to prophecy and conspiracy.

ANT6009
Medical Anthropology

By systematically comparing ethnographic data from across the globe, this module shows how shared ideas of wellness and illness/affliction develop, and how individuals work to maintain their wellbeing by transforming, training, inscribing, feeding and thinking about their bodies. Medical Anthropology studies how illness, disease and death are locally explained, experienced, and acted upon, and examines how western and non-western medical traditions interact with bio-medical institutions.

CRM6015
Global Conflict, Genocide and Crimes of the State

This module explores the issue of global (in)security in the context of state and non-state conflict. Theoretical and conceptual understandings of crime, violence, victimisation and justice will be used to interrogate acts such as war crimes and terrorism. The module will address the history of such crimes and will critically explore State and international responses.

CRM6016MX
Green Criminology: Climate Justice and the Planetary Crisis

This module will address theoretical perspectives, methodological issues, and empirical research related to the field of green criminology, including applied concerns, such as policy and social/political praxis, through a range of concepts, topics, and themes that are central to green criminology.

LAW6018MX
Law, Literature and the Screen

To introduce students to fictional and factional representations of the legal order in prose, film and TV, and to examine the inter-connections between law, literature and the screen.

PIR6009MX
Mao to Now: the Politics of Modern China

This module introduces students to politics in China. It provides them with the analytical skills and historical understanding to examine the structure of the contemporary Chinese state, looking in particular at Maoist legacies, nationalism and ideology, the relationships between party, law, state and market, and China’s involvement in international affairs.