BA (Hons) History & Anthropology

What you'll study Overview

Taught jointly by the Departments of History and Anthropology, this programme emphasises a creative engagement with processes of social change and cultural interaction. You also examine the history of past societies (non-Western and Western) through a culturally informed framework. You'll be introduced to debates surrounding the nature of evidence, the role of memory, cultural representation and interpretation, and the use of oral, literary and visual sources. You'll also have the opportunity to apply your academic skills within the workplace, through our History at Work scheme.

Year 1 (credit level 4)

Your first year introduces you to key methods and perspectives in history and anthropology. You'll also learn about the role of ethnography by focusing on the linguistic and cultural groupings of a particular region. In addition, you'll pick another history option.

You take the following modules:

Year 1 modules Module title Credits. Introduction to Social Anthropology Introduction to Social Anthropology 30 credits

This module introduces basic anthropological concepts of kinship, politics, economics, and religion and the history and theoretical schools of anthropology.

30 credits. Anthropological Methods Anthropological Methods 15 credits

This module explores aspects of anthropological methods. You study the following areas: data collection techniques and implications of type and quality of data; participant observation: techniques involved, its evolution and change; analytical approaches to primary data, re-analyses of secondary sources; the philosophy of science; value free social science, interaction between observer and observed, perception and ‘fact’.

15 credits. Concepts and Methods in History Concepts and Methods in History 30 credits

This core module introduces you to theories of history, methodologies and conceptual problems of advanced historical work from the ancient to the contemporary world. The module will help you acquire some of the fundamental skills involved in historical study – including writing at university level – as well as help you with online research, footnoting and compiling a bibliography. It consists of one lecture and seminar per week.

30 credits.

You also take one of the other first year 30-credit History modules.

Year 2 (credit level 5)

In Year 2 you investigate ‘classic’ theories and key anthropological texts on religion, magic, myth, ritual, morality, symbolism and belief, and you’ll explore interactions between changing economic and political structures in modern life via ethnographic examples.

You take these three Anthropology modules:

Year 2 modules Module title Credits. Anthropology of Religion Anthropology of Religion 15 or 30 credits

This module is worth 15 credits if you study it at Level 6 and 30 credits if you study it at Level 7.

Questioning the category of religion, this module will introduce you to the sociological thought which has informed the anthropology of religious phenomena and will highlight the specificity of anthropological approaches which combine comparative, historical and ethnographic methodologies and concerns. Focussing on both ‘world religions’ and more localised cosmologies and practices, you will learn about different anthropological approaches (structuralist, Marxist, phenomenological, symbolic and cognitive) which emphasise different dimensions of religious practice and experience. You will also be encouraged to think about the relevance of these approaches for understanding the continued persistence, salience and transformation of religious ideas and practices in the contemporary world.

15 or 30 credits. Anthropology and the Visual Anthropology and the Visual 15 credits

This module provides a critical introduction to the many ways anthropologists engage with the visual from their use of visual methodologies and analysis of representations to their ethnographic study of everyday visual forms. Focusing on a wide range of visual media from photography, museum exhibitions and popular representations on TV to dress, body art, architecture and other everyday visual and material forms, the module raises issues about the significance of visibility, the politics of representation, the social life of visual and material forms and the relationship between seeing and other senses.

15 credits. Politics, Economics and Social Change Politics, Economics and Social Change 30 credits

Politics, Economics and Social Change introduces you to the core concepts and theories relating to economic and political organisations and the problem of accounting for change, both empirically and theoretically.

To familiarise you with a number of empirical contexts in order that you may be able to conceptualise the complex socio-economic processes that are affecting the peripheral areas that have long been the concern of anthropologists.

To explore a number of contemporary problems relating to such issues as the apparent contradiction between local or national autonomy and globalisation that do not fit easily into definitions of the "economic" or "political".

30 credits.

You also take 60 credits' worth of modules in History from an approved list , 30 credits of which may be a Group 2 module.

Year 3 (credit level 6)

During your third year you take:

• An individual project that consists of independent, interdisciplinary study supervised by staff from both departments. Assessment by: dissertation
• A choice of History and Anthropology options

You take the following core module:

Year 3 core module Module title Credits. Anthropological Approaches to History Anthropological Approaches to History 15 or 30 credits

There are long held tensions between the disciplines of anthropology and history, although they share some common epistemological concerns.

Increasingly, anthropologists have incorporated historical accounts towards expanding ethnographic possibilities, and to explore theoretical questions of continuity, social change and periodisation, and to examine colonialism as a set of historical conditions. As part of a historicised practice, anthropologists have challenged assumptions about relationship between myth and history, and explored complex temporalities.

In turn, historians have borrowed from anthropological methodologies to underpin radical ideas about microhistories, oral history practices, which have also contributed towards the anthropological project. More recently, both historians and anthropologists have turned to memory as a way of accessing the past through practice, policy and the emotions.

This course sets up these questions through three interconnected threads: the history of anthropology, historical anthropology, and anthropologies of history.

We examine the different kinds of evidence that may be used to understand the past, and how the past is made sense of in the present, through archives, images and material culture. Together this provides us with a model for approaching the past anthropologically, in order to gain ethnographic understandings of the dynamic processes of historicity in everyday contexts, where the past can be deployed, imagined and evidenced.

15 or 30 credits.

You also take a combination of option modules from both departments to the value of 75 credits. Anthropology option modules include:

Year 3 options Module title Credits. Anthropology and Gender Theory Anthropology and Gender Theory 15 or 30 credits

This module is worth 15 credits if you study it at Level 6 and 30 credits if you study it at Level 7.

This module explores the inter-relationship of gender, sexuality and the body both within western cultures and western social theory, and in a range of other cultural and historical contexts. Emphasising the ways in which the body and gender have been produced/imagined differently in diverse times and places, it focuses on both classical and current anthropological topics including:

• The status of the body – biological or cultural
• Decoration, modification and transformation of bodies
• Distinctions between sex and gender
• Alternative sex and gender systems
• Kinship, marriage and chosen families
• New reproductive technologies
• Identity politics and queer theory
• Theories of performance/practice
• Violence, resistance and power politics
15 or 30 credits. Anthropology and the Visual II Anthropology and the Visual II 30 credits

This module will explore the role of visual representation in anthropology in terms of both the history of its use within the discipline, and also the potential it holds for new ways of working. We will look at work in a wide range of media – photography, film/video, performance – and the ways in which they might be used in an anthropological context, and this will involve looking at work from outside anthropology such as photojournalism and contemporary art, as well as the work of visual anthropologists. The intention of the module it to provide a strong theoretical background for those students going to take the Anthropology and the Visual Production Course in the spring term, and to give students a challenging and creative view of the potentials of visual material within anthropology.

30 credits. Anthropology and the Visual: Production Course Anthropology and the Visual: Production Course 15 credits

Following on from Anthropology and the Visual II, this is a practically based module in which you will explore the techniques of video-making/photography.

15 credits. Anthropology of Art I Anthropology of Art I 15 or 30 credits

This module is worth 15 credits if you study it at Level 6 and 30 credits if you study it at Level 7.

Modern Anthropology has had an uneasy relation with art and with objects and images in general. The reaction against the museum anthropology of the 19th century led to a certain iconoclasm in the discipline. Yet a hundred years later, the interest of anthropologists on art, and conversely, of artists in Anthropology, is blooming. But this is not so contradictory: in fact modern anthropology and modern art are very close from their origin, in their critical reflection on the relation of images, objects and persons. In this module, we will discuss first the questions that the anthropological tradition has opened up on the relation of things, images and persons. Is the value of objects a human construction? Do objects have agency? Are images, representations? What are the arguments for idolatry and iconoclasm? All these questions are necessary preludes to understand the anthropological approach to art in the modern world. They will enable us to ask what characterises 'art' as a form of social value in our society, as well as how objects and images from other societies are valued as 'art'.

15 or 30 credits. Anthropology of Art II Anthropology of Art II 15 or 30 credits

This module is worth 15 credits if you study it at Level 6 and 30 credits if you study it at Level 7.

This module is designed to offer students the opportunity to conduct a short piece of research in the field broadly defined as the Anthropology of Art. Picking up on theoretical issues introduced in Anthropology of Art I, you will be expected to select your own topic for fieldwork. You may wish to analyse the practice of a particular artist (especially one whose work relates to ethnography in some way), concentrate on aspects of art institutions in London (techniques of display, audiences, exhibitions), or on lives of art objects (their production, consumption, circulation, interpretation). Key issues include: aesthetics and the culture industry: the role of the avant-garde: Frankfurt School critical theory: popular art, resistance and accommodation: the rise of film criticism: museums and collecting.

15 or 30 credits. Anthropology of Health and Medicine I Anthropology of Health and Medicine I 15 or 30 credits

This module is worth 15 credits if you study it at Level 6 and 30 credits if you study it at Level 7.

An introduction to key areas of medical anthropology, ranging from ideas about healing to questions of social inequality and ‘biosociality’. We will explore questions of how culture shapes understandings and experiences of the body, health and illness. We'll also examine the implications of new technologies on understandings of health, and the politics of modern global healthcare. We will engage with classic and contemporary ethnographic work.

Key questions include:

• How is health understood and experienced culturally?
• What is the relationship between health and unequal economic and technological systems?
• What can anthropology contribute to global health issues?
15 or 30 credits. Environmental Anthropology Environmental Anthropology 15 or 30 credits

This module is worth 15 credits if you study it at Level 6 and 30 credits if you study it at Level 7.

This module examines three areas of anthropological enquiry into human-environment relations:

• different societies’ experience of and thoughts about their biophysical surroundings (beliefs, practices, dwelling)
• human shaping of landscapes (living in balance with nature, enhancing or destroying it)
• environmental politics, or political ecology (small and large scale resource conflict, science and policy processes, environmental movements)

Each topic is examined through one or two key studies, drawn from different regions of the world (eg Amazonia, West Africa, Indonesia) and relating to different resources (eg forests, soil, water, oil).

Throughout the module, we will also discuss the bearings of the anthropological ideas examined on public discourses of environmentalism and on conservation policy.

15 or 30 credits. Indian and Peasant Politics in Amazonia Indian and Peasant Politics in Amazonia 15 or 30 credits

This module is worth 15 credits if you study it at Level 6 and 30 credits if you study it at Level 7.

This module looks at Amazonian societies from pre-history to the present – indigenous, peasant, colonial, developmentalist – and includes discussion of modern social movements (Landless Peoples Movement) as well as classic themes of Levi-Strauss's 'world on the wane', human ecology and extractivist economies.

15 or 30 credits. The Anthropology of Rights The Anthropology of Rights 15 credits

This module is worth 15 credits if you study it at Level 6 and 30 credits if you study it at Level 7.

This module encourages you to engage critically with the rights discourses that underpin development agendas in the contemporary world. You will consider the historical evolution of rights discourses, the institutions that have been established to uphold rights, the language of Human Rights used in international law, as well as the concept of rights as understood by development organisations, governments and multilaterals (such as the UN).

You will also analyse the cross-cutting – and often competing – claims made in the name of, for example, gender and child rights, indigenous rights, intellectual property rights, animal and environmental rights, customary law and bioethics.

The module provides an opportunity to explore the concept and discourses of rights in relation to numerous contemporary social issues (such as natural disasters, constitutional reform, war crimes tribunals, environmental disputes and gender politics), and consider the purchase of the rights concept (and its limitations) within development discourses and practices, as well as in relation to patterns of governance and social justice.

15 credits. Anthropology of Human Animal Relations Anthropology of Human Animal Relations 15 or 30 credits

This module is worth 15 credits if you study it at Level 6 and 30 credits if you study it at Level 7.

Animals are famously good to think with and feature in some of the most controversial thought experiments in anthropology. This course introduces a pantheon of anthropological animals, from Bororo parrots and Lele pangolin to Derrida’s cat and Haraway’s dogs. What does it mean if people can become animals and vice versa? How do we turn animal into edible? Can dogs be heroes?

We also look at the political economy of animal production, the largest industry in the world. The consumption of animals has recently entered an unprecedented phase of extreme exploitation epitomised by the factory farms of Euroamerica. At the same time, ‘wild’ animals have been commodified in zoos and rare species preserved in parks that exclude human inhabitants. How are we to understand these apparently contradictory impulses? Why are cows food and pandas poster children for the Worldwide Fund for Nature? As we adapt to new forms of biotechnology what is at stake in our exchanges with animals, of genes, organs, diseases and labour? The module uses a wide range of resources including film, ethnography and fiction to explore these and other questions.

15 or 30 credits. Psychological Perspectives in Anthropology Psychological Perspectives in Anthropology 15 credits

The link between anthropology and