BA (Hons) Sociology and Anthropology

Course details On this course you will usually be taught by a range of staff with relevant retail expertise and knowledge appropriate to the content of the unit. This will include senior academic staff, qualified professional practitioners, research students. You will also benefit from regular guest lectures from industry including many of our alumni. Year 1 Core units Introduction to Social Theory: This unit will introduce you to key social theories that have informed classical and contemporary sociology and anthropology. Families & Kinship in Contemporary Society: This unit engages you with cultural diversity and social complexity of kinship and family constellations across the globe. You will employ sociological and anthropological approaches in exploring how these forms of social organisation underpin social cohesion, conflicts and changes in contemporary societies. Introduction to Social Research: This unit offers a broad introduction to sociological and anthropological methods and approaches to research. You will be introduced to a range of classic and contemporary examples of social research and will develop your knowledge of research methods and methodologies in dedicated skills workshops. Ancient People & Places: You’ll discover the key thematic studies in archaeology concerning the evolution and development of ancient humans, changing technologies and material culture, and the organisation and development of past societies. Introduction to Anthropology: This unit will develop your understanding of social anthropological concepts, questions and methods of investigation. You will explore what is distinctive and valuable about social anthropological ways of seeing the world and addressing global issues. Social Exclusion & Discrimination: You’ll apply relevant sociological and anthropological approaches to explore social exclusion, inequality, discrimination and oppression. Year 2 Core units Into the Field: This unit aims to provide students with experience of carrying out ethnographic research. Working in teams, you will collaboratively design and undertake research projects in the Bournemouth area, using ethnographic methods and techniques to investigate sociologically and anthropologically framed research questions. Globalisation & Marginalisation: You’ll explore how a series of global processes, institutions, and flows (of people, capital and commodities, for example) generate complex forms of inequality and marginalisation in the contemporary world, as well as some of the ways in which these developments are challenged and opposed. Themes in Archaeology & Anthropology: This unit will introduce you to the diversity of contemporary and past human cultures around the world, and to some of the methods anthropologists and archaeologists use to study these differences. Methods & Methodologies in the Social Sciences: You’ll broaden your understanding and familiarity with core social research design, modes of analysis and methodologies, including qualitative, quantitative and emancipatory methods. Option units (choose two) Ethnographies of Crime & Policing: You will explore ethnographies of crime and policing. You will study critically how crime and ‘policing’ may be understood and approached within social worlds and will observe ‘policing’ behaviour in Bournemouth. Love & Intimacy in Contemporary Society: Understanding theories of intimacy, emotions, and sexuality within Sociology and in studying everyday life, media representations and commercialisation. Trafficking, Migration & Criminality: You will consider the relationship between trafficking, migration and criminality. The unit looks at different forms of trafficking (including human trafficking, the drug trade, the global sex industry, organ trafficking and the smuggling of commodities) across a number of countries in Europe, North Africa, South East Asia and the United States. 20-day Placement: You will have the opportunity to study an area of academic and professional interest in sociology and its relationship to wider society through participation in "placement" based learning. Growing Up & Growing Old: This unit explores sociological and anthropological perspectives and theories of childhood, youth and aging. Societies of Prehistoric Europe: The aim of this unit is to provide students with an introduction to the study of early farming societies in Temperate Europe and the northern Mediterranean (c.6000-800 BC). In Sickness, Disability & Health: Developing a critical awareness of the historical, structural and cultural influences on views of health and the construction of disability. Controversial Cultures: This unit aims to acquaint you with classic and contemporary debates about how culture and controversial culture should be understood, theorised and studied. Please note that option units require minimum numbers in order to run and may only be available on a semester by semester basis. They may also change from year to year. Year 3 Placement: You'll complete a minimum 30-week placement which can be carried out anywhere in the world. The placement year offers you a chance to gain experience and make contacts for the future. Year 3/4 Core units Cultural Ecology: Adaptations of human populations to their respective habitats always embrace cultural strategies and their biological conditions and consequences. By considering an ecosystems approach, you will discuss the diversity and correspondence of biocultural solutions developed by human populations in response to a variety of existing or changing natural environments. Politics & Ideology: This unit assists you to understand the political processes and ideologies that may be key drivers in the development of policy and governance at the organizational and societal level. Dissertation: The final-year project provides you with an opportunity to demonstrate your intellectual, analytic and creative abilities as well as your research competence through sustained, independent inquiry into a chosen topic within the broad parameters of sociology or anthropology. Option units (choose three) Animals & Society: This unit aims to provide you with a detailed critical understanding of humans’ interactions with animals in Britain from the Palaeolithic through to the early Post-medieval period. These interactions include the exploitation of animals for meat and other products and how animals were incorporated into burial practices and other rituals. Seekers, Believers & Iconoclasts: This core unit explores belief systems as a sociological phenomenon contextualised within a cultural and social analysis, as well as a philosophical and historical one. 'Troubling' Gender: This unit will explore gender as socially constructed and historically variable aspect of societies, past and present. It will examine the ways in which gender informs social structures, inequalities, and analyse the interrelationships between gender and other social categories (e.g., class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, and nationality). Terrorism, Protection & Society: The overall aim of this unit is to introduce you to many of the complex issues involved in conceptualising and responding to terrorism and protection in contemporary societies. You will be introduced to protection and counter terrorism as a form of social regulation and control of individuals and ‘deviant’ groups (micro and meso issues) and prescribing ways in which society is ordered in an age of terrorist threat (macro-political issues). Anthropology of International Policy and Intervention: In this unit you will become familiar with critical anthropological debates on international intervention policies and practices. 20-day Placement: You will have the opportunity to study an area of academic and professional interest in sociology and its relationship to wider society through participation in "placement" based learning. Please note that option units require minimum numbers in order to run and may only be available on a semester by semester basis. They may also change from year to year. Scheduled learning and teaching activities Year 1 – 21 % of your time will be spent in timetabled learning & teaching activities Learning and teaching: 216 hours (actual) Independent learning: 984 hours (actual) Non-assessed learning and teaching: 39 hours Year 2 – 18% of your time will be spent in timetabled learning & teaching activities Learning and teaching: 188 hours (actual) Independent learning: 1012 hours (actual) Non-assessed learning and teaching: 20 hours Year 3/4 - 18% of your time will be spent in timetabled learning & teaching activities Learning and teaching: 192 hours (estimated) Independent learning: 1008 hours (estimated) 89% of the course is assessed by coursework Year 1: 67% Year 2: 100% Year 3: 100% Throughout the course you will be assessed by coursework culminating in your final year research project, but you will also undertake group work and written exams. Programme specification Programme specifications provide definitive records of the University's taught degrees in line with Quality Assurance Agency requirements. Every taught course leading to a BU Award has a programme specification which describes its aims, structure, content and learning outcomes, plus the teaching, learning and assessment methods used. Download the programme specification for BA (Hons) Sociology and Anthropology. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the programme specification, the information is liable to change to take advantage of exciting new approaches to teaching and learning as well as developments in industry. If you have been unable to locate the programme specification for the course you are interested in, it will be available as soon as the latest version is ready. Alternatively please contact us for assistance.