MA in Anthropology & Cultural Politics

What you'll study

The MA is made up of the following modules:

Core modules Module title Credits. Anthropology and Cultural Politics Anthropology and Cultural Politics 30 credits

. What is the relationship between culture and power?
. How is power manifested or articulated 'culturally'?
. In what ways may culture be understood to be 'political'?

This module is centrally preoccupied with social and political theories organised around the question of 'culture' and its relation to 'power', and vice versa, and with comprehending what may be the stakes of the politics of 'culture'.

The module elaborates upon the problem of 'politics' and its always complex configuration with respect to what comes to be deemed to be 'cultural', specifically in relation to creative and productive labour, alienation, capitalism and commodification, the state, ideology, and hegemony. We also consider the concepts of the critique of everyday life, the society of the spectacle, and the production of space.

While principally concerned with a series of theoretical problems, the module will nonetheless also marshal the insights that may be gleaned from ethnography, in the effort to situate the discipline of socio-cultural anthropology in relation to the problems posed by or for 'cultural politics'.

30 credits. Anthropological Theory Anthropological Theory 30 credits

The aims and objectives of this module are to introduce you to major subfields of modern anthropology and to do so in a broadly historical and comparative framework.

The lectures will enable you to see how different anthropologists approach a number of central contemporary issues. The topics chosen will focus upon some of the theoretical developments and methodological strategies pursued in response to profound and widespread social transformations. Each week the module will focus on a single technique, methodology or strategy in anthropology in the work of a specific anthropologist.

30 credits. MA in Anthropology & Cultural Politics Dissertation MA in Anthropology & Cultural Politics Dissertation 60 credits

The dissertation is a thorough critical discussion of existing knowledge in a relevant area.

60 credits.

*Students who have a first degree in anthropology can replace Anthropological Theory with an additional option module.

Option modules

Some examples of option modules from the Department of Anthropology are listed below. In addition, modules can be selected from several other departments and centres including English , Media and Communications , and Sociology.

Module title 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 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. Critical Voices in Development Critical Voices in Development 30 credits


While taking this module, you'll concentrate on planned change in the 20th century with special emphasis on the post World War II era, after the rise of the so-called Development Industry. We will cover the history of development and aid through various approaches to development, and will explore the discourses which have informed approaches to policy. Following this you will look at implementation and the history of anthropological involvement, including anthropological critiques. Finally, there will be an in-depth analysis of the development implications (both in terms of international agency or national government policy implications as well as projects on the ground) of selected global trends. Possible selected trends might be HIV/AIDs or Structural Adjustment Policies.

30 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. Learning from Social Movements Learning from Social Movements 15 credits (UG) 30 credits (PG)

This module revolves around contemporary debates in the anthropology of social movements. It considers the contribution of ethnographic approaches to activism and protest for thinking about politics, collective action and social change. The anti- globalisation movement, #occupy, the anti-corruption movement in India, the anti-foreclosures movement in Spain (PAH), the Landless Workers' Movement, right-wing extremism, feminist reproductive health activists, independent-living activism, queer movements and the Indigenous Environmental Network are some of the examples that the module will explore. Rather than 'explaining away' these movements, this module is based on learning from them, i.e. devising ways of conceptualising their practice, methods and transformative power. The module will also consider, as a transversal issue, the question of 'engaged' or 'militant' research - and more broadly the relationship between the production of academic and activist knowledges.

15 credits (UG) 30 credits (PG). Intercultural Film Intercultural Film 15 credits

“You guys [Balanda (white) anthropologists] keep looking, looking, looking but you just don’t see”
Aboriginal filmmaker Bangana in Deger ‘Shimmering Screens’ p221

Why is film so affective? What do we understand about how film works? These questions are absolutely fundamental if we are to consider anthropology’s relationship to the moving image.

Thinking through this cinematic magic from both a media, and an anthropological perspective allows us to construct a set of productive new approaches to understanding film. Anthropologists began using film very early on – the earliest footage was shot on the Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits in the 1890’s – when the camera was considered a “vital” piece of equipment.

However, this module will critically consider the general assumption that visual anthropology equals documentaries with ethnographic (ie exotic) content. It will instead, explore a series of creative approaches to the visual as evidence and witness from an anthropological perspective. The proliferation of so-called ‘indigenous media’, particularly on the web, arguably redefines the role of the visual anthropologist, and we will the problems and productive possibilities of intercultural looking.

These questions are central to a renewed interest in various kinds of ethnographic film as a result of the recent convergence of contemporary art and documentary. The module will argue for an experimental approach to intercultural filmmaking and suggest what the future of anthropological film might look like. The module also provides a strong theoretical background for those students going on to take Experimental Ethnographic Filmmaking in the Spring Term.

15 credits. Photography & Sound Photography & Sound 15 credits

This module takes up Weinberger’s criticism of contemporary visual anthropology for adopting a narrow definition of its field and its available tools, when the conjunction of ‘visual’ with ‘anthropology’ should actually open up a whole range of creative possibilities for conducting and presenting research.

It will explore the role of photography and sound in anthropology in terms of both the history of their use within the discipline, and also the potentials they hold for new ways of conducting research.

The module will take an anthropological approach to develop a new understanding of photography and the way in which it participates in society. Photographs have become one of the primary and most tangible forms for recording memory, and we will explore the magical animist nature of photography. The module will also consider the potential of sound as a means of anthropological description and a way of researching space and place, time and memory, identity and belonging. We will consider the relations between words and sounds, and ways of knowing and being in the world. The distinctions between the word as it is written and as it is spoken is important here, as are issues of translation – sound into recording, sound into text, one sense into another, as well as adequate cross-cultural translation. The module also provides a strong theoretical background for those students going on to take Ethnography T hrough Photography and Sound in the Spring Term.

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 and the Visual 2 Anthropology and the Visual 2 15 credits

This module explores 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. It looks 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.

15 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. 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. Economic and Political Anthropology I Economic and Political Anthropology I 30 credits

We begin with an overview of the state, highlighting the contingency of its current form and discussing whether or not analyses of the state continue to be relevant in the light of globalisation and changing modes of production. We then go on to analyse key economic institutions that exist through (sometimes in spite of) the state. In the second half of the Autumn term, through locales such as factories, we will see these institutions in action by exploring the capitalist labour process, the impact of industrialisation on the peasant economy and political forms of peasant resistance. We think about changed practices of labour through globalisation of capital and flexible production, and drawing together certain themes (such as value and freedom) that have been running throughout all the lectures. We end the first term by looking at contemporary forms of radical politics, with a special focus on anarchism and at its agenda of building ‘societies without states’.

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