Option courses

Anthropology and Cultural Politics
This course focuses on the anthropological concern with representation in both the artistic and political senses of the term. It will cover such concerns as consumption, fetishism, and material culture, use of art and artistic representations and imagination in social movements, as well as in the art world, theories of narrative and their relation to political action, the nature of hierarchy, magic, labour, and the imagination.

Anthropology and Gender Theory
This course explores the inter-relationship of gender, sexuality and the body both within Western culture and Western social theory, and in a range of 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: 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.

Anthropology and History
Anthropology has for a long time had a troubled relation with history. The scientific racism of the 19th century was replaced in the beginning of the 20th century with ahistorical, site-specific studies. But with time, history became an issue again – the growing interpenetration forced by colonialism, and capitalism and the world wars questioned the assumptions of radical cultural difference on which synchronic studies were based. Inevitably, history and historical change has become the heart of anthropological theory. A number of questions and dichotomies on historical continuities and changes have emerged, both at a theoretical and an empirical level: the relation of structure and agency; the place of consciousness and historicity in relation to historical events; the formation of a global culture versus the persistence of local cultures; the meaning of terms such as ‘modernity’, ‘capitalism’ and the ‘West’.

Anthropology and the Visual
This course 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 course 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.

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

Anthropology of Art 1
Modern anthropology has had an uneasy relation with art and with objects and images in general. The reaction against 19th-century museum anthropology led to a certain iconoclasm in the discipline. Yet 100 years later, the interest of anthropologists in 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 in their critical reflection on the relation of images, objects and persons. After discussing this relationship, we will focus more deeply on the issues that the anthropological tradition has opened up on the relation of things, images and persons. Is the value of objects just a human construction? Do objects have agency? Are images only symbols? What are the arguments for idolatry and iconoclasm?  

Anthropology of Art 2
This course is designed to offer you the opportunity to conduct a short piece of research in the field broadly defined as the Anthropology of Art. Drawing on theoretical issues introduced in the Anthropology of Art course, you will be expected to select your own topic for research, which can include: the lives of objects (their production, consumption, circulation, interpretation etc.); cases of iconoclasm (in public monuments, for example); the practice of an artist or collective (particularly those whose work relates to ethnography); art institutions like galleries or museums (techniques of display, audiences, exhibitions etc).

Anthropology of Human-Animal Relations
This course introduces you to the ‘animal question’ within anthropology and related disciplines. You will review some of the classic examples of thinking about animals within anthropology. The course provides a background to current debates about animals that will enable you to contribute to arguments about animal rights, biotechnology, and the desirable limits of human intervention in processes once thought of as residing in ‘nature’. Topics include: totemism, domestication, classification, perspectivism, animals in art/literature/movies, heroic animals, zoophilia, zoonoses, transgenic animals, xenotransplantation, cloned animals, pet-keeping, monsters and imaginary animals, cryptozoology, meat-eating and animal rights.

Anthropology of Religion
What is meant by the category, “religion”? How is it possible to explain the diversity of religious practices and beliefs around the world? Are there common themes that cut across different religious traditions? And how might we explain rises and falls in religiosity in different times and places? These are just some of the questions anthropologists have addressed when approaching religious phenomena in a comparative, historic and ethnographic framework. Focussing on both ‘world religions’ and lesser known cosmologies and practices, this course introduces some of the main approaches anthropologists have employed (including structuralist, materialist, phenomenological, symbolic and cognitive approaches) in their attempts to understand different dimensions of religious practice and experience. Students are 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.

Anthropology of Rights
This course 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 course 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.

Critical Voices in Development
This core course of the MA in Development and Rights will enable you to explore the theoretical concepts underpinning development, the history of development and its institutions – from NGOs to the World Bank and the IMF, while considering diverse case studies from around the world. You will also explore the historical role of anthropology’s involvement in development, as official mediators between ‘the West and the rest’ through imperial conquest, colonial administration and a post-war development industry. As a central component of the course you will critically analyse current trends that have emerged to dominate the field of global political and economic interventions and/or policies – ‘participation and empowerment’, ‘gender awareness’, ’sustainable development’, ‘community development’, ‘NGOs’, and ‘environmental conservation’.

Economic and Political Anthropology
This course investigates the scope and approaches of economic and political anthropology as well as development studies. Topics under investigation will include aid, populism, marginality, nationalism, fundamentalism, globalisation and other phenomena that do not fit easily into definitions of the ‘economic’ or ‘political’.

Ethnographic Film and Cinema Studies
This course consists of film screenings followed by discussions. The emphasis is on key documentary and ethnographic films, from Nanook of the North (Flaherty) to Sans Soleil (Monker) and Photo Wallahs (McDougall). A focal theme of the seminars will be the examination of the ‘language of film’.

Environmental Anthropology
Human-environment relations and their bearing on public discourses of environmentalism will come under examination on this course. It deals with: different ways of encountering biophysical surroundings across societies; European traditions of environmental thought and their impacts; management practices, colonialism, and cultural elaboration of the idea of nature; environmental social movements, identity politics and social justice in environmentalism.

Gender Theory in Practice
This course will examine the growing literature on development with special reference to gender issues. You will consider the historical effects of various forms of gender bias in the development of three regions: Africa, Latin America and the Indian subcontinent. You will address the legacy of colonialism on gender and examine recent development issues that have had differential impact on men and women: the green revolution, migration, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, import-substitution, industrialisation and structural adjustment policies. The course will also look at certain global issues including the structures of development policy, planning and implementation as well as urbanisation, feminisation of poverty, and the new International Division of Labour. The second part of this course consists of group presentations by students.

Indian and Peasant Politics in Brazilian Amazonia
The Latin American regions of Amazonia, the Andes, Guatemala, and Chiapas are examined on this course, which considers the historical background that has produced the present situation in rural areas. Themes discussed include eco-politics, new indigenous movements, alternative models of development, violence and the state, identity and perceptions of the past, the Protestant offensive, and new models of democracy.

Psychology and Anthropology
This course, which is both historical and thematic, is focused on a number of key scholars who have attempted in various ways to bring a psychological dimension into anthropology (or the social sciences more generally). It addresses: personality, language, madness and cognition, conceptions of the self. The relationship between the self and human agency and the social (cultural) context is a central theme of the course.

Social Anthropology of the Caribbean
The course explores the social anthropology of the oldest colonial sphere, highlighting anthropological theories informing Caribbean ethnography. Central themes are the creation of Caribbean societies, communities, cultures and identities in response to colonialism and contemporary opportunities and constraints, and the significance of the study of Caribbean culture-building for changing ethnographic approaches and anthropology. Topics include theoretical perspectives framing the Caribbean; the global processes that forged the unity and diversity of the Caribbean oikoumenê or societal area; controversies on the interrelationship of ‘race’, class, culture, gender and ethnicity; the ‘continuity-creativity debate’ on the African heritage and Caribbean creolisation; maroon societies; varying views on peasantisation and community; marriage, kinship, land and descent; rural development and tourism; urbanisation and urban neighbourhoods and networks; and religion and morality, music and dance.

Urban Issues in Anthropology
Through historical and ethnographic perspectives this course considers: the changing use and valorisation of different urban spaces at different times; how cities are represented; plus ideas of order and disorder, of public and domestic places, of control and resistance through carnival, informal economies and kinship networks. The course covers both the developing world and Euro-American cities, and supplements theoretical discourses and ethnographies with films and novels.

Please note: due to staff research commitments not all of these courses are available every year.