MA Visual Anthropology

The module draws on visual art, ethnography and film to think about central anthropological issues such as ‘personhood’, ‘class’, ‘indigeneity’, ‘commodity fetishism’, ‘performance’, ‘identity’, ‘memory’, ‘the sensuous’, ‘realism’, ‘history’, ‘mediation’ and ‘advocacy’. The aim of the module is to reflect on how much images tell us about human beings and their relationships in the contemporary world.

Directions and Diversions in Visual Anthropology is the core module for the MA Visual Anthropology programme and, as such, explores key concepts and debates in the sub-field. The module takes an inclusive approach towards the definition of visual anthropology, and provides tools both for the anthropological analysis of visual materials, and for applying anthropological knowledge to the production of actual visual artifacts. The overarching goal is to foster a situated understanding of the role of the visual in the production of anthropological knowledge, including its political and aesthetic dimensions. In this sense, the module is designed to provide a theoretical and methodological foundation for the students’ own projects.

Arguably modern anthropology and modern art are close in terms of both their origins and their critical reflection on the relationships between images, objects and persons, and a concern with anthropological or ethnographic issues is often an explicit feature of contemporary artworks. But despite a long history of dealing with the so-called ‘art’ of other cultures, what does anthropology have to contribute to an understanding of the kinds of artworks you might find at Tate Modern today? Using ethnographic case studies this module will consider key anthropological approaches to art both historically and thematically, and will explore how art and anthropology are entangled with each other, including suggesting ways in which anthropology can productively learn from contemporary art.

The purpose of this module is to provide a practical understanding of solo camera-director documentary making. The sessions are aimed at developing awareness, skills and confidence in the use of audiovisual equipment to tell engaging stories relevant to the social sciences. We will combine shooting and editing exercises with screenings and discussions.

The first term concentrates on developing the necessary practical skills to document unscripted social events and interactions (i.e. filming and editing). The second term focuses on specific documentary styles, interviewing techniques and storytelling conventions. This term will also deal with the stages of documentary production from the idea to the completed film. While the module aims to train participants as solo camera-directors group exercises will provide a taste of working within a conventional documentary crew. Students are also encouraged to critically relate to their films to current themes and discussions in anthropology and to fieldwork research.

This module is concerned with social and cultural constructions and understandings of gender, sexuality and the body as discussed in anthropology and beyond. The main aim of the module is to develop a critical understanding of some of the major theoretical approaches to gender, sex and the body, as they have been and are relevant to anthropology. In European intellectual history ideas about the body have often revolved around the biological binary categories male and female. In this module, however, using a range of ethnographic examples we look at ways in which the idea of male and female is perceived, embodied and challenged, cross-culturally, in different contexts, and at different historical moments. The topics addressed range from work, performance and narrations of the self, to queer communities and families, and from biopolitics, and new technologies of the body/reproduction, the body, gender, and nation, and gender and globalisation. By the end of the module, you will be expected to be familiar with the main theoretical perspectives in anthropology on gender, sexuality and the related politics. You should also be aware of the historical changes which have marked the analysis of these concepts and be able to use ethnographic material as evidence for theoretical points.

This module will explore understandings and experiences of the health and illness by engaging with classic and contemporary ethnographic work to ask:

•How are health and illness understood and experienced; how are healing practices assessed?

•What is the relationship between health and inequality, both with reference to professional status and economic disparities?

•What can anthropology contribute in practice?

This is a practical module in which you'll find and negotiate a work placement within an organisation outside the university. These organisations can be either not-for-profit or profit­based. They might include activist groups and Non – Governmental Organisations involved in rights, advocacy or development work, local community-based initiatives, social entrepreneurship initiatives, law firms, media outlets and corporations involved in corporate social responsibility projects. The module allows students a great deal of flexibility in arranging the nature of the placement and the organisation involved, in consultation with the module convener and the college placements office.

For programmes on which the placement is a core module, the placement provides the opportunity to interrogate the boundary between theory and practice.

For students on MA Migration and Mobility, the placement module is also a platform for more nuanced investigation of the relationship between research led, theoretical approaches to migration and mobility and the exigencies and logistics involved in advocacy, practical interventions and vocational application. Advocacy and development work are not in opposition to critical, theoretical concerns – they are mutually constitutive. But understanding how various kinds of considerations need to balance against one another, what needs to take priority and when, can only be gleaned from first hand experiences and observations.

The placements involve working half a day a week carrying out a project useful to the organisation. You'll gain an understanding of the demands, constraints and concerns of working within an organisation and will be able to draw out connections between the practical issues of concern to the organisation in their applied work and the theoretical issues addressed in the rest of the module.

Students are expected to negotiate a work placement in the autumn term, to be taken up before the end of January or in early February at the latest. The placement should be for one half day a week ideally, but no greater than a full working day a week, to allow students to also attend to the other elements of their study on the module. Where more than a half day placement is being negotiated, the convenor will need to be informed.

The hours are to be agreed by the organisation and the student, but should not impinge on attendance at lectures and seminars that make up part of the student's studies on the MA. The duration of the placement is also to be agreed between the parties involved, but should ideally last for 10 weeks. Students who wish to consider their placement for a longer period should remember to take into consideration the amount of time and effort that will be required during the assessment period and to consider their own progress on their dissertations before undertaking any further commitments.

During the placement, students are asked to make a positive, 'hands on' contribution to the work of the organisation that has accepted them and to abide by the organisation's own code of conduct. The academic expectations of the placement include gaining a closer understanding of the historical and conceptual approaches that frame the work and goals of the organisation, together with a better appreciation of the demands and constraints under which the organisation operates. While it is hoped that these understandings will be largely the product of your work in the organisation (a form of participant observation in anthropological terms), it is always useful to conduct semi-structured interviews with members of the organisation where co-workers are amenable to the idea and where it in no way proves disruptive to your work there.

All students are reminded that the placement, both as part of their anthropological training and as a form of ‘field research’, are governed by the Ethical Guidelines adopted by the American Association of Anthropologists.

This module explores the friction and common ground between History and Anthropology. In order to understand this productive but spirited dialogue, we historicise their relationship and overlapping but divergent theoretical perspectives and methods. Modern social anthropology was formed in the early 20th century by a rejection of evolutionism and its replacement by synchronic site-specific studies, a move that effectively eclipsed history’s theoretical significance to the discipline. Yet, dissatisfaction with the ways in which synchronic functionalist ethnographic analyses ignored history and social change brought about lasting debates about continuity and rupture; the relation between pasts, presents and futures, and the wider humanistic turn of both disciplines under the theoretical influence of Marxism, feminism, and other critical social theory since the 1960s. This module is, in many ways, an examination of the possibilities of a historicised anthropology and poses several intertwined empirical and theoretical questions about the place of structure and agency, consciousness and historicity, and memory and silences within ethnography. Through historical ethnographies and selected social historiography, we aim to understand not only how to approach the past anthropologically, but also grasp ethnographically the uses of history as a collectivist political project implicated in nationalism, racist ideology, and categories like world heritage.

To introduce 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".

Modern anthropology and political economy have their origins in the democratic revolutions and enlightenment philosophy of the 18th century. How could the arbitrary social inequality of the old regime be replaced by a more equal society founded on what all people have in common, their human nature? We consider different approaches to political economy – Marxist, neo-institutionalist and anthropological – and look at the relationships between the state and the economy both historically and how they are experienced in everyday encounters.

It has been claimed that the contemporary global flows of ideas, commodities and people fragment national political and cultural spaces towards both more local and global directions. Others have argued that nationalist ideologies are, in fact, re-emerging and legitimising growing inequalities in the new global order. We will revise classical theories of state and nationalism in the light of these two positions and discuss ethnographies of conflicting – regional, supranational, national, global – identities.

How can we develop critical knowledge about migration and borders? This module explores the multiple ways migration and borders are understood and experienced in different social, geographical, and political settings, as well as in different theoretical and discursive domains. Grounded in anthropological perspectives and methods, and branching out into film, literature, and art, the module aims to destabilise dominant understandings of migration and borders. In doing so, it critically unpacks core themes at the heart of contemporary debates on transnational movement – from race to belonging, from surveillance to gender. Throughout the module we will engage with a variety of theoretical, literary, and visual materials that focus on migrant lives and border crossings to develop a critical understanding of migration and the material, political, cultural, and linguistic borders that shape it.

This module will consider the border politics involved in the making of 'transnational', diasporic', and 'local' communities. We will theorise the border as a material, political, cultural and linguistic boundary that is increasingly defining social life as well as engage with the experiences of those who cross borders. We will ask: How are borders constructed and contested? How do migrants experience borders? How is the discourse of citizenship destabilised when movement and borders become central heuristics by which to understand belonging and membership? Throughout the module we will read academic texts as well as engage with films and literature that focus on migrant lives and border crossings to develop a theoretical and practical knowledge of border politics in relationship to migratory flows.

This module revolves around contemporary debates in the anthropology of social movements. It considers the contribution of ethnographic approaches to activism and protest to the theorisation of 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, the pedagogical orientation of the 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.

The assessment is constructed around student projects that will present, in a multimedia portfolio format, the result of research conducted about/with social movements.

To understand some of the implications and practical concerns of communicating anthropological themes and issues through visual and aural, as well as written media. This is a production-based module and does not follow the usual lecture/seminar format. It is centered on the development of your own individual practical visual or sound project and seeing that through to completion, hopefully by the end of the term. As such the contact hours are mostly made up of one-to-one tutorials, although there will be some sessions when we meet as a whole group. We will have a group viewing session in the last week of the Spring Term. Above all else, the module requires you to engage in a process of practical production, not to take a few photographs, or record a bit of sound at the end of the term, but to develop and refine a project through all the various stages and forms necessary for its successful completion. Students typically produce several versions of the practical work as they refine their project over the module of the term.

In planning their project students should - if necessary - look at a practical ‘how to do it’ books, although technical advice will also be given in tutorial sessions. Even if you have had a good deal of photographic experience, this is likely to draw attention to issues you have not so far considered.

This module uses a range of data to focus on the relationship between Anthropology and Psychology. Although anthropology has often been described as a `bridge’ between the natural sciences and the humanities, the relationship between anthropology and psychology (or Psychoanalysis) has always been fraught with tension. This module explores these tensions and some attempts to overcome them.

The aim of this module is to introduce you to rights in terms of their philosophical foundations, the history and shape of the UN system and anthropological contributions. We will be exploring human rights and humanitarian law a bodies of law, institutions, systems of practice and ideologies – with particular focus on the issue of cultural relativism (historically the key stumbling block for anthropological engagement with rights) and cross-cultural experiences of engagement with, or resistance to, rights.

During the term you should acquire an overview of the relationship between anthropology, feminist theories and theoretical and applied issues within the field of development and politics. The emphasis will be on critical engagement and debate, and on a comparative approach to gender and gender systems of power in developed and developing countries. We will draw on the theories and debates covered in other modules to examine the implications of gender differences within specific economic and political systems.

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.

This module introduces the fascinating domain of the anthropology of religion: a vast and wide-ranging subject. It introduces some of the many ways anthropologists have approached religious phenomena and highlights what is unique about anthropology’s contribution to the understanding of religion. It raises questions concerning what counts as ‘religious’ and includes within the remit of the module consideration of a variety of non-human agents (gods, God, spirits, witches) and religious practices (meditation, worship, performances).

This module offers an introduction to theoretical debates and methods of digital anthropology. It combines an introduction to the debates that have shaped the field with practical sessions designed to familiarize learners with digital methodologies for anthropological research. As digital technologies transform contemporary experiences of subjectivity, embodiment, sociality and everyday life, the module uses anthropological tools and methods to think through digital technologies in a range of ethnographic contexts. Topics covered will reimagine the object of anthropology through digital ethnography, and explore how the purchase of digital futures and imaginaries remake anthropologists’ conceptual toolkits.

The module will combine an enquiry into the materialities and politics of digital infrastructures, devices and social media platforms with practical learning using digital methods to produce anthropological analysis. Practical sessions will develop independent research skills including research design and ethics, working with digital video, techniques of online data collection and digital qualitative and ethnographic analysis.