MA Visual Anthropology

This module offers you 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 the module Anthropology of Art 1, you will be expected to select your own topic for research. The topic may relate to areas such as:

• The social life of artistic objects and images (their production, consumption, circulation, interpretation, agency, etc.)

• The practice of an artist or art collective (especially those whose work relates to anthropological preoccupations)

• The ethnography of art institutions like galleries or museums (techniques of display, audiences, exhibitions, etc.)

• Cases of iconoclasm (in public monuments, for example)

Your research may make use of fieldwork methods (such as participant observation, interviews and photographic documentation) and/or the analysis of documents including visual (pictures, films, material artefacts) and written materials (museum archives, newspapers, essays, books, internet sites). The appropriate methods for your research will be determined by the topic, the time-frame, issues of access, etc. Once you have selected your topic, you should confirm its suitability with your module tutor before embarking on fieldwork.

This module consists of screenings followed by seminars. The emphasis will be on key feature, documentary and ethnographic films, from Nanook of the North (Flaherty) to Burden of Dreams (Blank) to Blade Runner (Scott). A focal theme of the seminars will be the examination of the 'language of film'.

This module will train you in the use of camcorders (diverse formats), sound-recording, lighting, scripting/story-boarding and digital editing. During terms 1 and 2, you will be required to produce short practice videos (2-4 minutes) supervised by members of staff and will keep production diaries to document your acquisition of skills. While MA degrees normally result in dissertations, the key assessed artefact of the MA Visual Anthropology programme is a film. Accompanying this, however, will be an essay/report of 5,000 words in which you will provide a supporting textual account in the form of a catalogue.

This module looks at various ways in which anthropology has engaged with images, in terms of the production of narrowly anthropological research material through ethno-photography and ethnographic film as well as in terms of a broader set of interdisciplinary concerns with theories of representation, modern media, translation and political advocacy. The ethnographic project of modern anthropology has been a hybrid scientific/literary enterprise and visual complements, film in particular, have provided links both to cognate fields and non-specialist audiences. The module is grounded in a wide-ranging literature that informs the history of anthropological and social theoretical concerns.

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.

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 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 twentieth 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.

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 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).

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.

“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.

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 Through Photography and Sound in the Spring Term.

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

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.

The intention of the module is to give students a challenging and creative view of the potentials for using audio-visual material within anthropology. It also provides a strong theoretical background for those students going on to take the AN53040A Anthropology and the Visual: Production Module in the Spring Term.

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.