BA (Hons) Anthropology & Sociology

The module will invite you to explore being human through the relations that make and complicate us. This introduction to anthropological thinking encourages us to think about self, other and social world(s) through the relations that connect and differentiate our species. Our critical conversation on human being follows a path of thinking about social relations across multiple scales & contexts: 

• Personhood 
• Bodies: Race/Gender/(dis)Ability 
• Anthropological Selves/Others/Collaborations 
• Kinship/Relatedness/Friendship 
• Non/other-than human/ Mystical/ Devine (animals, spirits, sorcerers, gods....) 
• Infrastructures/ Objects (artefact, document, attire...) 
• Exchange/Exploitation (gifts, comrades, world systems, assemblages....) 
• Citizen/Nation/Border 
• Present Pasts/ Empire/Hauntings 
• Planet/Futures 

As you progress through the course, your thinking will move outwards from selves and persons; through bodies, kin and others; into infrastructures, world systems and planetary futures.

The aim of this module is to acquaint you with contemporary social anthropology, as well as to give you the confidence and the tools to think critically and work collaboratively. The module begins by locating the discipline within the social sciences and humanities before proceeding to an exploration of central themes, methodologies and ethical concerns.

The course is structured around lectures, seminars and workshops. Lectures and seminar discussions will draw on late-20th century and contemporary anthropological texts and debates. The emphasis will be on exploring how anthropology can give us a unique perspective on key contemporary social issues. Workshops will include practice-based activities to encourage the development of your critical awareness, thinking and reading, as well as collaborative work skills. The module will also include career-centered discussions.

As the module progresses you will gain a growing sense of what social anthropology is and hopefully feel more confident to enter discussion concerning the kinds of questions it asks. Reflecting this gradual build-up of confidence and understanding, the portfolio assignment – which will involve a series of short texts and/or visual submissions – will be guided by regular discussions, receiving interim feedback at the end of the Autumn term, before final submission and assessment at the end of the Spring term.

Anthropological Methods is an introduction to practices of ethnographic research. The module examines the relationship between theory and method within anthropology. You will learn about the specific techniques that are used by anthropologists as they conduct their fieldwork.

This module also draws attention to how ethnographic knowledge produced during fieldwork is both relational and contextual. It considers certain historical conjectures and power dynamics that have contributed to the way ethnography is (perhaps at times rather paradoxically) at once defined as a product and perceived as a process.

The module explores the epistemological and ethical foundations of anthropological methods in order to encourage you to think about fieldwork as an encounter and ethnography as the relation between anthropological practice and theory.

This module aims to introduce you to the ‘sociological imagination’. What is distinctive about Sociology? With a focus on knowledge and power, the module looks at how Sociology has developed, with an emphasis on the study of relations between individuals and groups in modern industrial societies.

This module will:
•introduce students to key sociological approaches to social divisions and differences
•foster students’ knowledge and understanding of the development of sociological thinking through the study of classical and contemporary accounts of social power, identity and inequality
enable students to analyse and contrast differing approaches to the study of core sociological topics, including class, gender, race, religion and nation

In this module our approach to the ‘sociological imagination’ is to understand Sociology as a discipline that has its own history. That history has influenced how we do Sociology today. It has given us different approaches, perspectives and different methods. These didn’t arrive all at once, but arose at different times, often in response to social events or changes in philosophical thinking. New perspectives and questions have arisen that have taken Sociology in new directions. We have to gain a sense of the history of our discipline in order to see where Sociology came from and how that history has changed. Those changes in approach have shaped the Sociology we study today, and we have to understand as much as we can about it in order to understand our own inheritances. But we also have to read this history critically, because it doesn’t have to determine how we do Sociology in the future.

In this module, our approach to the ‘sociological imagination’ is to understand Sociology as a discipline that has its own history. That history has influenced how we do Sociology today. It has given us different approaches, perspectives and different methods. These didn’t arrive all at once, but arose at different times, often in response to social events or changes in philosophical thinking.

New perspectives and questions have arisen that have taken Sociology in new directions. We have to gain a sense of the history of our discipline in order to see where Sociology came from and how that history has changed. Those changes in approach have shaped the Sociology we study today, and we have to understand as much as we can about it in order to understand our own inheritances. But we also have to read this history critically, because it doesn’t have to determine how we do Sociology in the future.

This module is concerned with the complex relationship between culture and social processes, and how this informs meaning-making. Through a focus on two particular approaches to the study of culture – the Critical Theory and semiotics – you'll consider how culture is produced and consumed through different social processes and institutions.  

Lectures explore key perspectives and debates on culture in twentieth-century social thought, including the ‘culture industry’, ideology, and culture as ‘text’.

You'll learn through the use of substantive examples of macro-social phenomena (eg consumption) and different media objects (eg cinema and advertising), as well as exploring examples of contemporary cultural phenomena (eg digital meme culture).

Critical appraisal of different theoretical perspectives – for example, via decolonial and feminist analyses – help you to evaluate debates and apply these to the study of contemporary cultural phenomena. Seminar activities and assessment further support the development of your ability to construct critical and evidenced sociological arguments. 

The module takes its lead from Jock Young’s call to the criminological imagination and his critique of a criminology based on a realist, positivist and often quantitative conception of evidenceorthodox criminology.

‘Crime’ animates politics and everyday conversation; it’s the stuff of the news, dramas and films. But much of academic criminology produces abstracted or empirical study. By contrast ‘cultural criminology’, seeks to make sense of the lived cultures and phenomenological experiences of crime.

In this module, you'll examine of how crime and the criminological are refracted through a rich and diverse field of media and cultural forms, devices and practices. You'll learn that crime has been ‘imagined’ in a wide range of ways. You'll explore a series of examples and cases in order to provide depth and empirical focus. You'll also gain a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding what the criminological imagination might mean and how we might bring to the fore its critical analytical force. 

This module is concerned with key ways of thinking that have shaped and continue to shape the discipline of social anthropology. As such, the module is intended to augment what you have learned in the first year and to help consolidate your sense of how important concepts in social anthropology fit together.

The focus of the module is how the discipline’s main 20^th century schools of thought have developed, how they relate to one another and what they have contributed to our understandings of the world.

Our concern is with the different ways in which anthropologists have conceived of ‘culture’ and ‘society’ in their efforts to account for the myriad of ways in which humans live.

We shall explore how these approaches to anthropology compete with, and sometimes contradict, one another and how these dynamics have driven the discipline through the political landscape of the twentieth century to where we are now so that we can, in the last, pause to envisage where we can and should go next.

The aim of the module is to introduce you to black, indigenous and transnational feminist analyses of the historical and sociopolitical foundations and consequences of predatory capitalism. You'll explore the challenges different communities face in relation to different forms of large-scale resource extraction and climate change, and the actions undertaken by those communities to deal with those challenges.

You'll be introduced to these themes via literature and audio-visual content that offers important ways forward, developing the critical analysis skills necessary to explore practical solutions to these problems.

You'll work towards answering the question 'How can reimagining ecology help us to rethink possible responses to large-scale extraction and climate change and to continue to fight for measures that might slow down climate change?'.

This module to introduce you to critical debates about knowledge and method within anthropology and sociology, and to examine how these debates have shifted over the history of these disciplines.

The objectives of the module are:

• To introduce a shared history of debate in anthropology and sociology, focusing on how knowledge is produced within different forms of social and cultural research
• To assess the status of anthropology and sociology as social 'sciences'
• To critically examine anthropological and sociological methods and knowledge in relation to issues of values, subjectivity and difference

In this module, you'll explore the management, regulation, oversight, accountability – in short, governance – of everyday life. Our everyday lives seem increasingly subject to governance with an explosion of rules, guides, technologies, and forms of scrutiny to which we are subjected. Developing an understanding of these pervasive forms of governance requires a focus on the ordinary, everyday ways of acting and relating to each other, and the ways in which we are held to account through these mundane activities. 

Yet we also need to pay attention to the objects, technologies and political structures required to give governance an effect. In particular, making sense of governance needs a move beyond law or structured regulation to understand how governance is mediated through social, political and material relations involving ordinary, everyday activities, objects, and technologies. 

We'll being by considering the history of the governance of everyday lives, exploring how our contemporary situation has emerged and looking at what questions this has raised. We'll ask how - as sociologists - we can usefully go about studying and critically engaging with everyday governance? And how can we communicate our analysis of governance to different types of audiences?

Weekly topics based on staff research specialisms bring to life the everyday nature of governance in different areas, such as: health, environment, rights, education, crime, religion, migration, consumption and data.

By focusing on contemporary local and global examples of everyday governance, we examine how these practices are held together, how they occasionally fall apart, and how they have different kinds of effects for different communities. We conclude by questioning the future of everyday governance and where we might go next. 

The Anthropology of Religion module takes as its starting point the fact that religion is everywhere in the modern world, exerts a powerful influence on social life, and motivates social action in a variety of ways. You’ll explore how distinctions between the secular and the religious, and between science and magic or ‘superstition’, have been used to legitimate or devalue different/non-Western practices and indigenous cultures.

Using a wide range of ethnographic studies, the module encourages you to question the implicit hierarchy often assumed between secularism and religion, and to challenge and rethink earlier academic epistemologies. A focus on religion as a mode of social action is also explored in relation to how religious belief and practice may promote forms of social justice and activism - as well as violence and oppression.

The module also looks at the relationship between religion, race, place and identity in the context of diasporic communities. You’ll also examine how social media and digital platforms are facilitating transnational notions of religious belonging and identity. You’ll be introduced to anthropological and interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, the body and sexuality. You’ll also explore themes of embodiment and corporeality via the relationship between religion, ecology, and environmentalism. You’ll particularly focus on how nature-oriented new religious movements have sought to resist instrumentalist neo-liberal and Enlightenment disenchantments of space, place and landscape.

This module provides a critical introduction to the anthropology of policy and engages with key questions of power, governance, and the role of institutions in social change. The aim of the module is to promote a better understanding of public anthropology in ways that provide learning opportunities that both enhance your academic skills and provide opportunities for personal development by engaging with real-world problems and their possible solutions.

We'll explore a range of issues involving contemporary policy interventions that seek to provide solutions to societal problems, including the rationalities that policies embody, the instruments mobilized for their implementation, and key issues around policy travel and translation, policy discourses and their effects, and the complex ways that people engage with, and sometimes resist, policy processes.   

You'll work in groups to build a policy for institutional change relating to an area of your choice. This could be for example lowering the attainment gap in educational institutions, the challenges of creating a carbon-neutral workplace, grappling with the ethical nuances of generating historical transparency regarding cultural heritage, or building more care-driven spaces.

Each week focuses on a different area of research and delivery practice. Teaching comprises a combination of lectures and workshops (depending on class size) ranging from sessions focused on theory building and critical thinking  (what policy does, what does it reveal about practices of inclusion and absence/exclusion etc), to practical sessions addressing the how-tos of policy research (eg where do you find institutional policies and what are the methodologies for reading them) and to creative methodologies for creating and communicating policy (e.g community action research models).  

This module examines indigenous cosmopolitics (political claims, epistemologies and imaginaries which exceed the terms of ‘politics’ as understood and practiced in the global North) across the globe and their entanglements with and inspirations for diverse movements for global justice, decolonization and transformations in relations between humans and the environment. We'll read contemporary cosmopolitical practice and theory to understand the claims (philosophical, legal, political, cultural) made by diversely positioned indigenous groups, and critically position this in dialogue with the history of Western political thought. The module will chart the movements of cosmopolitical thinking across the global South and examine the modes of political and legal practice which it inspires.  

Cosmopolitical philosophies emerging from indigenous thought and practice directly address issues of social and environmental justice, decolonization, and sustainability, and these will therefore be key topics of debate and discussion. The teaching will be research-led and will draw on expertise within the department, and will utilise interdisciplinary perspectives (particularly those from Media, Sociology, Law and Art) in addressing issues of contemporary concern. 

What is politics? For many people, the answer is simple: politics, as the management and organisation of the public good, is the province of government and parties. Its occurrences and machinations are played out, more or less openly, in parliaments, bureaucracies, elections, as well as in our newspapers and on our television and computer screens.  

The module will begin by considering some of the perspectives on collective action provided by social history, considering issues such as the role of ‘disruptive power’ in insurrections and the role of class, race and gender in generating intersectional types of struggles. It will then consider some of the salient theoretical debates on the sources and subjects of transformative political action, from debates about the ‘racialised’ and ‘gendered’ Other in relation to the French revolution and the Declaration of Human Rights, to discussions on the place of violence in anti-colonial and liberation movements.

Throughout, attention will be placed on the relevance of concepts in political sociology to the study of contemporary movements for political change - from labour movements to recent anti-racism struggles, from feminism and the new women’s protests, to activism in the age of the Internet and social media. The module will both provide an analytical toolbox for approaching the sociological study of politics and serve as an introduction to some of the most important positions in political sociology. 

In this module, you'll gain workplace learning experience designed to enhance your studies by bringing theory and real-life practice together. You'll develop practical skills and provide research opportunities within an organisation. You'll expand your networks and provide valuable insights into potential work environments for when you graduate, as well as the space and guidance to reflect on what it means to apply sociology to the world of work.

As part of your assessment for this module, you'll complete a research report. Your course lecturer will assist you in identifying the focus of your research and in applying relevant theory elsewhere, as appropriate. While individual placements vary, all students will conduct, to varying degrees, a small-scale ethnography of the organisation within which they are placed, which will include how the concept of culture is relevant to it, and both its micro, internal goings-on and the macro and policy context in which it operates.

The minimum 10-day placement takes place in May-June with related teaching and support hours spread across the summer and autumn term. Assessment takes place in the autumn term.

Please note: we will endeavor to source placements from across a wide range of areas but cannot guarantee specific placements. You should be flexible and appreciate that any broadly-related experience can be valuable.

This module explores a selection of approaches to the sociological study of the body, as well as substantive problem-areas where the body has become an important focus of research. You address the contrast between traditions that approach the body as an object (the body we have), those that approach the body as a subject (the body we are), and those that address the body in terms of performativity (the body we become). 

The module will cover contemporary approaches to the body and especially sexuality, beginning with an introduction to Foucaultian critiques and associated theories of performativity. It will provoke a series of questions about social constructionism and materiality, inviting students to evaluate more process oriented theories of performativity as well as those emphasising the productive work of speech acts (Butler). The terms ‘drugs’ and ‘technology’ in the title give emphasis to the way in which the body will be posed as always already engaged with phenomena that is more commonly deemed external. This conceptual approach will introduce students in second year to more contemporary debates and particularly debates that offer a more applied approach to inquiries of the body in relation to health, medicine and everyday technologies.

‘Leisure is free time'. But is it?

We need only think about the annual subscription to gyms to recognise that leisure time really isn’t ‘free time’. ‘Leisure is a marker for time away from work’. But we need only think of the time of the harried vacation to know that the clock-time of work never ceases to operate.

In critical theory, leisure time is defined as functionally dependent on the labour market system. Indeed leisure is revealed as big business, as leisure time becomes ever more central to consumer culture. This module examines the interconnections between leisure, culture and society.

Organisations make strange things happen. Organisations can cause serious problems. Some organisations can be quite useful or may even be necessary for doing things well together. Schools, churches, banks, supermarkets, the state and indeed the university not only shape the world but also shape the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves. This module explores the role of organisations in social life through a range of theoretical approaches and case studies.

More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities. In the scale of things, London is a medium-sized city compared to the mega-cities such as those in SE Asia, on the Indian Subcontinent and in South America. These are cities with large-scale rural to urban migration and they grow at a fast pace and through informal practices in which people improvise on formal structures with electricity hookups and ad hoc buildings sometimes called ‘slums’. In these terms, London is a more formal or regulated city as well as only moderately large. London is a very interesting city with a colonial heritage and multi-racial population accrued through migration. It is a global financial centre and lies at a confluence of migration streams with a constant in and out flow of people.  

Time, space and rhythm are overarching themes running through this module and the key to understanding what cities are and how they work. In addition to time, space and rhythm cities are layered by the ways in which power runs through them. Social inequalities, class, ethnicity, renewal and rebuilding are all sociological concerns that manifest themselves in cities. Cities are shaped as much by the people who live in them as the architects and planners who draw up the urban substance that builders make. Cities are never finished, they are always emerging and mutating just as they are never at rest but increasingly twenty-four-hour commercial enterprises. 

This is a visual urban sociology module conducted on the streets of London rather than in a Goldsmiths’ classroom. This is a different way of learning and it involves using your senses, especially observation, as you move through the city. This is knowledge acquisition on the move.

What is politics? For many people, the answer is simple: politics, as the management and organisation of the public good, is the province of government and parties. Its occurrences and machinations are played out, more or less openly, in parliaments, bureaucracies, elections, as well as in our newspapers and on our television and computer screens.  

The module will begin by considering some of the perspectives on collective action provided by social history, considering issues such as the role of ‘disruptive power’ in insurrections and the role of class, race and gender in generating intersectional types of struggles. It will then consider some of the salient theoretical debates on the sources and subjects of transformative political action, from debates about the ‘racialised’ and ‘gendered’ Other in relation to the French revolution and the Declaration of Human Rights, to discussions on the place of violence in anti-colonial and liberation movements.

Throughout, attention will be placed on the relevance of concepts in political sociology to the study of contemporary movements for political change - from labour movements to recent anti-racism struggles, from feminism and the new women’s protests, to activism in the age of the Internet and social media. The module will both provide an analytical toolbox for approaching the sociological study of politics and serve as an introduction to some of the most important positions in political sociology. 

Most people in the world are religious and religion is a significant social force across societies. Research within the Sociology of Religion shows that while a few years ago many sociologists and criminologists thought religion’s influence was decreasing, especially in the ‘west’, this view has changed with the realisation of religion’s continuing, and in some cases increasing, significance.

Religious individuals and institutions both protect and harm individuals: where are the boundaries marking acceptable or unacceptable religious practice? New questions arise concerning the legal rights and responsibilities of religious actors, the shifting boundaries between public and private, the roles of those who police and enforce individual and collective rights and the type and quantity of religious laws and rules. What is meant by religious equality, and how does this impact on human rights and social justice? Do religious people have the ‘right’ to follow their religion’s teaching if it affects the rights of other people, and who decides?  

What is considered to be ‘criminal’ activity changes over time and place, as does the nature of law and other forms of regulation. Most literature on religion and crime speaks to the normative, taken-for-grantedness that religious people are ‘good’. Such assumptions ignore the way religion actually ‘works’ on the ground. Globally, terrorism, conflicts and war crimes are often driven by ethno-religious claims and aspirations. Those in positions of religious power and authority sometimes abuse their roles and the people who follow them. How does the law, and religion, construct certain behaviours as either deviant or permitted, and how is that changing and why? 

The activity of such diverse arenas as sharia courts, secular courts and the United Nations are explored to show how religion is regulated and represented. Finally, the role of religion in the care of criminals is explored, starting with early prison reform and more contemporary initiatives such as prison chaplaincy.  

Using theories and cases from around the world, with an emphasis on the UK and Europe, this module helps students of sociology, law, criminology and sociology of religion to understand the critical relationships between religion, crime and law.  

This module will also prepare you for future study of contemporary religion, law and crime and for careers where understanding diversity and complexity will be strong employability assets. 

The module considers crimes against humanity, and the meaning of key concepts such as:

• Humanity
• State
• Universal jurisdiction
• Individual responsibility

You'll explore what kinds of behaviour constitute crimes against humanity, and how, why and by whom such crimes are committed.

You'll examine what kinds of international legal instruments and institutions have arisen to designate crimes against humanity as such in order to try to prevent or punish them.

You'll compare legal practices of representing such crimes with other practices, in particular memoirs and films. We'll employ concepts to understand case studies and it will employ case studies to shed light on concepts; it will in this way develop a materialist sociological methodology, rooted in empirical study, in order to understand the world. 

We’re living in a time of global climate crisis. How might we, as sociologists, and as people living in this world, make sense of climate change and ecological collapse? What are our responsibilities? How are we complicit? How can we make sense of the histories which led to this moment and how might we imagine our futures? How do we stay hopeful?

In this module, we'll think together about how we got here and where we are going. We will explore the environmental crisis as a multiple, interconnected issue which has a long history, and highly differentiated and unequal impacts. The module takes a decolonial and anti-racist perspective to environmental issues, embedding work by indigenous, racialized and global south scholars across each week of the term, to help us reframe debates and theories. We also look at different kinds of fictional writing about the environment. In this way, we want to explore how the global climate crisis represents a challenge to ways of knowing and to ways of living and necessitates us thinking in different and more connected ways.

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.

In this module you'll explore understandings and experiences of 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? 

Adopting an expansive understanding of ‘art’, this module examines the history, ethics and socio-political implications of aesthetics, beauty, and exhibiting.

Using ethnographic case studies and evaluating varied analytical frames, you'll consider anthropological approaches to and uses of art, both historically and thematically.

Topics range from ‘ways of seeing’, to art on the body art; from the politics of photography to art-as-research-method; from capitalism to liberation. Throughout the course we will contemplate the multiple ways in which art and anthropology are entangled with each other, highlighting shared disciplinary practice of critical reflection on the relationships between images, objects, and persons.

In this module, you'll examine 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 (e.g. Amazonia, West Africa, Indonesia) and relating to different resources (e.g. forests, soil, water, oil). Throughout the module, you'll also discuss the bearings of the anthropological ideas examined on public dismodules of environmentalism and on conservation policy.

The module aims to provide you with a critical understanding of international development as a social, political and historical field, and of anthropology’s engagement with development and processes of planned social change. You'll gain an understanding of the emergence of development as an idea, the architecture and infrastructure of aid, and key theoretical approaches in the study of inequality.

You'll examine the tensions inherent in anthropology’s long and intimate relationship with development, through the early production of expert knowledge about tradition and culture; through its critical engagement with policy processes and planned interventions, and through the professional negotiation of the fields of development anthropology and the anthropology of development.  

The module then goes on to contextualise these theoretical and critical approaches to development through a series of interlinked topics and ethnographic case studies. These take students beyond the idea of development as linear progression, or as a monolithic force acting on the world, and instead reveal a field fractured by contradictions, contestations and contingencies that are produced, reproduced and interpreted across multiple locations and cultural contexts.

In this module, you'll learn about the social and cultural constructions and understandings of gender, sexuality and the body as discussed in anthropology and beyond. You'll 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. 

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'll be exploring human rights and humanitarian law as 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. 

The aim of this module is to allow students to explore the possibilities of communicating anthropological themes and issues through visual and aural media by producing practical work.

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. As such the contact hours are made up of some joint screening sessions and group workshops, as well as some one-to-one tutorials.

The module requires you to engage in a PROCESS of making a visual piece of work, 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 this module, you'll 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. You'll examine 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 you a challenging and creative view of the potential for using audio-visual material within anthropology.

This module takes two approaches to the anthropology of violence. First, when societies break down and engage in violence, the question of culture comes up. How has a convivial society with certain cultural practices turned to extreme violence? After violence, a related question comes up: “can cultural practices help reconciliation, justice, truth finding and aid in overcoming violent memories?” Second, anthropology is also the study of the species human. What kind of political and social environment does violence create? How does that change preconceived notions of the human and humanity?

This module starts with a theoretical overview of how anthropologists have approached violence, specifically genocide and war. By providing ethnographic case studies you'll interrogate concepts such as solidarity, kinship, “religious wars,” “ethnic conflict,” and memory. You'll take social practices as the main lens and combine it with larger frames of modernity, globalization, and securitization. Building on colonialism, nationalism and the question of human life therein, you'll be provided with an understanding of how different groups navigate social life during and after violent events.

The module provides you with an introduction to the anthropology of work and organisations alongside a practical work placement. You'll develop and apply your anthropological knowledge while gaining key career development skills. The placement will last  5 days per week for 2 weeks, or at least 10x8 hour days spread over a longer period.

The aim of the module is to provide you with experiential learning opportunities to enhance your academic studies and offer the opportunity for personal development.

Previous partner organisations offering placements have included The Migration Museum, Lawyers Against Poverty, and Lewisham Community Gardens.

This module introduces you to contemporary debates in the anthropology of social movements. You'll consider 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 we'll 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. You'll 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.

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. We’ll 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’ll 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 offers an introduction to theoretical debates and methods of digital anthropology. The module combines an introduction to the debates that have shaped the field with practical sessions, designed to familiarise you 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. Through the topics of this module, we’ll reimagine the object of anthropology through digital ethnography and explore how the purchase of digital futures and imaginaries remake anthropologists’ conceptual toolkits.

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

This module will introduce you to 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's centred 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.

You'll typically produce several versions of the practical work as they refine their project over the module of the term. In planning your project, you 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.

The module aims to provide you with a critical understanding of international development as a social, political and historical field, and of anthropology’s engagement with development and processes of planned social change. It will aim to provide an understanding of the emergence of development as an idea, the architectures and infrastructures of aid, and introduce key theoretical approaches in the study of inequality.

We’ll consider the ways in which contrasting ideas of development were woven into both colonial policies of extraction and discourses of trusteeship and into anti-colonial freedom movements that led to the formation of post-colonial nation states after World War 2. We’ll also examine anthropology’s long and intimate relationship with development through its critical engagement with policy processes and planned interventions, as well as tensions between academic and applied approaches in the discipline.

The module contextualises these theoretical and critical approaches to development through a series of interlinked topics and ethnographic case studies. You’ll be actively encouraged and supported to develop your own perspectives and critiques of development and to make links between the topics introduced in this module, for example, (neo) colonialism, decolonisation, racism and whiteness, growth and inequality, the role of state and corporate actors in development, and whether the interventions and outcomes which the contemporary international development industry is intended to deliver are worthwhile.

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 forests, soil, water, oil).

Throughout the module, we will also discuss the bearings of the anthropological ideas examined on public discourses of environmentalism and on conservation policy.

The module draws on visual art, ethnography and film to think about central anthropological issues.

Topics we’ll discuss include:

• personhood
• class
• indigeneity
• commodity fetishism
• performance
• identity
• memory
• the sensuous
• realism
• history
• mediation
• 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.

The Anthropology of Religion module takes as its starting point the fact that religion is everywhere in the modern world, exerts a powerful influence on social life, and motivates social action in a variety of ways. You’ll explore how distinctions between the secular and the religious, and between science and magic or ‘superstition’, have been used to legitimate or devalue different/non-Western practices and indigenous cultures.

Using a wide range of ethnographic studies, the module encourages you to question the implicit hierarchy often assumed between secularism and religion, and to challenge and rethink earlier academic epistemologies. A focus on religion as a mode of social action is also explored in relation to how religious belief and practice may promote forms of social justice and activism - as well as violence and oppression.

The module also looks at the relationship between religion, race, place and identity in the context of diasporic communities. You’ll also examine how social media and digital platforms are facilitating transnational notions of religious belonging and identity. You’ll be introduced to anthropological and interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, the body and sexuality. You’ll also explore themes of embodiment and corporeality via the relationship between religion, ecology, and environmentalism. You’ll particularly focus on how nature-oriented new religious movements have sought to resist instrumentalist neo-liberal and Enlightenment disenchantments of space, place and landscape.

This module will 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. You’ll be able to familiarise yourself with a number of empirical contexts. In result, 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. We’ll explore several contemporary problems relating to such issues as the apparent contradiction between local or national autonomy and globalisation that does not easily fit 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’ll 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.

The module will provide an overview of the study of material culture within the discipline of anthropology, with a focus on the materiality of heritage, memory, and archival practice.

We’ll engage in conversations about the materialisation of the past through both formal and informal archival practice, including institutional archives, policy archives, oral histories, collective remembering, and other forms of memorialisation.

We’ll also participate in discussions on absences and silences in the archives and hold conversations about the immaterial archive, for example exploring how experiences of intimacy or sensuality are denied space within professionalised archival practice.

Conventional ways of demarcating economic, power, and cultural relationships have long relied up notions of "North and South", "first and third", "east and west", "colonial and post-colonial." These means of envisioning the world and of tracing the intersections among diverse places, times, and peoples, while maintaining some salience, no longer seem to grasp what is really taking place.

The module, in particular, explores the emerging relationships between Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa—articulations that have been elaborated over a long history but which now take shape in new and powerful ways.

Additionally, there are a plurality of "worlds” that enjoin different actors and spaces that cannot be easily defined according to geopolitical understandings--where information infrastructure, design, telecommunications, and travel combine to create new possibilities of transaction. The module looks at how these worlds affect our understandings of sociality, actors, and collective life, in general, and the shape and operations of emerging powers in particular.

Philosophy, Politics & Alterity considers the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Isabelle Stengers and others in order to explore what they understand by the term ‘politics’ and the political constitution of difference/alterity. In pursuit of this aim, we will consider the importance of spatiality and temporality of difference, the construction of subjectivity as a political process, the importance of contemporary geo-political formations and the different analyses of resistance offered by these theorists, whether that be in terms of revolution and uprising, or in terms of aesthetic interventions. Through explorations, reading and discussion, the module will not only to understand the work of these thinkers, but also to turn our collective attention to current geo-political controversies and the legacies of those from the past.

The module aims to introduce you to a range of contemporary debates, which relate broadly to the sociological analysis of identity, memory and emotion. Through an examination of themes such as normativity and belonging, you're invited to consider the ways in which identity can act as a valuable resource, but also as an instrument of stigmatisation; contemporary examples relating to social class, disability, racialisation and LGBTQ lives help to illuminate the cultural politics of identity in contemporary societies. The emotional dimension of identity is foregrounded through the sociological analysis of emotion as an effect of wider, societal processes, but also as a driver of categorisation. 

You'll then be introduced to the relationship between identity and collective memory. Through an exploration of different facets of remembering and forgetting – such as cultural trauma and nostalgia – lectures foreground the contested nature of social memory. Contemporary local and global examples – eg on austerity politics, Black Lives Matter, and the Covid-19 pandemic - help students to apply theoretical knowledge to the critical analysis of social identities. You'll be encouraged to build on material presented within the module to develop further your independent, sociological thought, as well as your ability to communicate with non-academic audiences.

In this module, you'll explore the key theories of the relationship between identity and the law.  What is the relationship between legal and social identity?  How do we consider this relationship in terms of questions of justice? 

You'll examine contemporary debates concerning identity and law, from critical race feminism to deconstruction. You'll engage in a critical analysis of a range of key approaches to understanding identity, law, and justice. You'll apply these different approaches to case studies such as:

• Sexual assault
• Refugee law
• Human rights
• Terrorism
• International crimes

The first section of the course explores different accounts of law and identity and the second section explores debates concerning justice and identity.

Recent dramatic shifts in worldwide religiosity demand sociological analysis: new variants of religions and spiritual movements are proliferating just as numbers of non-religious people are increasing. Both of those changes - towards more religion/spirituality and away from religion - are impacting everyday life through, for example, politics, media, international relations, gender dynamics, education, consumerism and security. Participants share profuse manifestations of relationality – embodied, enacted and digitalised - which appear to contradict social theories of post-enlightenment individualisation.    

As literalist, fundamentalist strands of Christianity, Islam and Judaism rise and mutate, they affect extremist and populist forms of politics, violence and terrorism. While many religions have become more orthodox, devout and exclusionary - posing challenges for the more liberal ‘middle ground’ -  they have also (apparently paradoxically) attracted people who had previously been less religious and committed to their faith, yet now embrace some its more divisive, often violent, beliefs and practices.  

Less dogmatic and more mystical variants, such as Sufism in Islam and Kabbalah in Judaism proliferate amongst otherwise non-religious people.  Some religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, diffuse through both secular and spiritual practices, as many people turn to mindfulness, yoga, and meditation. Reinvented religions and spiritual practices may revive through paganism, the occult and rich afterlife beliefs.  

And then there is the fastest-growing religion category of them all - those who say they practise no religion. 

The number of those who claim to have no religion is increasing rapidly:  the ‘nones’ is the third-largest religion-related group – about 1.1 billion people - worldwide. The demographic of those who identify as atheist is remarkably consistent: overwhelmingly young, and mostly male. Beyond those self-described atheists is a larger, more fluid category of people who affiliate with ‘non-religion’ but have complex beliefs and practices, sometimes described as spiritual or paranormal, often relating to kin and ethnicity, sometimes visible through nationalism, environmentalism and human/other-than-human rights campaigns,  

Central to these shifts to and from religion are wider global, structural, economic and discursive changes. In this module we explore the new imaginaries, tensions, histories, power dynamics and cultural e(a)ffects that may help explain the current contemporary religious landscape. 

This module will also prepare you for future study of contemporary religion and for careers where understanding diversity and complexity will be strong employability assets. 

In this module, you'll examine the emergence of modern ideas of ‘race’ and forms of racism as well as the social and political forces that have shaped their development. We'll consider how racial ideas are conceptualized and justified through separate and interrelated forms of biological, social, and cultural description and explanation.

You'll explore the history of racial ideas from the Enlightenment and Romantic periods through to contemporary debates. We'll consider the historical formations of ‘race’ and racism in relation to Atlantic slavery and emancipation in the Caribbean and North America, classical scientific racism, and anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

The module also engages a range of critical issues: the rise of ethnicity as an alternative category to ‘race’; ‘racial’ epidemiology and public health; feminist approaches to the ‘intersections’ between ‘race’, class and gender; ‘differentialist’ forms of ‘new’ or ‘cultural’ racism; and eliminativist perspectives arguing that race ought to be eliminated altogether as a category and concept.

We'll also examine the conceptual work performed by racial ideas as well as their analytical coherence, political functions, and social effects. The module will emphasize a critical approach to the understanding of ‘race’ and encourage students to evaluate the social implications of racial ideas.

Citizenship was an achievement of working-class movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the UK (and elsewhere in Europe and Scandinavia).  But citizenship has continuously been challenged in different ways as itself creating injustice and inequalities – especially in terms of race and gender, and now in terms of nationality in the age of migration and with issues of empire and decolonising becoming more prominent.

In addition, citizenship is now bought and sold – how does this contribute to old and new inequalities?  Does citizenship offer tools to enable individuals and groups to address systemic inequalities today?  What are the limitations of citizenship?  How do they differ according to social interests and identities?  Do human rights offer better tools and how can their significance be analysed and assessed? 

This module will take an interdisciplinary approach in order to chart the gender dimensions of transnational migrations in the contemporary world. As a growing number of migration scholars emphasize, a gender perspective is crucial to orienting our theories and understanding of migration and global human geographies in the twenty-first century. You'll be encouraged to address questions such as:

• Why are men and women increasingly on the move on a global scale?
• What do male and female migrants do in the so-called countries of destination in the Global North?
• How does gender help us to understand the migration trajectories of migrants?
• How are gendered migrations linked to processes of social reproduction?  

The module will be divided into two parts. First, you'll be encouraged to analyse the recent history and political economy of migrations through the lenses of gender, as well as ‘race’ and class theories. We'll focus on the notions of ‘feminisation of migrations’ and ‘crisis of social reproduction’ to examine their root causes and dimensions.

You'll then learn to explore the social and cultural representations of migrants in the Global North and to identify the ways these representations can be scrutinised through theories of gender, ‘race’ and class. We'll take a critical perspective on key concepts such as ‘sexualisation of racism’, ‘racialisation of sexism’, ‘gendered assimilation’, ‘civic integration of migrants’ and ‘gendered colonial technologies of domination’. Taking a case study approach throughout the module, you'll learn how to evaluate the feasibility and appropriateness of different methodologies and techniques of social research when undertaking empirical research projects involving migrants. 

What is childhood and what are children’s experiences of their childhoods, their societies and cultures? How do children contribute and shape their communities, societies and cultures? This module lets you explore childhood and children’s lives from an interdisciplinary and international perspective. Building on key debates in childhood studies, including issues of power, participation, agency and control, students on the module learn about the different ways childhood has been produced in societies across time in relation to the state, families, education, government, and more.

You'll learn to ask what these ‘figurations of the child’ mean for children’s everyday lives and lived experiences and how children respond to dominant understandings of childhood. The module places an emphasis on children’s cultures, their everyday lives, and lived experiences, and you'll be exposed to a range of theories and methodologies that have been used to study childhood and do research with children. In view of discussions around the decolonization of the curriculum, the reading list has been updated and the various sessions consider the topics from an international and historical perspective.

Documentary and docufiction film is increasingly seen as an accessible and lively way for members of the public to engage with aspects of contemporary life – and especially issues to do with social justice.

In the university, it also seems especially appropriate to ‘decolonising the curriculum’ because of the way film graphically brings contexts and issues into focus with which we may have no familiarity in everyday life.  Documentary has indexical qualities that make it especially attractive in both these respects.

At the same time, however, documentary film is always also narrative and metaphorical.  In this module, we'll approach films both as graphically exemplifying social issues and as raising issues of representation and the ‘politics of location’ in terms of framing particular narratives and images, representing ‘Otherness’, exemplifying global tendencies etc.

In this module, you'll take a critical and sociological perspective to the study of crime and control in a globalised world. Globalisation is understood as an unequal process with historical roots in colonialism and empire.

Likewise, criminological theory has had a close relationship to colonialism. Criminologists now recognise that many of our theories, developed during colonialism and empire, are not relevant outside of the global north, and may even be harmful. As a result, contemporary criminologists need to learn to think globally in comprehending and researching transnational and global forms of crime.  

You'll examine a variety of contemporary and historic topics, including:

• Colonialism and criminal justice
• The contemporary war on drugs
• Organised crime
• Violence against women in a globalised world
• The relationship between criminal justice and bordering practices

This module has a non-standard assessment. Drawing on topics covered in this module, students write a blog post, factsheet, or film review for a non-academic audience as well as a structured reflection and bibliographic exercise.

The concept of ‘crimes of the powerful’ responds to long-standing criticisms that criminology focuses on petty crimes and offenders whilst neglecting crimes committed by powerful corporations, states and organisations.

In this module, we'll take a wide-ranging interdisciplinary approach drawing on research and theory from criminology, sociology, socio-legal studies, law, human rights, politics and international relations to discuss diverse issues such as war, state crime, corporate and white-collar crime. You'll learn why crimes of the powerful have generally proven difficult to legislate or punish.