Integrated Degree in Anthropology (including Foundation Year)

This module will introduce you to the key theoretical and methodological underpinnings of social anthropology, and to the debates that have been central to the discipline.

You’ll explore the history and theories of the subject such as religion, communication and symbolism through a critical, inclusive and decolonising lens.

You’ll be encouraged to reflect on your own experiences of everyday aspects of culture and society, and how many everyday social practices and institutions shape our sense of collective identity and social status in the modern world. You’ll also examine how the colonial histories of societal practices and institutions continue to operate as sites of disjuncture and exclusion in creating, sustaining and social inequalities by making them appear as a ‘natural’ part of everyday life.

You’ll examine the way public action, social justice movements, and local/indigenous forms of protest and activism have sought to liberate everyday understandings from racialised, prejudicial, and ethnocentric colonial assumptions. You’ll also address issues around the environment and sustainability, specifically in relation to exploring ideas about human relationships with other-than-human beings and things.

This module will introduce you to the role and scope of anthropology in the modern world. Using accessible and contemporary examples of anthropological writing and research, you’ll explore how anthropology facilitates cross-cultural understanding of different ‘ways of seeing’, and the importance of this in an increasingly globalised context.

You’ll learn how twenty-first-century anthropological research addresses how all human societies participate in wide networks of social relationships under a dominant global capitalist economy. You’ll consider the role of anthropological research and examine how anthropologists approach our global world, as reflective and politically engaged researchers. 

You’ll explore anthropology in an interdisciplinary way, looking at political, economic and social issues whilst gaining a strong foundation in the ethnographic and theoretical foundations of Anthropology.

This module will be delivered primarily via online and blended learning.

This module will introduce you to a range of interdisciplinary research methodologies, with a focus on qualitative anthropological and social research.

You’ll engage with critical debates using examples taken from contemporary research occurring within Goldsmiths. Topics include what constitutes ethical, inclusive, decolonised and sustainable research practice, the importance of methodologies produced from within indigenous anthropologies, as well as exploring how research methods and their outcomes can be employed in social justice advocacy and in relation to providing solutions to pressing global contemporary social issues around indigenous rights, consumption and the environment, and the use of social research methods by the military.

You’ll gain practice-based skills through a range of group-oriented research exercises as preparation for using anthropological methods in your own independent research. This will also include digital and audio-visual research, expanding your visual, media and digital cultures skills.

This module will enable you to develop inter-disciplinary academic and independent research skills needed for degree-level study. The course links academic skills such as time management and note-taking, with the anthropological topics and issues covered in the programme.

You’ll not only learn to ‘think anthropologically', but to engage critically and thoughtfully with academic theory and research from other disciplines, and express a range of issues in a clear, concise, and articulate manner.

This will introduce you to visual anthropology and the anthropology of art. You’ll examine anthropological and interdisciplinary perspectives on the contemporary significance of digital and social media, branding and advertising, marketing, and material culture.  

You’ll explore the ways in which anthropologists have employed visual media in documenting the communities they study. You’ll gain a more nuanced understanding of cultural differences through engagement with visual outputs like film and video, from a variety of global, cultural contexts.  

The module also addresses some of the ways we’re able to ‘observe’ and participate in one another’s cultures and social lives. You’ll be encouraged to critically engage with a range of topical issues including:

• Social media and care in the time of Covid-19.
• Representation of cultural identities in an increasingly mediatised world.
• Advertising, branding and consumerism in the media.
• Social media, politics and ‘fake news’.
• Social media and political violence.
• Representations of gender, sexuality, body and race in the media.
• The role of the internet and social media in contemporary forms of activism, social justice and environmentalism.

This module guides you through the processes of designing and completing a piece of individual research through online lectures and seminars. You'll engage in discussion of current anthropological and interdisciplinary research projects which will be introduced to you by members of the Anthropology department and visiting lecturers (including from the Royal College of Art).

You'll have the opportunity to construct your own research question around an appropriate topic of your choice. You'll be supervised through individual tutorials, helping you to gain practical experience in key anthropological and interdisciplinary research skills.

You can also explore the use of visual elements of anthropological and interdisciplinary research in your project where appropriate, such as the use of film and photography. You'll be encouraged to think critically about the conditions under which such images are produced.