Module ANT1005 for 2021/2
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
ANT1005: Introduction to Social Anthropology: Exploring Cultural Diversity
This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
Whilst the precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover all or some of the following topics:
- Kinship and the construction of relatedness
- Gendered difference
- Of witches and fallen gods: thinking in different modes
- Senses of place, qualities of time: questioning ontologies
- Race and colonialism in the ethnographic encounter
Typical questions for formative assignments and tutorial presentations are:
1. Why study kinship? How would social anthropologists answer this question?
2. Why did Captain Cook have to die? And why have anthropologists argued about it?
3. People across the world perceive different qualities of time. Without clocks, would we be living unstructured lives?
4. What does it mean to say that the belief in witchcraft is rational?
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 27 | 123 | 0 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning & Teaching | 22 | Eleven 2-hour lectures, involving group discussion and film screenings |
| Scheduled Learning & Teaching | 5 | Five 1-hour tutorials |
| Guided independent study | 33 | Weekly reading for lectures and tutorials |
| Guided independent study | 18 | Preparing tutorial presentation individually or in pairs |
| Guided independent study | 27 | Peer workshopping of reading responses via ELE |
| Guided independent study | 20 | Essay writing (reading, library-based research) |
| Guided independent study | 25 | Preparing reading responses portfolio for submission |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Boyarin, J. (ed.) 1994. Remapping Memory - The Politics of Timespace. Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press
Butler, J. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London: Routledge
Carsten, J. (ed.), Cultures of Relatedness: new approaches to the study of kinship. Cambridge: CUP.
Deloria, P. 1998. ‘Literary Indians and Ethnographic Objects’. Playing Indian. London: Yale University Press
Feld, S. and K. Basso (eds). 1997. Senses of Place. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Fields, K. and B. Fields. 2014. Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. London: Verso
Gupta, A. and J. Ferguson (eds) 1997. Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kuper, A. 1996. Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School (3rd edition). London and New York: Routledge.
Mead, M. 1928. Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Harper
Roscoe, W. 1994. ‘How to become a Berdache: toward a unified analysis of gender diversity’. In H. Gilbert. (ed). Third sex, third gender: beyond sexual dimorphism in culture and history. New York: Zone Books
Sahlins, M 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wagner, R. 1981. The Invention of Culture. London: University of Chicago Press
Yanagisako, S. and C. Delaney. 1995. Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. New York: Routledge.
