Professor Charles Stafford OLD 6.02 and Dr Thomas Grisaffi, KGS 1.06

This course is compulsory for BA/BSc Social Anthropology and BA Anthropology and Law students. It is optional for BSc Human Resource Management and Employment Relations and BSc Environment and Development. Also available to General Course students and as an outside option.

This course provides a general introduction to Social Anthropology as the comparative study of human cultures.

Cultural variability and human universals. The interaction between nature and culture seen through the study of body techniques and the senses, kinship and descent, gender, sexuality, marriage, death. Production and exchange; violence, modernity, ethnicity and race. The debate about the integration of hunter-gatherer societies into the modern world.

Lectures AN100 weekly MT, LT, Classes AN100.A - specialists, weekly MT, LT, AN100.B - non-specialists, weekly MT, LT.

Students are expected to prepare discussion material for presentation in the classes and are required to write assessment essays.

Anthropology students taking this course will have an opportunity to submit a tutorial essay for this course to their personal tutors.  For non-Anthropology students taking this course, a formative essay may be submitted to the course teacher. 

M Bloch, Prey into Hunter (1996); E Hirsch & M O'Hanlon; C Piot, Remotely global (1999); M Mauss, The Gift (1970).

A three-hour examination in the ST worth 80%. Two assessed essays (2,000-2,500 words each) one per term (20%).