1. Handbook
  2. Bachelor of Arts
  3. Majors, Minors and Specialisations
  4. Anthropology

Anthropology

Bachelor of ArtsMajorYear: 2018

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Overview

Anthropology is the study of people’s common humanity as well as the extraordinary cultural and social diversity found around the globe. Its distinctive methodology, based on intense, long-term participation in people’s daily lives, allows for ideas to develop out of local experience and knowledge. Contemporary fieldwork is as likely to take place in an urban tower block or tourist resort or moving with migrants or refugees, as it would be in a remote village in Africa or an island community in Melanesia. This major invites participation in subjects on: diverse ideas about the body; belief and religious practices; the growth of consumption and commodification, ethnic and national identity, and constructions of nature, sex, family and gender. The course we offer will expand your horizons by challenging your taken-for-granted understanding of the world, and it will also provide you with the skills needed to work successfully with people, to listen, to think critically, and to be fully engaged in an ever more expanding world.

Intended learning outcomes

On successful completion of this major, students will be able to:

  • apply critical and comparative analytical skills to the identification and resolution of problems within complex changing social and cultural contexts; and
  • demonstrate a detailed knowledge and understanding of selected fields and intellectual debates in social and cultural anthropology; and
  • apply an independent and creative approach to knowledge based on an appreciation of interplay between theory and ethnographic inquiry; and
  • articulate the relationship between diverse and contested forms of knowledge and practice and the social, historical and cultural contexts that produced them; and
  • communicate effectively in a variety of written and oral formats; and
  • act as intellectually informed and ethically aware participants within a community of scholars, as citizens and in the workforce; and
  • collaborate effectively in groups to meet a shared goal with people whose disciplinary and cultural backgrounds may differ from their own; and
  • work with independence, self-reflection and an appreciation of cultural diversity to meet goals and challenges in the workplace and personal life.

Last updated: 18 December 2020