Undergraduate: Part I

In your first year, you’ll study Social Anthropology as part of the Human, Social, and Political Sciences Tripos (HSPS), gaining a foundational understanding of how anthropologists explore human societies across cultures and time.

The following Social Anthropology (SAN) papers are available in the first year:

Core Paper: SAN1 – Social Anthropology: The Comparative Perspective

In SAN1, you will learn how anthropologists study, analyse, and theorise about the immense variety of forms of social life they have found across the world: how such taken-for-granted categories as gender, family, sexuality, economy, and the state are subject to radical cultural variation, and how everyday matters such as food, clothing, work, and trade may be bound up with religious and other symbolic meanings.

You will also learn about the main kinds of social theory developed by anthropologists in response to the challenge of understanding this diversity, and about the distinctive forms of ethnographic field research anthropologists use in order to gain close, first-hand knowledge of the societies they study.

The course includes close readings of two contrasting ethnographies:

  • Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony among the Bemba of Zambia – A. Richards (1982 [1956])
  • Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society – J. Robbins (2004)

Optional Paper: SAN2 – Ethnographic Methods and Writing

As an optional fourth paper, SAN2 offers practical and theoretical training in ethnographic research. This paper has two aims:

  • To support students to develop the skills necessary to produce their own ethnographic research and writing
  • To support students to develop the skills necessary to assess and interpret secondary ethnographic research

The paper provides practical training in research methods; considers the relationship between research and writing; interrogates the ethical and political dimensions of ethnography; explores the role of comparison both within and between ethnographies; and considers the relationship between anthropology and the ethnographic method.

The paper combines lectures in different aspects of ethnography, alongside seminars that focus on two ethnographies read in their entirety. These seminars encourage students to think about issues of representation and literary style, in relationship to questions of method, ethics and analysis.

Undergraduate students: SAN2 is intended for HSPS Part I and Part IIA students on the single-track Social Anthropology degree. Students who intend to complete a Social Anthropology dissertation in IIB are strongly advised to take this paper.