skip to content

Department of Social Anthropology

 
Read more at: An anthropological study of the early detection of cancer

An anthropological study of the early detection of cancer

Dr Ignacia Arteaga Probably most of us know someone affected by cancer. Millions of pounds are spent every year on cancer research to reduce the prevalence and seriousness of the many cancers that affect people living in the UK. Practices of biomedical innovation are expanding the frontiers of this research towards what is...


Read more at: Intimate Inquiries: Marriage, Polygyny & the State in Contemporary Malaysia

Intimate Inquiries: Marriage, Polygyny & the State in Contemporary Malaysia

Dr Nurul Huda Mohd Razif Postdoctoral Affiliate, Department of Social Anthropology Research Fellow, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, NL Nurul first came to the Department of Social Anthropology as a doctoral candidate in 2013, and defended her PhD, entitled “ Halal Intimacy: Love, Marriage, and Polygamy...


Read more at: Dr David Sneath: Mongolia Remade: Post-socialist national culture, political economy and cosmopolitics
Dr David Sneath: Mongolia Remade: Post-socialist national culture, political economy and cosmopolitics

Dr David Sneath: Mongolia Remade: Post-socialist national culture, political economy and cosmopolitics

This collection of new and previously published work by David Sneath, Director of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, explores the historical processes that have made and remade Mongolia as it is today: the construction of ethnic and national cultures from the aristocratic orders of the past; the transformations of...


Read more at: What does ‘everyday life’ look like in a place built to be a kind of fascist ‘Disneyland’?

What does ‘everyday life’ look like in a place built to be a kind of fascist ‘Disneyland’?

What can this tell us about memory, about the contemporary resurgence of the far-right, and about the concept of ‘everyday life’ itself? Dr Paolo Heywood My current work explores these questions in a small town called Predappio in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. What makes it ‘extraordinary’ (and indeed infamous, for...


Read more at: Landmark 'Oceania' Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (2018)

Landmark 'Oceania' Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (2018)

Professor Nick Thomas, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge The project was innovative in its conception and approach, being based in sustained dialogue with Islanders – artists, scholars, community members – from across the Pacific, over many years. While most such exhibitions...


Read more at: Images Fresh From the Field - Graduate Photographic Competition 2019

Images Fresh From the Field - Graduate Photographic Competition 2019

Postgraduates in Social Anthropology are invited to enter this year’s Graduate Photographic Competition to have their work displayed in the Department and have the chance to win a Heffers book voucher (First Prize £75, Second Prize £50 and Third Prize £25). Photos will be judged on quality and content, with special...


Read more at: Research Exploring Nature-Based and Alternative Medicine in Mongolia

Research Exploring Nature-Based and Alternative Medicine in Mongolia

Research Exploring Nature-Based and Alternative Medicine in Mongolia Over the past 8 years, Dr Elizabeth Turk, MIASU Research Associate, Department of Social Anthropology, has been exploring the increased popularity of nature-based and ‘alternative’ medicine in post-Soviet Mongolia. During a time described as 'disorganised...


Read more at: Dr Matei Candea: Comparison in Anthropology - The Impossible Method
Dr Matei Candea: Comparison in Anthropology - The Impossible Method

Dr Matei Candea: Comparison in Anthropology - The Impossible Method

Why and how do social and cultural anthropologists make comparisons? What problems do they encounter in doing so, and how might these be resolved? What, if anything, makes one comparison better than another? This book answers these questions by exploring the many ways in which, from the nineteenth century to the present...


Read more at: Dr Andrew Sanchez: Indeterminacy: Waste, Value, and the Imagination
Dr Andrew Sanchez: Indeterminacy: Waste, Value, and the Imagination

Dr Andrew Sanchez: Indeterminacy: Waste, Value, and the Imagination

Indeterminacy: Waste, Value, and the Imagination Edited by Catherine Alexander and Andrew Sanchez What happens to people, places and objects that do not fit the ordering regimes and progressive narratives of modernity? Conventional understandings imply that progress leaves such things behind, and excludes them as though...


Read more at: Prof James Laidlaw: Recovering the Human Subject
Prof James Laidlaw: Recovering the Human Subject

Prof James Laidlaw: Recovering the Human Subject

Based on a conference held in Cambridge to mark Caroline Humphrey’s retirement from the Sigrid Rausing Professorship of Social Anthropology, this volume includes a reprint of Humphrey’s already classic 2008 article, ‘Reassembling Individual Subjects’, which serves as a focus for debate. Responding to decades of 'anti-...