Social Anthropology University of Cambridge

Overview

The Social Anthropology course from the University of Cambridge can be a free-standing qualification or a route to the original research involved in a PhD, or a means to acquire knowledge of anthropology for use in other fields and professional contexts.

This is a demanding course which enables students to reach a fairly high level of specialist knowledge in social anthropology within a relatively short time and, subject to performance in their exams and assessed work, equips them to undertake a research degree. Given that MPhil students are supervised on an individual basis in order to provide a programme of teaching tailored to individual needs, the assignment of supervisors is spread as evenly as possible among the staff attached to the Department.

Principal fields of anthropological analysis are covered in two core seminar courses in 'The Scope of Social Anthropology'. Attendance at these is compulsory for all students. These two courses cover, respectively, 'Production and Reproduction', which includes the fields of economic anthropology and kinship; and 'Systems of Power and Knowledge', which includes political anthropology and the anthropology of religion.

Students also take a non-assessed course in theory and methods and one course in a specialist option subject. Different optional papers are on offer each year. Examples of optional papers include : Ethnography; Gender, Kinship and Care; History, Archive, Time. In addition, for those wishing to specialise in a particular professional field, the Department may also offer options in Social Anthropology and Museums and Medical Anthropology. A provisional list of planned modules can be found on the Department's website.

Key facts:

Knowledge and understanding

The course addresses key problems in anthropological theory, interpretation, comparison and analysis in relation to particular ethnographies and substantive debates in the anthropological literature. Through critical reflection on a range of anthropological theories, and through practice in the application of those theories to bodies of ethnographic data, students acquire a thorough and intensive grounding in a range of styles of social anthropological analysis.