Professor C Fuller, A505, Dr M Scott, A616 and TBA

This course is compulsory for MSc Social Anthropology, MSc Anthropology and Development, MSc Anthropology of Learning and Cognition and optional for MSc Law, Anthropology and Society and MSc China in Comparative Perspective.

The main aim of this course is to examine the relationship between theory and ethnography in modern social and cultural anthropology; the course focuses on the development of anthropology before circa 1970 during the MT, and after that date during the LT.

Topics covered include: classical social theory of Marx, Durkheim and Weber; colonialism and evolutionism; functionalism; culture and personality theory; conflict and the critique of functionalism; class, caste and social stratification; Levi-Strauss and structuralism; methodological individualism and urban anthropology; Bourdieu, Sahlins, Ortner and practice theory; anthropology and history; theories of culture and interpretive anthropology; postmodernism and ethnographic critique; anthropology of gender, anthropology of nations and nationalism; anthropology of ontology; anthropology of globalisation; epistemology.

Lectures (25 in all) AN404 weekly MT, LT, ST, Seminars (25 in all) AN404.A weekly MT, LT, ST.

D Mclellan, Karl Marx: Selected Writings; W Runciman, Weber: Selections in Translation; S Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work; B Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific; EE Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion; F Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man; E Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma; C Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind; M Bloch, Marxism and Anthropology; A Béteille, Caste, Class and Power; U Hannerz, Exploring the City; M Sahlins, Culture in Practice; P Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice; Gupta and Ferguson, Culture, Power and Place; J D Kelly and M Kaplan, Represented Communities; F Merlan, Caging the Rainbow; H Moore, The Subject of Anthropology; J Assayag and C Fuller (eds), Globalizing India. Detailed reading lists are provided at the beginning of the course.

There is a three-hour examination in the ST.