Undergraduate Course: Contemporary Issues in Social Anthropology (SCAN10080)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The course engages with both established and developing contemporary scholarship and debates concerning anthropological approaches to the body.
The course aims to enrich and supplement broader disciplinary studies across medical and political anthropology, as well as scholarship concerned with material culture.
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| Course description |
Now more than ever the body and its forms have become entangled in and around debates across a swathe of academic scholarship and current affairs issues of broader public concern. From questions around the biological modification and technological transformation of the individual body to moral quandaries around the movement, disappearance, and substantiation of certain kinds of bodies at particular times and places, concern with the body increasingly saturates public debate and activity. Yet, despite its centrality as an object or subject of focus, the body appears ever more unstable and destabilising a presence.
This course links together established scholarship in the anthropology of the body with debates on the issue of the body as it is relevant to broader social phenomena. The course will touch upon core epistemological debates concerning the body covering, for example, work in the fields of phenomenology, embodiment, and biopolitics. These core issues will be embedded in established and contemporary debates which have surrounded the body as an object and subject constituting and constituted by broader social phenomena. We will discuss for example, the body in death, the body as a focus of the biomedical gaze; and the body as articulated in contemporary and historical political, economic, and creative movements, including for instance in colonial regimes, as an artefact for museum and memorial spaces, and as a commodity marketed for consumption.
Indicative topics:
The phenomenological body
- In what ways could we argue the mind, emotion, and the body are associated?
- How might culture mediate sensory experience?
The body under surveillance
- How is the physical body governed/regulated via surveillance?
- What anxieties surround surveillance of the body, or the absence of surveillance?
The medical body
- How is the body medicalized and what are the connotations of this?
- How is the medicalisation of bodies entangled with and governed by broader social categories?
The dead body
- How and why does the dead body matter in death?
- What do dead bodies do?
The body in the Anthropocene
- How has technology changed the nature of the body and what are the implications for its form and significance?
- What form will future bodies take?
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 2 social science courses (such as Sociology, Politics, Social Policy, Social Anthropology etc) at grade B and above. We will only consider University/College level courses |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2017/18, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 22 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Short essay (1000 words): 30%«br /»
Long essay (3000 words): 70%«br /»
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| Feedback |
Essays will be returned with feedback within 15 working days of submission. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of some of the main terminologies and theories in social anthropology
- Apply this knowledge by applying theoretical skills and ethnography to make sense of the issue addressed by the course
- Critically identify, define, conceptualise and analyse complex anthropological problems and issues
- Convey information about contemporary issues in anthropology to informed audiences
- Show in depth knowledge of the topic
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
By the end of the course, students should have strengthened their skills in:
- analysing evidence and using this to develop and support a line of argument,
- bringing anthropological approaches to bear on an issue of contemporary significance
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| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Ms Laura Major
Tel: (0131 6)51 1329
Email: |
Course secretary | Mr Ewen Miller
Tel: (0131 6)50 3925
Email: |
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