SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
M.Sc. Psychological and Psychiatric
Anthropology
Module Outlines /These brief outlines are for general information only and are intended to provide a broad indication of the nature of the course and the type of topics it covers. The actual modules taught in any year are subject to variation. Detailed reading lists with related essay and seminar topics will be available on registration for the course.
Credit Structure: Modules total 120 credits + Dissertation 60 credits.Attendance: Course commences September/October each year.
Full-time: 2 days a week – Weds./Thurs. Part-time: 1 day a week - 1st year Weds., 2nd year Thurs.
Approximately 26 weeks attendance required for teaching between October and April.
Duration: Full-time: 1 year. Part-time: 2 years.
Entry criteria: Normally a good Honours degree from a UK institution, an equivalent overseas qualification, or an equivalent professional qualification (e.g. from a health background or similar). Candidates not fully meeting these criteria may, nevertheless, be considered. Students whose first language is not English must have IELTS of at least 6.5 or equivalent.
Course Convenor: Dr. Andrew Beatty
Web Site:
THEMES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC ANTHROPOLOGY (30 credits)
Convenor: Dr. Andrew Beatty
Main Aims of the Module:
1 To provide a theoretical introduction to psychological and psychiatric anthropology
2 To provide students with a detailed insight into the ways in which person, emotion, and subjectivity are shaped through cultural practices in settings of sickness and health
3 To assess a range of ethnography and theory bearing on psychological issues and mental health, enabling students to bring a comparative perspective to familiar problems.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to:
1 Demonstrate a critical understanding of, and evaluate, key issues and debates in psychological and psychiatric anthropology
2 Show how a knowledge of Western and non-Western ethnography may be brought to bear on the main topics
3 Employ cross-cultural perspectives in analysis
4 Critically relate their anthropological knowledge to current debates in the field
Main Topics of Study: The development of psychological and psychiatric anthropology; theories of emotion (approaches to, and critiques of, the ‘social construction of emotion’); selfhood and subjectivity in cross-cultural perspective; psychoanalytic approaches; folk psychologies; culture and personality; mental health and ethnic minorities; cultural perspectives on madness; narrative and illness; the construction of diagnostic categories.
Assessment: One semester paper (4,000 words max.)
Indicative Reading: Lutz, C. and G. White. 1992. New directions in psychological anthropology. Cambridge. Kleinmann,A.and B. Good (eds) 1985. Culture and depression. Heald, S. and A. Deluz. 1994. Anthropology and psychoanalysis: an encounter through culture. Routledge. Lutz, C. 1988. Unnatural emotions: emotions on a Pacific atoll and their challenge to Western theory.Cambridge. Obeyesekere, G. 1993. The work of culture. Chicago.
ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH METHODS – Part 1 (15 credits)
Convenor: Dr. Eric Hirsch
Main Aims of the Module: To introduce students to the methods employed by anthropologists when undertaking ethnographic research.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: 1. Appreciate the centrality of fieldwork to anthropological research. 2. Critically evaluate the methods employed by anthropologists in the course of doing fieldwork.
Main Topics of Study: The centrality of fieldwork to anthropological research; theoretical and practical issues of participant observation, open-ended unstructured interviews and semi-structured interviews; the advantages and disadvantages of using questionnaires during fieldwork; ethical clearance and ethical issues arising in the course of fieldwork.
Assessment: 1 x 1500 word essay + 1 x 2500 word essay.
Indicative Reading: Ellen R 1984. Ethnographic research: a guide to general conduct. London: Academic Press. Gellner D and Hirsch E (editors) 2001. Inside Organizations. Oxford: Berg Press
ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH METHODS – Part 2 (15 credits)
Convenor: Dr Melissa Parker
Main Aims of the Module: (1) To take further the critical understanding of ethnographic research and anthropological perspectives acquired in Ethnographic Research Methods Part 1 and (2) To prepare students for the field research on which their dissertations will be based.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: 1. Identify different genres of ethnographic writing and the implications of different forms of representation. 2. Gain an understanding of the problems of access. 3. Gain detailed knowledge of the ethical procedures and issues that may arise when undertaking participant observation in a wide range of institutional, clinical and community settings throughout the world.
Main Topics of Study: Different styles of ethnographic writing; problems of access in ethnographic research; ethical clearance and ethical dilemmas; constructing a research proposal.
Assessment: 1 x 3000 word essay, 1 x 1500 word essay.
Indicative Reading: Sanjek, R. (ed.) 1990. Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology. Ithaca and London: CornellUniv. Press. van Maanan, J. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press .
READING MODULE: ISSUES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Convenor: Prof. Adam Kuper
Main Aims of the Module: To introduce some of the major research fields in modern social anthropology, including religion, the anthropology of the body, gender, and kinship.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to 1. Understand the approach taken by anthropologists to some of the broad fields of interest within the human sciences. 2. Appreciate and make use of the forms of reasoning employed in social anthropology.
Main Topics of Study: Kinship, gender, religion, the anthropology of the body.
Indicative Reading: John Monaghan and Peter Just, Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction, OxfordUniversity Press, 2000.
READING MODULE: HISTORY AND THEORY OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Convenor: Dr. Andrew Beatty
Main Aims of the Module: To provide a critical, historical perspective on the development of major theories and characteristic methods of social anthropology.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: 1. Develop an understanding of the main currents of thought in twentieth century social and cultural anthropology. 2. Gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of major theoretical perspectives in anthropology. 3. Understand critically and evaluate theoretical assumptions.
Main Topics of Study: ‘Evolutionary’ anthropology; ‘race’, ‘civilisation’; diffusionism and the Boas school; the development of ethnographic research; functional, structure and comparison; structuralism; neo-evolutionism; culture and the interpretation of cultures; critiques (Marxism, feminism, post-modernism).
Indicative Reading: Adam Kuper, Anthropologists and Anthropology, London: Routledge, 1996.
DISSERTATION IN PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC ANTHROPOLOGY (15,000 WORDS)
Main Aims of the Module: To bring perspectives derived from the taught modules to bear upon an issue of research interest to the student in the domain of psychological and psychiatric anthropology: i.e. the dissertation should reflect a specifically anthropological approach to research and analysis. Primary research data are to be derived primarily from participant observer study in a field site chosen by the student, supplemented by other research methods such as interviews, ethnographic tasks etc. The object of the dissertation is twofold: (i) to analyse an issue or problem that arises out of the data gathered during fieldwork; and (ii) to show how this analysis is warranted by the field data and how it relates to relevant literature in (and to other research in) this area.
Optional Modules (60 credits from):
ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING (30 credits)
(Recommended)
Convenor: Dr. Peggy Froerer
Main Aims of the Module:
- To provide an understanding of theories of learning in anthropology and psychology, by means of an initial review of studies of children’s cognitive development.
- Through detailed ethnographic comparisons, to show why learning is best understood as a microhistorical process, which is lifelong and in which the biological, the psychological and the sociocultural can be understood as aspects of a single phenomenon.
- To explain how social processes inform learning in respect of, for example, gender and kinship. Here the focus is primarily on informal learning and how implicit understandings and explicit categories are constituted anew during the lifecycle and in this self-same process transformed.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: 1. Understand and evaluate critically contemporary theories of learning in the light of psychological and anthropological findings concerning what people learn and how they learn it. 2. Understand how social processes give rise to specific ideas and practices in domains of everyday life such as gender and kinship. 3. Understand and make analytical use of anthropological concepts, understand anthropological methods and the explanations they make possible, and use ethnographic evidence in relation to explanation. 4. Students should emerge with a richer, more profound and more critical understanding of theories of cognitive development and achieve new awareness of how theory and methodology can be radically improved by an understanding of how people learn.
Main Topics of Study: Models of learning in anthropology and psychology; (ii) children as subjects and objects (iii) learning as an embodied microhistorical process; (iv) space-time coordinates of learning; (v) kinship and intersubjectivity; (vi) person and gender; (vii) language and consciousness; (viii) ritual and learning.
Assessment: 1 x 4000 word essay.
Indicative Reading: Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness, London: William Heinemann, 1999. Ken Richardson, Models of Cognitive Development, Hove, Psychology Press, 1998. Christina Toren, Mind, Materiality and History: Explorations in Fijian Ethnography, London, Routledge, 1999.
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH (30 credits)
Convenor: Dr. Nicolas Argenti
Main Aims of the Module: To introduce students to the study of childhood and youth as they are constructed and practiced in different social, cultural and economic settings. The module is split into two sections. The first section focuses on children, looking first at how ideas of childhood are constructed by adults, and then at how children themselves negotiate their place in society. The second section is devoted to young people, with particular reference to the historical and political dimensions of the emerging category of ‘youth’.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: 1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of, and evaluate, anthropological research into ideas held by different peoples across the world concerning the roles of children and young people. 2. Understand contemporary theories of childhood and adolescence, and be able to question these in relation to a detailed knowledge of the ethnographic literature. 3. Employ cross-cultural perspectives in analysis 4. Critically relate their anthropological knowledge to current debates in the field.
Main Topics of Study:
The concept of the child in society, children’s participation in society, children’s ways of coping with violence, child play, child labour, the history of youth as a political category, young people’s resistance to marginalisation, the radicalisation of young people.
Assessment: 1 x 4000 word essay.
Indicative Reading: Schwartzman, Helen B. 1978. Transformations: The Anthropology of Children’s Play. New York and London: Plenum Press. Alex de Waal and Nicolas Argenti (eds.), 2002. Young Africa: Realising the Rights of Children and Youth, Trenton, N.J. and Asmara: Africa World Press.
ANTHROPOLOGY OF EDUCATION (30 credits)
Convenor: Dr. Peggy Froerer
Main Aims of the Module: To provide students with: a)A broad appreciation of the key issues in the anthropology of education b)An understanding of the relevance of these issues for anthropology and education in general and professional practice in particular.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: 1.Understand and critically evaluate anthropological theories and ethnographies relevant to the relationship between learning, education and the politics of culture and society, and between international development and educational practice/research in the West and elsewhere. 2. Understand and critically evaluate applied anthropological studies in educational practice. 3. Understand and critically evaluate phenomenological perspectives on both formal pedagogies and informal ‘ways of knowing’. 4. Employ cross-cultural perspectives in analysis. 5. Critically relate their anthropological knowledge to current debates in the field.
Main Topics of Study: History of anthropology of education and learning; evaluating the anthropological contribution to research in education; education, learning and the politics of culture and society; education, learning and international development; education and schooling in social context; education, authority and the transmission of knowledge; education and apprenticeship; education, learning and literacy; education and categories of social distinction – age, kinship, nationalism and religion; education and categories of social distinction – race, class, gender and ethnicity; education, knowledge and social memory; education, the state and nationalism.
Assessment: 1 x 4000 word essay.
Indicative Reading: Spindler G.D. & Spindler L. (2000) Fifty Years of Anthropology and Education 1950 –2000: a Spindler anthology. Lea. Wulf C. (2002) Anthropology of Education. Lit Verlag. (History & Theory of Anthropology)
ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO HEALTH, HEALING AND MEDICINES (15 credits)
(for 2007/8 entry)
Convenor: Prof. Murray Last
Main Aims of the Module: Assesses the key concepts of medical anthropology, especially the role of the cultural and social dimensions of health care.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: 1. Evaluate theory & research findings of medical anthropology, in a variety of settings in UK and non-western communities; 2. Analyse the cultural, social and economic dimensions of “traditional” and “western” medicines, with their various strengths and weaknesses.
Main Topics of Study: The therapeutic “triangle”, at the micro-level, of patient, doctor and patient’s kin & community; at the macro-level, the political economy of health, the dynamics of a national medical culture; the problem of efficacy in treatments and the role of the placebo effect; how might one change people’s health behaviour through public health? Plus problems in the specific analysis, cross-culturally, of (1) chronic illness & disability; (2) the process of dying; (3) pain; (4) ‘mental illness’.
Assessment: 1 x 2500 word essay.
Indicative Reading: Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor; AIDS & its Metaphors (1978/2001)
D.Sanders, The Struggle for Health (1985) Cecil Helman, Culture, Health and Illness (4th edition; 2001)
CLINICALLY APPLIED MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (15 credits)
(not available for 2007/8 entry)
Convenor: Prof. Cecil Helman
Main Aims of the Module: Assesses the key concepts of medical anthropology from a clinically-applied perspective, especially the role of the cultural and social dimensions of health care.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: 1. Evaluate theory & research findings of medical anthropology, in a variety of clinical settings. 2. Analyse the cultural, social and economic dimensions of Western medicine, with its various strengths and weaknesses.
Main Topics of Study: Medical versus lay perceptions of illness; body image & the interpretation of symptoms; psychosomatic disorders; reproduction and childbirth; death, dying and bereavement; ritual in health care; family culture and health; alcohol, tobacco & drug use and abuse.
Assessment: 1 x 2500 word essay.
Indicative Reading: Helman, C.G. (2001) Culture, Health and Illness (4th edition) (Arnold) Hahn, R.A. (1995) Sickness and Healing: An Anthropological Perspective. YaleUniversity Press. Kleinman, A. (1980) Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture. University of California Press.
APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY AND INTERNATIONAL HEALTH (15 credits)
Convenor: Prof. Cecil Helman
Main Aims of the Module:.To analyse and evaluate clinically-applied medical anthropology in relation to contemporary global health problems.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: 1.Understand and assess contemporary global health problems. 2. Evaluate how cultural and social factors inform the design, delivery, and evaluation of international health programmes.
Main Topics of Study: Health care pluralism in the UK, and abroad; folk, traditional and alternative healers; cultural attitudes to food & causes of malnutrition; cross-cultural psychiatry, and cross-cultural definitions of mental illness; culture-bound syndromes; migration, stress and health; urbanisation and the urban poor; family planning programmes; HIV & AIDS; primary health care; malaria; cultural barriers to international aid programmes
Assessment: 1 x 2500 word essay.
Indicative Reading: . Helman, C.G. (2001) Culture, Health and Illness (4th edition) (Arnold) Nichter, M. and Nichter, M. (1996) Anthropology and International Health: Asian Case Studies. Gordon and Breach. Desjarlais, R., Eisenberg, L., Good, B. & Kleinman, A. (1995) World Mental Health. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.
KINSHIP AND NEW DIRECTIONS IN ANTHROPOLOGY (15 credits)
Convenor: Dr. Isak Niehaus
Main Aims of the Module:. In the first part of the module the student should become familiar with central issues in kinship studies, and learn the central concepts and methods that have been developed for the description and analysis of kinship relations. In the second part of the module the student will become familiar with a range of new directions in kinship studies, such as new reproductive technologies, kinship and the state, gay kinship, the abortion debate, social reproduction, kinship and migration and paternity.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to critically consider current debates and controversies in the field of kinship, reproduction and new directions in anthropology.
Main Topics of Study: Descent and alliance, the household, the incest taboo, new reproductive technologies, kinship and the state, gay kinship, the abortion debate, conceptions of social reproduction, kinship and migration, the social and cultural construction of paternity.
Assessment: 1 x 2500 word essay.
Indicative Reading: Ginsburg, Faye and Rayna Rapp. (eds). Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Berkeley: University of California Press. Holy, Ladislav. 1996. Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship. London: Pluto
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE BODY (15 credits)
Convenor: Dr. James Staples
Main Aims of the Module:. To assess theoretical shifts in anthropological approaches to ‘the body’ via discussion of the work of theorists such as Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, as well as an exploration of phenomenological approaches to the body. To evaluate cross-cutting perspectives from social and medical anthropology, history and social studies of science. To expose students to contemporary approaches to the study of subjectivity, personhood and experience.
Main Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to understand and critically evaluate anthropological concepts with respect to ‘the body’ and connect these ideas to perspectives from other disciplines.
Main Topics of Study: The social body; embodiment, ‘habitus’ and phenomenological approaches to the body; cross-cultural perceptions of the body; the body in parts; sex and gender; childhood and the body; bodily norms, beauty and ideas of the perfect body; biomedicine and the body; death and the dying body.