ANTH2347: Relations and Belonging

• People and Cultures (ANTH1061) OR Being Human (ANTH1111)

• None.

• None.

• Provide a cross-cultural overview of the theoretical and ethnographic importance of the anthropological study of kinship and relatedness
• Cover key theories of kinship in social anthropology, supported by ethnographic case studies
• Consider the form that kinship practices take in a variety of different societies and communities and their relationship with political, economic, religious, and cultural life.
• Provide an in-depth and broad knowledge of kinship and its importance to human sociality, situating it in the wider context of anthropological research on politics, economics, and religion.
• Provide an awareness of how a theoretical and ethnographic knowledge of these topics might help understand critical events and controversies in the contemporary world.

• The indicative content of this module is:
• Overview of key issues in the anthropology of kinship followed by coverage of some of the following major themes: kinship and the social structure of human communities; the history of anthropological debates in the study of kinship and relatedness; anthropological approaches to relatedness; queer kinship; anthropological studies of new reproductive technologies; care and disability; human-animal relations; and death.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Understand the place of kinship in human societies, and the various ways it has been theorised by anthropologists.
• Be able to demonstrate familiarity with a range of representative ethnographic cases (present and past, Western and non-Western).
• Understand how to relate their personal experience of kinship to the broader field of anthropological knowledge.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Have an understanding of the basic conceptual vocabularies of kinship.
• Be able to analyse the symbolic foundations of kinship beliefs and practices.

Key Skills:

• Library research
• Understanding kinship diagrams
• Debating skills
• Note taking
• Essay writing
• Critical reading and analysis.

• Lectures and seminars introduce students to the material and enable discussion of it, informed by wider reading.
• Seminars allow students to explore and discuss material from the lectures and readings in depth with their tutors and peers.
• Formative assessment is by one 500 word written assignment.
• Summative assessment is by one 2000 word essay.

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