SOS 111 - Social Anthropology

The course aims to introduce students to the fundamental concepts, theories, and methods of social anthropology and to develop their ability to approach social and cultural phenomena from an anthropological perspective. It seeks to enable students to understand cultural differences within their historical and social contexts, critically question practices and assumptions commonly regarded as natural or universal, and comparatively analyze phenomena such as culture, identity, the body, gender, language, ritual, and exchange. The course also aims to develop students’ understanding of the methodological, ethical, and political dimensions of ethnographic knowledge production and to foster a critical perspective on anthropology’s historical and contemporary relationships with colonialism, representation, and power.

This course examines the key concepts, theoretical approaches, and fields of inquiry in social anthropology from both historical and contemporary perspectives. It introduces major debates in the discipline, including the concept of culture, cultural evolutionism, cultural relativism, ethnography and fieldwork, gift exchange and reciprocity, structuralism, ritual and symbolism, and interpretive anthropology. The latter part of the course focuses on contemporary areas of anthropological inquiry, including health and the body, gender and agency, media and communication, and language. The course also critically addresses the relationship between anthropological knowledge, colonialism, representation, and power. Through classical and contemporary anthropological texts and ethnographic cases, students explore how diverse social and cultural practices can be analyzed from an anthropological perspective.