Anthropology
Belonging: Kin, Family, Friends
Module code: L6069
Level 4
15 credits in spring semester
Teaching method: Lecture, Seminar
Assessment modes: Essay
What makes us related? Human relatedness and kinship are key topics within the history of social anthropology.
On this module, you’ll explore how societies imagine, organise and experience human relationships in different cultures.
You’ll analyse:
- how anthropologists’ ideas about kinship have changed over time
- how these changing ideas demonstrate broader shifts in the field
- how structures of power, technologies and economic exchange characterise human relationships
- the experiential ways humans connect to place and each other through bodily experience and emotion.
Module learning outcomes
- Demonstrate knowledge of the evolution of kinship theory in anthropology
- Demonstrate an understanding of debates about kinship as biologically or culturally constructed
- Demonstrate an ability to use anthropological methods in the analysis of kinship and other forms of relatedness
- Show an appreciation of the ways in which concepts of kinship, family and relatedness relate to changing structures of power, politics and economic exchange