Type of course

The course is mandatory in Bachelor in Social Anthropology.

The course may be taken as a single course.

Course content

This course offers an in-depth regional specialisation, immersing students in the ethnographic, historical, and theoretical study of a selected world region. The focus of the course alternates each year between West Africa, Southern Africa, China, Latin America, and Europe, allowing students to engage with a wide range of lifeworlds, social forms, and historical trajectories.

Each iteration of the course provides a comprehensive introduction to the region’s history, cultural background, religious and cosmological traditions, environmental contexts, and political dynamics. Students will examine how anthropologists working in these regions have explored topics such as kinship and family life, ritual and belief systems, livelihoods and ecological adaptations, colonial encounters and their legacies, postcolonial state formations, and the ways communities respond to economic, environmental, and global change.

Teaching draws on classic and contemporary ethnographies of the region, encouraging students to see how local worlds are embedded within broader global processes. The course also foregrounds the practice of ethnography itself—considering issues of fieldwork ethics, representation, and the researcher’s positionality—while fostering critical comparative skills that can be applied across regions.

By the end of the course, students will not only have developed deep, region-specific ethnographic knowledge, but will also be equipped to think anthropologically about the interplay of culture, history, environment, religion, and politics in diverse contexts.

Objectives of the course

After completing the course, students should have the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge and understanding

The student should

• be familiar with the regional ethnography of a particular world region.
• have knowledge of the historical, cultural and political dynamics in that region.
• be familiar with the anthropological literature, theories, and debates concerning the region.

Skills:

The student should:

• be able to reflect on, critically engage with, and interpret the ethnography of the world region.

Competence:

The student should:

• be able to apply anthropological interpretive skills to understand regional ethnography.

Language of instruction and examination

Teaching methods