Facilities The Department of Social Anthropology occupies an extensive suite of offices on North Street and in the mediaeval St Salvator’s College. It iswell situated in the centre of town and at the geographical heart of the University. The Centre for Amerindian Studies has its own set of rooms within the Department, including a reading room that holds a library for Latin American and Amerindian studies. Postgraduate students also have their own area within the Department, which includes a computer room, and three further rooms reserved for their use.Within Social Anthropology there is also a museum collection of ethnographic objects, and a common room that includes a general anthropological class library, providing a space that is shared by both staff and postgraduates. The Departmental libraries, along with the main library, which holds a fine anthropology collection, include materials from all ethnographic regions of theworld.


Our Research Focus Research here is especially concerned with the scrutiny and creation of qualitative methodology, and with its application to comparative analysis. The criticism of sources and testimonies provides a link between the interpretive and historical interests of the Department. One focus is upon indigenous and individual understandings of social reality, and everyday constructions of cultural meaning as embodied in diverse forms of social life, discourse, and practice, and the problems and possibilities of their comprehension and translation by others. This is balanced by attention to problems of social change, and to the semantic, sociological and historical contexts from which the active participation of ethnographic subjects in theworld can emerge.


More recent developments are philosophical anthropology, literature and anthropology, the ethnography of aesthetics and emotions, representation in history and anthropology, and phenomenological anthropology. A number of topical themes, such as‘the market’, new religious movements, peace and violence, the State, colonialism and post-colonialism, identity politics and history, gender and egalitarianism, hierarchy and ritual, conviviality and trust, agency and convention, memory and the past, embodiment and childbirth, mestizaje/métissage, and anthropology as a moral endeavour are also being addressed in Departmental research.


6


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16