#socanth

[annabelstudying]

scary times at the moment, make sure you look after yourself and stay safe <3 here are some socanth notes from a couple of weeks ago, and a song that i have consistently loved for a good 3 years :)

[askacambridgestudent]

Hi, could you tell me about the typical week of a Social Anthropology student in second year? How many essays do we have?

Do we have any SocAnth helpful experts? My impression is that HSPS second year in general is a bit more organised than first year, because you’re now streamlined within a single department and there’s none of that crazy interdepartmental confusion that happens in first year. That being said, I think you’ll still have around 1-2 essays a week (although my impression is that they’re spaced out a little better than in first year) and either 2 lectures a week or one 2-hour lecture a week per paper.

[askacambridgestudent]

Hi ! Could you compare Queens' and Girton, in general and also regarding hsps ? thanks a lot !!

Yeah, sure!  

Vibe: They’ve both got very similar vibes -- they’re very very friendly, with a good mix of going out and staying in. People are generally extroverted and like to be around other people. Girton strikes me as being a lot more close knit, probably because of how far away it is, but it seems to be a very lovely community. I’d imagine Queens’ goes out more because it’s easier to go out (you’d need to get together in a group at Girton and make a proper plan vs just going out casually and on a whim).

Accommodation/distance: Girton accommodation is known to be quite nice, Queens’ is also decent. Their kitchens are definitely fine for cooking if that’s something you’d be interested in. Obviously, Girton’s pretty far away, so you’ll definitely need a bike to get places.

HSPS: Girton technically has DoS’s in both Pol/IR/Sociology and in Social Anth, but the DoS for Pol/IR is the same DoS for PBS and he’s definitely more of a psychologist, so I probably would not recommend picking Girton if you want to do anything but SocAnth. They seem pretty strong for SocAnth though! Queens’ is really strong for sociology (the DoS is a sociologist, and they’ve got really great sociology fellows) and is decent for politics (they’ve got multiple politics fellows), but not very strong for SocAnth (no fellows). So what you want to do in HSPS may end up being a deciding factor!

[askacambridgestudent]

Hi! What is the best college for Social Anthropology?

No college really has a reputation for SocAnth! Kings’ seems to be good though -- they’ve got the Head of SocAnth and two other fellows!

[askacambridgestudent]

Sarah, your 3rd year dissertation sounds more soc anth than bio anth? did you specialalise in soc anth or is there more overlap between the two than one might assume?

No, what I did has nothing to do with SocAnth. SocAnth doesn’t touch social network phenomenon at all, that’s all within bioanth. SocAnth is very philosophical, they never math or science. 

[askacambridgestudent]

sarah please could you give some example titles for your degree essays? i am considering applying for the now reinstated arch/anth program

Sure, it’s long so under the cut...

Here’s some first year Arch ones:

1. Critically asses the influence of Marxist philosophy on the work one of the following archaeologists: V. Gordon Childe, Antonio Gilman, Randall McGuire, Thomas C. Patterson, Mark Leone. EXPECTATIONS: You may pick any of the archaeologists listed above.  Your answer should delineate the core concepts or tenets of classical Marxism (see Chapter 12, in Renfrew & Bahn), and asses how these concepts were employed in one major example of the archaeologist’s work.  You should consider which aspects of Marxist theory the archaeologist chooses to emphasize, de-emphasize, or ignore, and you should present an argument about whether you were convinced by their application of Marxist theory to the particular archaeological problem or question they were attempting to address.

2. Critically evaluate the ‘biocultural’ or ‘co-evolutionary’ theory of human cognitive and technological evolution as put forward by proponents such as Stout, Toth, and Schick (see references below).  How do these scholars understand the relationship between human tool use and evolving cognitive, linguistic, and social capacities during the Lower Palaeolithic/Early Stone Age and Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age? What evidence do they use to support their arguments?  Is this theory convincing in light of competing possibilities?

3. Evaluate the contributions of ‘postcolonial theory’ to historical archaeology.  Have post-colonial theorists been successful in their aims?  Why or why not?

first year SocAnth:

1. “Discuss some of the ways in which kinship and marriage might both unite people into groups and networks and might also mark them off as individuals.”

2. Discuss some of the problems that anthropologists face when trying to make sense of the symbols of other cultures.

3. Compare and contrast the forms of exchange in “traditional” and “modern” societies. How different are things that look similar and how similar are things which look different? Can you make a wholesale contrast or is it more of something less of another?

4. It is a characteristic of humans to attach symbolic meanings and values to the material world. Discuss this with relation to houses and food.

first year BioAnth:

1. There are many similarities between human behaviour and that of our primate relatives.  Violence is an unpleasant but pervasive factor of both human and primate societies.  The root of this violence may either be a product of environmental stress, or deeply rooted in our biology and evolutionary heritage.  Discuss the various factors that structure social relationships among primates, and using interpersonal violence as a case study, critically evaluate some of the literature listed below to address the following question

2. Palaeoanthropological evidence indicates that early members of the genus Homo were the first to colonize areas outside of Africa.  Evidence for dispersals is as early as 1.8-1.7 million years ago in a number of places.  Yet, the overall evidence for this dispersal has been described as 'spatially and temporally discontinuous'.  Discuss the main evidence for the earliest dispersal of Homo outside of Africa, drawing on the key fossil and archaeological evidence.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the prevailing evidence for the early dispersals, and discuss what factors may be involved in limiting the geographic expansion of early hominins.  

3.  How is Homo sapiens adapted to environmental variation? Discuss in terms of climate and altitude, emphasizing human evolutionary trends.

and then 3rd year bioanth...

1. Has ancient DNA completely transformed our understanding of the genetic origins and affinities of Eurasian and Native American populations?  

2. The probability of conceiving a child per menstrual cycle is ≤0.15 in humans. Consequently, the reproductive system of our species has been described as ¨inefficient¨ and a paradox, given it is a process fundamental for the survival of the species. Do you agree with this characterisation?

[askacambridgestudent]

For someone who has never studied arch or anth before, could you give a small explanation as to what it entails, apart from that it's about humans approached biologically and culturally. Is it like English and history with lots of interpretation and analysis, or more like biology and statistics? It's hard to know if the degree is for me, because all reading can teach me is facts, and I obviously know that at Cam it's not about reciting facts.

Uhm so here is bio vs soc anth. here and here is some soc anth generally.  and here is some archaeology stuff. And here is some stuff on what people in my year are doing now after graduation if that’s helpful. 

[askacambridgestudent]

I've seen hsps and arch/bio anth have been split up again. i really want to do bio anth and soc anth together- which degree should i apply for? also as they're newly separate, would the 2017 intake be guinea pigs so the course would be as disgornized as hsps sounds to be?

Read here. I would probably recommend doing BioAnth+ a Soc Anth paper. Within that, you will need to do one archaeology paper, and you get then specialize in either bioanth or soc anth, whichever you like better. That’s essentially the way the degree was taught for 100 years (Arch, BioAnth, SocAnth) and I think it’s actually massively valuable to learn about it that way. The other option is to do HSPS and then specialize in SocAnth. I do think you can borrow a Bioanth paper in 1st year, so you’d have 1 SocAnth paper, 1 BioAnth paper, and 2 other papers. With that path, you end up with 2/4 papers unrelated to what you want to do as opposed to only 1. Also you don’t get the arch perspective, you get a sociology/politics perspective. 

So yeah, I would probably go the bioanth route for first year but if you prefer sociology/politics, HSPS is also a good option. Either way, you end up with flexibility in what you want to specialize in for pt 2.