Anthropology @ Hull

Social anthropology studies cultural diversity, the often radically different ways in which people around the world organise their lives and deal with such universal human issues as sex and marriage, family, work and play, religion and death, local and global forms of power, domination and resistance. Its primary aim is to make sense of apparently strange and exotic belief systems and practices and to show that far from being inferior, they constitute different expressions of a common humanity.

Social anthropologists acquire an intimate understanding of other ways of life by spending extended periods of time in small communities, often in remote parts of the world, mastering the local language and immersing themselves in the local culture. Such periods typically take between one and two years. More recently, anthropologists have provided a richer understanding of Western social and cultural institutions through the use conceptual and methodological tools forged in the study of non-Western societies.

Social anthropology is highly relevant in an increasingly globalised world and in multi-cultural societies like Britain as it plays a major role in combating forms of prejudice and intolerance like racism and ethnocentrism.

At Hull, Anthropology is taught as a core component in the following degree programmes (for more information click on the links below):