Social and Cultural Anthropology

Profile

In the disciplinary history of Social and Cultural Anthropology, there has been a momentous transformation when anthropologists’ earlier focus on non-modern, non-Western societies increasingly shifted towards the study of post-colonial social formations involving mass media communication and complex connectivities.

Photography by Sophie Day (Ladakh 1982)

At the University of Constance, Social and Cultural Anthropology is understood as a discipline at the intersection between the social sciences and the humanities that employs primarily qualitative methodologies to explore varied ways of constituting sociality, culturality, ‘identity’ and ‘alterity’, in so doing, taking account of the contextual and conflictual nature of the sociocultural negotiations involved in these processes.

Photography by Thomas Kirsch (Zambia 1993)

As concerns research activities, Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Con-stance endorses empirically grounded research that exhibits willingness for interdisciplinary dialogue and active interest in anthropological theory development.

As concerns teaching activities, the syllabus of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Constance is embedded in the BA and MA programmes in Sociology and is structured into three curricular categories: (1) “Fundamentals of Social and Cultural Anthropology”, (2) “Issues in Social and Cultural Anthropology” and (3) “Qualitative Research”.