The objective of this course is to communicate an anthropologically-informed understanding of social life in both Western and non-Western societies. By confronting you with the remarkable diversity of human social and cultural experience, our aim is to encourage you to question taken-for-granted assumptions and to view the world from a new perspective. Through a set of core course units, comprising about a third of coursework credits, you are provided with a comprehensive grounding in classical as well as contemporary debates in social anthropology and are introduced to the distinctive research methods and ethical positions associated with the discipline. You can select units of study from a good number of elective modules offered by staff working at the forward edge of their fields of study, and complete augment these by choosing from a broad range of units offered around the Faculty of Humanities. Through these options, you apply the social anthropological theories and methods learnt on the core units to particular substantive themes and topics. Diploma students complete their coursework in May and formally graduate in July. Over the summer holidays, MA students carry out research for a 15,000 word dissertation that is submitted in September; normally graduating in December.