Anthropology of International Development MSc

About the Course

Please note that we are intending to start this course in September 2012: please check nearer the time.

The course will appeal to graduates from a variety of backgrounds, including: anthropology, sociology, economics, politics, geography, law and development studies. It will provide the necessary training to enable students to seek employment with NGOs (such as Oxfam and Save the Children Fund), international agencies (such as the World Health Organisation and the World Food Programme) and the civil service (such as the UK Department for International Development). It will also provide a useful stepping stone for those seeking to undertake doctoral research in international development.

Aims

Over the last ten years, global aspirations to reduce the suffering of the "bottom billion" have led to unprecedented attention on international development. International agencies, governments and NGOs are working more intensely than ever before to deliver appropriate policies and interventions.

Anthropology has played a key role in the emergence of new perspectives on humanitarian assistance and the livelihoods of populations caught up in extreme circumstances such as famines, natural disasters and wars.

On the one hand, this has led to a radical re-thinking of what has been happening, but on the other hand, it has led to anthropologists sometimes playing controversial roles in agendas associated with the "war on terror".

This course examines these contemporary issues and debates, and explores their implications. It also sets them in the context of anthropology as a discipline. In so doing, students will discover how the apparent insights and skills of anthropologists have a long history associated with ethnographic work on economics, education, health, deprivation and conceptions of suffering dating back to the origins of the discipline.

Enquiries

Course Enquiries
For questions about the degree itself prior to and during application contact the School of Social Sciences: 

Helen Stevenson
Postgraduate Admissions & Marketing Administrator
Email socscipgenq@brunel.ac.uk
Tel +44 (0)1895 265952

Veronica Johnson
Postgraduate Programmes Office
Tel +44 (0)1895 265951

Application Enquiries (Home/EU)
For applications already submitted.
Email admissions@brunel.ac.uk
Tel +44 (0)1895 265265

Application Enquiries (International Students)
For general enquiries, including how to apply: Email brunelinternational@brunel.ac.uk
For applications already submitted: Email international-admissions@brunel.ac.uk.
Tel +44 (0)1895 265519

Course Director: Dr Peggy Froerer

Visit the School of Social Sciences website

Special Features

Our course team has worked in countries across the globe including South, West and East Africa, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, as well as Britain.

Research interests of our current team of internationally respected anthropologists are as follows:

Dr Nicolas Argenti has undertaken long-term fieldwork in Cameroon and in Sri Lanka. He is an expert on children’s and young people’s experience of conflict and on theories of child play, embodiment, and collective memory.

Dr Andrew Beatty specialises in religion, kinship and emotion. He has worked on the relation between family forms and styles of thinking (conceptual and moral relativism) in Java, has a research interest in Mexico and has published on the anthropology of emotion.

Dr Dominique Behague specialises in the anthropology of psychiatry, the biomedical and social sciences, and the medicalisation of life-cycle transitions, including adolescence and young adulthood, in Southern Brazil. Recently, Dominique has conducted ethnographic research on the role of epidemiology and evidence-based medicine in global health politics and financing, with specific reference to the rise of global mental health.

Dr Peggy Froerer has conducted extensive field research in India. She is an expert on the anthropology of childhood, education and schooling, and is interested in theories of learning and cognition. Her earlier work focused on Hindu nationalism and Christian/Hindu ethnic relations. She is currently working on a monograph on education and social mobility in central India.

Dr Eric Hirsch has a long-standing interest in the ethnography and history of Papua New Guinea. His research focuses on issues of historicity, landscape, power and property relations. He has also carried out fieldwork in Britain on the relations between new technologies and personhood.

Dr Isak Niehaus works on the diverse fields of population removals, cosmology, witchcraft, masculinity, sexuality, politics and AIDS in the South African lowveld, and is interested in the parallels between post-Apartheid in South Africa and post-Communism in the Czech Republic. He is currently writing the biography of a South African teacher.

Dr Melissa Parker has undertaken research in Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Ghana and London. Her publications address a wide range of issues including tropical diseases; maternal and child health; female circumcision and sexuality; HIV/AIDS and sexual networks; anthropology and public health.

Dr Will Rollason's research is based in south-east Papua New Guinea, focusing on issues of development, race and work in the post-colony. He has written on clothing, sports, tourism and colonial politics. Currently, he is working on the way in which indigenous ideas about the future affect contemporary engagements with capitalism and development.

Dr James Staples conducts fieldwork in South India, including long-term research with leprosy-affected people in a rural coastal community and, more recently, with disabled people in the major city of Hyderabad. His thematic interests include personhood, performance and the body; disability and notions of human rights; and marginal livelihoods, including begging.

The Anthropology Department has an associated research centre focusing on children, child development, youth education and learning - Centre for Anthropological Research on Childhood, Youth and Education (CARCYE).

Course Content

Modules

Core

Anthropology of International Development (two modules)

Ethnographic Research Methods
Main topics of study: the centrality of fieldwork to anthropological research; theoretical and practical issues of participant observation, open-ended unstructured interviews and semi-structured interviews; the advantages and disadvantages of using questionnaires during fieldwork; different styles of ethnographic writing; gaining access in ethnographic research; ethical clearance and ethical dilemmas arising in the course of fieldwork; constructing a research proposal.

Dissertation

Elective

Anthropology of Disability and Difference
Main Topics of Study: A critical overview of the medical and social models of disability that have framed discourse on disability; ethnographic and phenomenological alternatives to such approaches; conducting fieldwork with cognitively and physically impaired people; disability across the life course, with a focus on childhood disability; identity and disability; social policy, development, the state and disability; ethical dilemmas and the new genetics.

Anthropology of the Body
Main Topics of Study: The social body; embodiment, ‘habitus’ and phenomenological approaches to the body; cross-cultural perceptions of the body; the body in parts; sex and gender; childhood and the body; bodily norms, beauty and ideas of the perfect body; biomedicine and the body; death and the dying body.

Anthropology of the Person
Main topics of study: theories of the person; the notion of 'normality'; the emergence of memero-politics; classifications, kinds, and kind-making; 'looping effects'; cultural bound syndrome and 'ecological niche'.

Kinship and New Directions in Anthropology
Main topics of study: descent and alliance, the household, the incest taboo, new reproductive technologies, kinship and the state, gay kinship, the abortion debate, conceptions of social reproduction, kinship and migration, the social and cultural construction of paternity.

Plus two un-assessed reading modules

History and Theory of Social Anthropology
Main topics of study: evolutionary' anthropology; 'race', 'civilisation'; diffusionism and the Boas school; the development of ethnographic research; functional, structure and comparison; structuralism; neo-evolutionism; culture and the interpretation of cultures; critiques (Marxism, feminism, post-modernism).

Issues in Social Anthropology
Main topics of study: kinship; gender; religion; anthropology of the body.

Assessment

Assessment is variously by essay and practical assignment (eg analysis of a short field exercise). A final dissertation of approximately 15,000 words, based on fieldwork in the UK or abroad, is also required. There are no examinations.

Careers

The course will provide the necessary training to enable students to seek employment with NGOs (such as Oxfam and Save the Children Fund), international agencies (such as the World Health Organisation and the World Food Programme) and the civil service (such as the UK Department for International Development). It will also provide a useful stepping stone for those seeking to undertake doctoral research in international development.

Fees for 2012/13 entry

Home/EU: £5,060 full-time, £2,530 part-time
Overseas: £13,860 full-time, £6,930 part-time

Read about funding opportunities available to postgraduate students

Fees quoted are per annum and are subject to an annual increase.

Entry Requirements for 2012 Entry

Normally a good UK Honours degree, an equivalent overseas qualification, or an equivalent professional qualification (eg from a health background). Candidates not fully meeting these criteria may be considered. Students whose first language is not English must have IELTS of at least 6.5 or equivalent.

Entry Requirements for 2011 Entry (click to expand)

English Language Requirements

• IELTS: 6.5 (min 6 in all areas)
• TOEFL Paper test: 580 (TWE 4.5)
• TOEFL Internet test: 92 (R20, L20, S20, W20)
• Pearson: 59 (51 in all subscores)

Brunel also offers our own BrunELT English Test and accept a range of other language courses. We also have a range of Pre-sessional English language courses, for students who do not meet these requirements, or who wish to improve their English.