social anthropology

Topic description and stories

Vision in the field: Photography from social anthropology

23 Jan 2024

The University’s Department of Social Anthropology studies how people live: what they make, do, think and the organisation of their relationships...

A full-page newspaper advert used to promote MNREGA

Drowning in a paper sea: India’s welfare efforts failed by its peculiar bureaucracy

21 Jul 2016

India’s sophisticated laws and progressive policies fail with startling regularity. A new study locates a possible reason as to why in the convoluted...

Detail from a portrait of William Halse Rivers in his Royal Army Medical Corps uniform., Credit: St John's College, Cambridge

Rivers beyond Regeneration

04 Nov 2014

Best-known for his treatment of shell-shock victims in World War I, a new study examines William Rivers’ crucial, but often overlooked contributions...

An exchange taking place between the Urapmin people, Papua New Guinea, Credit: Joel Robbins

Looking for the good

03 Aug 2014

Anthropology looks at human differences in its study of the ‘other’ and at human commonalities in its more recent focus on the ‘suffering’. In...

The communal area between Mbare housing blocks. Inside the one-roomed homes there are no toilets or sanitation facilities, so washing and laundry happen in communal areas. Many families prefer to cook on open fires, which occupy empty ground between block, Credit: Rowan Jones

Reporting from Zimbabwe: a visit to Harare’s biggest township

17 Aug 2013

In the township of Mbare, anthropology student Rowan Jones finds a complex picture of poverty and propaganda - plus a baffling level of support for...