University of Roehampton, BA (Hons), Childhood and Society and Social Anthropology

This is a combined Honours course which allows the student to study 2 subjects; the childhood and society course asks questions about what is happening to children: how society treats children, how they are governed and the moral and political values attached to childhood; the student also considers what children themselves feel and think, and how they imagine themselves as well as the world around them; the course involves not only an analysis of specific institutions, including schools, hospitals, clinics etc, but also an appreciation of the fact that children are not a submissive population and have a right to fashion their own lives; social anthropologists study human societies in all their diversity and complexity, from the smallest hunter-gatherer groups to mass western social systems; the social anthropology course focuses in particular on social issues, such as variations in family structure, cultural traditions, religious, political and economic systems, as well as gender and sexuality; social anthropologists work in many different fields reflected in subjects as varied as urban life in cities, as diverse as Calcutta and east London, kingship and rituals in Rajasthan, India, fox hunting in Shropshire, and bullfighting in Spain.