Dr Mayanka Mukherji

This course is available on the Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Melbourne) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

This course provides an examination of the cultural frameworks and social aspects of kinship systems and gender roles, analysed through ethnographic examples from a diverse range of settings. It aims to equip students with the analytical tools to engage in theoretical debates concerning core concepts such as 'kinship', 'care’, 'gender', 'the body', and the relationship between 'nature' and 'culture', as well as exploring how the experiences of kinship, sex and gender vary according to the regimes of politics, law and materiality in which they are embedded. The course considers how the practices and meanings of kinship, sex and gender are entangled with culturally and historically specific ideas of bodily control, pollution, beauty, race, nationalism, modernity, and care. In the first half of the term, we consider Bodies and Reproduction; in the second half, we focus on Materialities, Movements and Care.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the WT.

The contact hours listed above are the minimum expected. This course has a reading week in Week 6 of LT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the WT.

Carsten, J. After Kinship (2003);

Donnan, H. and Magowan, F. The Anthropology of Sex (2010);

Moore, H. L. A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender (1994);

Stone, L. Kinship and Gender: An Introduction (2006);

S. Franklin and S. McKinnon, Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies (2001);

G.R. Bentley and R. Mace, Substitute Parents: Biological and Social Perspectives on Alloparenting Across Human Societies (2009).

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the ST.