Prof Laura Bear

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in Social Anthropology, Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Melbourne), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Singapore) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

Unless granted an exemption by the course teacher, students taking this course from departments other than Anthropology should have completed EITHER an introductory course in anthropology such as AN100 or AN101 OR have completed an AN200 course in their second year of study

This course will introduce students to different ways in which anthropologists (and others) have sought to understand the human mind in its social and cultural context. It will survey a range of classic and contemporary theoretical perspectives within psychological anthropology and cognate disciplines, including psychoanalytic and post-psychoanalytic social theory; cognitive and evolutionary anthropology; phenomenological approaches in anthropology; scientific and folk theories of mind; and other anthropological engagements with the psy disciplines. Students will learn to assess the value and limits of such perspectives by placing them in dialogue with ethnographic studies of selected mental phenomena and mediating social practices. Specific topics addressed in any given year will reflect the current research interests of the course teacher, but indicative themes could include: mental health and illness; neurodiversity; theories of emotion and affect; empathy and the opacity of other minds; perceptions of time; comparison; will, trance and hypnosis.

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

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

Abi-Rached, J. and Rose, N. 2022. Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Beatty, A. 2019. Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chodorow, N. 1999. The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.  

D'Andrade, R. and Strauss, C. (eds). 1992. Human Motives and Cultural Models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Grinker, R. 2007. Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. Philadelphia: Basic Books.

Jenkins, J. 2015. Extraordinary conditions: culture and experience in mental illness. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Luhrmann, T. (ed.) 2020. Mind and Spirit: A Comparative Theory. Special Issue of Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26(S1).

Mageo, J., & Sheriff, R.E. (eds.). 2020. New Directions in the Anthropology of Dreaming. Routledge.

Mercier, H. and Sperber, D. 2017. The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Mitchell, J. and Petty, K. (eds.). 2020. Uncanny Landscapes. Special Issue of Material Religion 16(4).

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours) in the spring exam period.