Objectives of Programme's Learning Outcomes

• Understand the fundamentals (theories and tools) in human and social sciences
• Identify and explain the basic theoretical trends in various fields of human sciences (law, economics, management, history, psychology, etc.) and their applications.
• Sociology and Anthropology option : Understand the fundamentals in the field of sociology and anthropology
• Have a critical view of theories, concepts and methods specific to sociology and anthropology.
• Describe and analyse contemporary, minority or distant human societies; decipher speeches and social and cultural representations.
• Avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism, sociocentrism and chronocentrisme.
• Master knowledge from disciplines within social and human sciences.
• Identify and explain the basic theories in political sciences and social sciences.
• Understand the tools and methods adapted to these disciplines.
• Put English language skills and skills of at least one other language other than French into practice.
• Read and understand the overall meaning of non-specialised texts, listen and understand the overall meaning of audio documents.

Learning Outcomes of UE

At the end of the class, students will have acquired a comprehensive view of the various (past and current) theoretical trends in Anthropology as far as scientific methods are concerned. They will be apt questioning constructively the foundations as well as the validity of anthropological production, apt following the appropriate steps required by any investigation and apt choosing, amongst the range of available methodological tools, those which will be most appropriate for a good conduct of their research.  
Finally, they will have a clear idea of methods and techniques most typically used in the discipline, particularly those related to interviews, thanks to a detailed presentation, illustrated with examples drawn from the teacher's personal research experiences. 
 

UE Content: description and pedagogical relevance

The class is divided into 5 lessons. Lessons 1 to 4 consist in a tool box containing a series of i) concepts (culture, symbols and rituals, emic and etic approaches, structure and function, ...) ii) of positions typical of the exercise of the discipline (respect for the spokesperson, non-judgmental orientation, rejection of any type of instrumentalization, ... ) which the student will tame and later learn to manipulate simultaneously when he will acting "in the real" during future fieldwork.
In each lesson, a jump is made in history in order to understand how methodological tools have been used by our predecessors and what use one can make today of such past experiences.      
The plan is as follows:

Lesson 1: Spontaneous anthropology and empirical match
Lesson 2: Indigenous versus scientist discourses: lessons learned from evolutionist anthropologists
Lesson 3: The French school and British Social Anthropology. From observation to description: objectivist stance and contamination from ideology 
Lesson 4: Fieldwork and participatory observation: the conceptual and practical aspects of scientific research
Lesson 5: Methods and techniques for anthropological data gathering 
 

Prior Experience

Having succeeded with the class "Introduction to Anthropology", Bac 1