AXL5401W  MINOR DISSERTATION
96 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Master’s convenor
Course entry requirements: AXL5411W. Acceptance for a master’s programme.
Course outline:
Master’s in Anthropology: Candidates undertake an approved and supervised anthropological research project based on engagement with appropriate literature and at least two months of field- based research (normally in southern Africa). It culminates in a 25,000 word ethnographic dissertation (part of which may be an ethnographic film or new-media text).
Master’s in Practical Anthropology: Candidates complete an approved internship which produces a written report and dissertation. The internship is based on an approved consultancy brief requiring at least six weeks of anthropological work with a public sphere agency and/or in social-cultural interventions. Following the internship and internship report, candidates write a separate 25,000 word dissertation.
MPhil in Environmental Humanities: Candidates undertake an approved co-supervised and cross- disciplinary research project, based on engagement with appropriate literature, and one to two months of field-based research. It culminates in a 25,000 word ethnographic dissertation.
Programmes other than the above three: Candidates undertake an approved project applying anthropological perspectives to a field of study appropriate to their programme of registration. It comprises a supervised research exercise based on directed reading, participation in a graduate seminar, and primary and/or secondary research. It culminates in a minor dissertation appropriate to the candidate’s programme of registration.
DP requirements: Submission and approval of a consultancy report in terms of brief and a chapter outline for dissertation.
Assessment: A dissertation of no more than 25,000 words.
AXL5402F  ANTHROPOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Dr D Fuh
Course entry requirements: Honours in Anthropology or Development Studies, or permission of Head of Section.
Course outline:
The course is core to the programme in Practical Anthropology. It is an advanced course designed to focus on the theory and particularly the practice of development intervention taking an anthropological perspective. It will prepare participants for self-employment, public sector, private sector employment or development NGOs. It includes a fieldwork exercise based on a short field- trip. At the end of the course they will have:
- developed a conceptual framework and the skills necessary to analyse relationships between cultural issues and the development process;
- developed and enhanced anthropological research and data handling skills and learned to apply them practically; and
- acquired some expertise in specialist fields selected from a wide range of options relevant to the anthropology of development.
The course is core for students in the master’s in Practical Anthropology programme and strongly recommended for students in the master’s in Anthropology programme.
DP requirements: Submission of all prescribed assignments and satisfactory attendance and participation in coursework seminars plus completion of practical project.
Assessment: Assignments 50%; exam (essay and project report) 50%
AXL5402W RESEARCH DESIGN
1 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
AXL5403F  FURTHER SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Professor F Ross
Course entry requirements: Acceptance for a master’s programme; permission of Head of Section
Course outline:
Further Special Topics courses will normally include further advanced level work on an issue dealt with at the 4000-level or emanating from departmental research. Details of such further special courses will vary from year to year and they will only be offered if there is sufficient demand and adequate personnel.
DP requirements: Submission of work-in-progress.
Assessment: Coursework 100%.
AXL5404S  FURTHER SPECIAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Professor F Ross
Course entry requirements: Acceptance for a master’s programme; permission of Head of Section.
Course outline:
Further Special Topics courses will normally include further advanced level work on an issue dealt with at the 4000-level or emanating from departmental research. Details of such further special courses will vary from year to year and they will only be offered if there is sufficient demand and adequate personnel.
DP requirements: Submission of work-in-progress.
Assessment: Coursework 100%.
AXL5405F MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGIES: WELL-BEING IN A PRECARIOUS WORLD
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Associate Professor S Levine
Course entry requirements: Acceptance for a master’s programme.
Co-requisites: N/A
Course outline:
The course explores the subdiscipline of medical anthropology through a range of theoretical perspectives on well-being in relation to the body, medicines, and political economy. The overall theme of the course concerns the intertwining of body, sociality and illness. It seeks to demonstrate the ways in which illness and well-being are imbricated in a precarious world. Theoretical themes in medical anthropology are discussed alongside ethnographic work to inspire students in the importance of a detailed revisiting of local worlds and their global connections. Four major themes are: Phenomenological approaches to embodiment; Questions of power; Marginalisation, history and discourse; Knowledge and ethics in relation to biology, science, and biomedicine. The overall aim is to examine how well-being is constituted and to understand the ways in which contemporary arrangements of power, knowledge, resources enable or inhibit health, broadly understood. The course examines the entailments of practical medical anthropology.
DP requirements: Submission of all prescribed assignments; satisfactory attendance and participation in coursework seminars.
Assessment: Coursework 100%
AXL5406S  ANTHROPOLOGY OF YOUTH IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Dr D Fuh
Course entry requirements: Acceptance for a master’s programme.
Course outline:
The aim of the course is to equip learners with knowledge of current thinking in the social sciences around theories of childhood and youth, with a critical focus on the place of youth in contemporary social world-making. The course offers critical comparative approaches to the study of those deemed to be ‘young’, and interrogates the conventional modes of analysis of young people’s worlds and activities. The course may include a fieldwork exercise based on a short field trip.
DP requirements: Submission of all prescribed assignments; satisfactory attendance and participation in coursework seminars.
Assessment: Long essay (40%); 3 response papers (30%); project (20%); class participation (10%).
AXL5407S  ANTHROPOLOGY AND CONTEMPORARY THEORY
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Professor F Nyamnjoh
Course entry requirements: AXL4402S plus candidacy in one of master’s specialising in Anthropology or Practical Anthropology, or permission of Head of Section.
Course outline:
Beginning with the Archie Mafeje’s critiques of anthropology, the course explores current theoretical interventions regarding coloniality and modernity in contemporary social sciences and humanities. With a particular emphasis on the possibilities that open when critiques of coloniality extend to the categories inhering in modernist thought, the course focuses on the possibilities for radical and innovative ethnographic accounts of the world. The course pays particular attention to modes of theorising relations, and seeks to undo a Western epistemology that takes distancing, objectification and war as its primary modes of engagement.
DP requirements: Submission of all prescribed assignments; satisfactory attendance and participation in coursework seminars.
Assessment: Two 5000 word essays (40% each); presentation (20%).
AXL5409F/S ETHNOGRAPHIC PROBLEMATIQUES
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Professor F Nyamnjoh
Course entry requirements: Candidacy in one of master’s specialising in Anthropology or Practical Anthropology or permission of Head of Section.
Course outline:
The course provides students opportunity to engage with ethnographic texts on selected anthropological themes and to develop an historical synthesis of ethnographic work pertaining to a selected anthropological research problem such as they will have to face in undertaking their own research for their minor dissertations. Students devise individual projects within a collaborative framework.
DP requirements: Submission of work-in-progress; oral presentation of final paper.
Assessment: Term paper 100%.
AXL5410F  ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH METHODS AND METHODOLOGY
12 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Professor F Ross
Course entry requirements: Acceptance for a master’s programme.
Course outline:
The course comprises theory and practice in ethnographic research methods, including participant observation, interviewing skills and visual anthropology. The emphasis is on contextual qualitative data collection methods and analysis. Students will develop research proposal skills and will be required to prepare a proposal and research design.
DP requirements: Submission of all prescribed assignments and satisfactory attendance and participation in coursework seminars by due dates.
Assessment: Coursework 100%.
AXL5411W RESEARCH DESIGN
(non-credit bearing) While this is not a credit bearing course, it is a pre-requisite for AXL5401W.
0 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Professor F Ross
Course entry requirements: AXL4401F or equivalent
Course outline:
The course is designed to provide supervision for candidates registered for the master’s specialising in Anthropology and Practical Anthropology. Its goal is to assist students to prepare proposals and obtain ethical clearance for the research and internships respectively required for those specialisations, and that is necessary for completion of a minor dissertation (see respective requirements for the dissertations under AXL5401W).
DP requirements: Submission of work-in-progress; oral presentation of final paper.
Assessment: Sectional approval of an appropriate research proposal (Anthropology) or an internship brief and research proposal (Practical Anthropology). In both instances the proposal must satisfy the Section by explicitly addressing ethical concerns that might arise in the process of undertaking the research and/or engaging in an internship.
AXL5412F  CRITICAL MEDICAL HUMANITIES IN AFRICA
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Associate Professor S L Levine
Course entry requirements: Acceptance into an honours or master’s programme. There are limited spaces in the course and as a result, and to ensure as far as possible an even split between Health Sciences and Humanities students, applicants may be interviewed for acceptance into the course. This will occur during the week before classes in the course begin.
Course outline:
Critical Medical Humanities in Africa is a course for postgraduate students in the Humanities and Health Science faculties. It contributes to new interdisciplinary research initiatives underway at UCT, and provides an unparalleled opportunity for students from the Health Sciences and Humanities to engage with the production of knowledge of and about the body, from multiple perspectives. The course also provides an intellectual platform for students in the Health Sciences and Humanities to explore new possibilities, already activated on the global stage, about the ways in which the arts can constructively engage with medical pedagogy and practice, and to engage in key debates relating medicine, the arts and medical anthropology.
DP requirements: Attendance at a minimum 8 of the 12 scheduled seminars.
Assessment: Written assignment 1: a discussion of the literature (20%); written assignment 2: a reflection on project (10%); individual project: a performance, composition, artefact, film, exhibition or publication (20%); final examination (50%).
AXL5414S  RESEARCHING THE ANTHROPOCENE
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Associate Professor L Green
Course entry requirements: Acceptance into an honours or master’s programme.
Course outline:
The term “anthropocene”, taken up by geologists to describe the era in which the effects of collective human action have become “significant on the scale of Earth history”, compels a rethinking of the divides between the human sciences and the natural sciences. The implication: not only are conceptual divisions between society and nature to be rethought, but that new approaches to research are needed to speak to the challenges of comprehending the interconnections of human life, earth systems, and species. This course offers an introduction to research methods that are needed in order to bring these interconnectivities and parts and wholes, into public life and decision-making. Building on current conversations across the south on the engagement of decolonial literatures and the post-humanities, this course explores the research methods proposed by leading scholars in these fields.
DP requirements: Submission of all prescribed assignments; satisfactory attendance and participation in coursework seminars.
Assessment: Two 5000 word essays (40% each); prepared seminar presentation (20%).
AXL5416F SCIENCE; NATURE; DEMOCRACY
24 NQF credits at HEQSF level 9
Convener: Associate Professor L Green
Course entry requirements: Acceptance into an honours or master’s programme.
Course outline:
This course focuses on the relationship between science and governance, drawing on current debates in science studies about the mediation of different versions of nature, truth and world in a democracy. Whether those concerns arise in relation to different disciplinary knowledges, the interests of capital, religious or indigenous movements, or between scientists and parliamentarians, the production of evidentiaries and procedures for verification are a central concern in decision- making in contemporary public life. The course explores the unstable knowledge terrain where state, science, publics and capital meet, with the goal of developing insight into the mistranslations and incomprehensions that occur, and to explore options that might resolve them. Building on emerging work on scholarly diplomacy in the scientific humanities, with a particular interest on science studies in the south, the course focuses on emerging strategies of mediation, equivocation, translation and contestation that are part of democratic processes and activism.
DP requirements: Submission of all prescribed assignments; satisfactory attendance and participation in coursework seminars.
Assessment: Two 5000 word essays (40% each); prepared seminar presentation (20%)