Politics & Social Anthropology

Politics and social anthropology together address how human societies are organised, governed and experienced from two complementary but distinct disciplinary angles. Politics examines the formal structures of power, the behaviour of states and institutions, the dynamics of political competition, and the theories of how authority can be justified and contested. Social anthropology brings a different lens, examining culture, kinship, ritual, exchange and identity through close ethnographic study of specific communities and societies, asking what human diversity tells us about universal human capacities and the variety of ways in which social life can be organised.

Together they produce an unusually rich perspective on how the world's peoples live and are governed.

At the University of Manchester this three-year full-time programme draws on two strong departments in one of the UK's leading research universities. You will study the major theoretical traditions in both disciplines, from Marxist political economy and liberal institutionalism to structural functionalism and interpretive anthropology, and you will engage with empirical material from societies across the world. Political science develops your ability to analyse institutions, policies and political behaviour systematically.

Anthropology develops your capacity for sustained, empathetic engagement with ways of life very different from your own, and for the kind of reflexive thinking that asks what your own cultural assumptions contribute to your analysis.

Graduates from politics and social anthropology programmes go on to work in international development and humanitarian organisations, the civil service, journalism, NGOs, public policy, social research, cultural organisations, the foreign service and academic research. The combination of analytical political understanding and anthropological depth is particularly valued in organisations that need to understand how politics and culture interact across diverse national and community contexts. Many continue to postgraduate study in politics, international relations, social anthropology, development studies or area studies.