Modern anthropology is an exciting new discipline concerned with the interface of the modern with the traditional, past and present, and the future. From studies of male surgeons and their culture of machismo in hospitals, to studies of the small group of elite businessmen who control Wall Street, anthropologists today engage in a wide variety of social and cultural studies of small-scale communities based on long-term intensive fieldwork methods which are increasingly sought after by a number of disciplines and employers. Graduated anthropologists work in development programmes and TV stations, newspapers, market research and advertising companies, schools and universities. We are concerned with issues of social exclusion and marginality, the interface between man and the environment, cultural production and the better understanding of people different from ourselves and alternative social systems.
The MA in Anthropology at ECNU is a 3-year degree programme taught by highly qualified faculty in both English and Chinese who have trained overseas as well as in China. A major component of training is a 6-month period of fieldwork in the second year, on the basis of which a thesis is written up under careful guidance from a supervisor. Our expertise covers visual anthropology and the making of fieldwork-based films, the anthropology of development and development issues, and socio-cultural relations with the environment, ranging from urban to rural situations and covering minority and majority populations.
For brief bios of faculty members and associated staff, see below:
Nicholas Tapp (PhD, U of London), ethnicity, Hmong studies, development
Yan Yunxiang (ECNU Zijiang Scholar; PhD, Harvard U), development and individual
Wu Xu (PhD, U of Alberta), food, ethnobotany
Beth Liu (PhD, Peking U), religion, ethnicity
Chen Yun (PhD, City U Hong Kong), religion, economy
Zhang Hui (PhD, UCLA), anthropology of education, media and visual anthropology
Link:
http://www.soci.ecnu.edu.cn/teacher.asp [web of School of Social Development]
http://rlxmsx.uueasy.com/read-htm-tid-16.html [What is anthropology?]
For some pictures of our recent fieldwork in China and Canada, see below
