300-level

ANTH301
Doing Ethnography: Concepts and Practices
Description
Ethnography is a research procedure central to the discipline of anthropology. It has also become an essential research method for many other fields in social sciences and humanities. This course aims at helping students understand the basic principles and praxis of ethnography. For this purpose, this course is designed as a combination of both theory and practice. Through lectures and assigned readings, this course addresses theoretical reflections by scholars on the epistemological, political and ethical implications of ethnography. This course also has a mock ethnographic project in which students work through major steps of doing ethnography.
Occurrences
Semester Two 2026
Points
30 points
Prerequisites
Any 30 points at 200 level from ANTH or SOCI, or any 60 points at 200 level from the Schedule V of the BA.
ANTH312
Kinship and Family in Comparative Perspective
Description
This course is designed to help students understand the importance of kinship and family in human societies and appreciate the complexities and variation in how kinship and family are conceptualized and practised in different cultures. In this course, we will discuss classic and contemporary case studies of kinship and family in cultures and societies around the world, including Africa, China, Europe, the United States, and the Pacific area (including New Zealand), to list just a few. In examining these cases and case studies, we will probe the issues of biology and culture, personhood and subjectivity, and structure and human agency in varied ways of conceptualizing and practising kinship in different cultures. This course also covers comprehensive knowledge of historical and contemporary theories and methods in kinship and family studies to help students develop critical perspectives on how kinship and family are practised in contemporary life.
Occurrences
Semester One 2026
Points
30 points
Prerequisites
Any 30 points at 200 level from ANTH or SOCI, or any 60 points at 200 level from the Schedule V of the BA.
Restrictions
ANTH212, GEND218, GEND318, SOCI212, SOCI312
ANTH326
Food Systems, Sustainability & Social Change
Description
This course will focus on building understanding of contemporary debates about food, sustainability, and society by exploring contemporary food systems and efforts to transform them. We will examine a range of socio-environmental challenges relating to food's production, distribution, consumption, and waste. How these challenges are framed and analysed will be critically considered using sociological approaches that draw out social, cultural, political, economic, and ethical dimensions. We will then explore social action aimed at improving the sustainability and/or justice of food systems' structuring, governance, and/or practice. Local, national, and international examples will be used to ground our examinations of these efforts. More specific approaches or actions discussed may include regenerative agriculture, corporate concentration, food redistribution, alternative proteins, food sovereignty, application of Maori principles to food systems, among other things. Combining in-class and field experiences, as well as a social action project, the course is designed to foster critical thinking and motivate community engagement for transforming food systems.
Occurrences
Semester Two 2026
Points
30 points
Prerequisites
Any 30 points at 200 level from ANTH or SOCI, OR any 60 points at 200 level from the Schedule V of the BA.
Restrictions
SOCI406; SOCI377
ANTH366
The Place of Witches: An Anthropology of Witchcraft, Healing, and Magic in the Atlantic World
Description
This course explores witchcraft, healing, and magic in the Atlantic World from an anthropological perspective. It covers a series of sub-topics such as witch-hunting, the regulation of witchcraft and sorcery beliefs and practices, divination, magical landscapes, and revitalization movements.
Occurrences
Semester One 2026
Semester One 2026 (Distance)
Points
30 points
Prerequisites
P: Any 30 points at 200 level from ANTH or SOCI, or any 60 points at 200 level from the Schedule V of the BA.
Restrictions
ANTH266

Not Offered Courses in 2026

300-level

ANTH302
Politics, Power and Capitalism
Description
This course poses fundamental questions about the domain of "the political" in relation to interest, influence, and power. It applies these concerns to the dominant social, political, and economic system of our times - capitalism. Concerned with its historical and geographical spread, its ideological manifestations, its crises, and its oppositional movements, it introduces students to critical ethnographies that explore issues of wealth and inequality, protest and control, and the role of military, technological, and economic power in contemporary societies.
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2018 , 2020 , 2023 , 2024
For further information see ANTH302 course details
Points
30 points
ANTH307
Visual Anthropology
Description
This course is about visual representations of culture and cultural difference. It looks at a wide variety of visual media, including art, photography, film, video, and digital technologies, to explore the ways in which these shape both the perception, and the experience, of cultural difference.
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2012 , 2013 , 2014 , 2015 , 2017
For further information see ANTH307 course details
Points
30 points
ANTH308
Food and Eating
Description
This course explores the food chain, from production, through consumption, to exchange and considers the ways in which food is implicated in the reproduction of and resistance to, inequalities of class, gender, ethnicity and nationalism.
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2011 , 2013 , 2015 , 2016
For further information see ANTH308 course details
Points
30 points
ANTH313
Environment, Development and Sustainability: Anthropological Perspectives
Description
This course is concerned with the social and ecological impacts of human activity in the context of a global fossil fuel civilization. Investigating problems of climate change, declining biodiversity, and environmental degradation, it provides an anthropologically informed perspective on crucial issues at the intersection of ecology, sustainable development, and social activism.
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2023 , 2024 , 2025
For further information see ANTH313 course details
Points
30 points
ANTH319
Cultures on the Screen
Description
This course examines how cultures are represented via visual media both by anthropologists and non-anthropologists. Using films and other visual media, accompanied by assigned readings, this course will help students understand problems and challenges associated with visual representation of cultures from anthropological perspectives.
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2023 , 2024
For further information see ANTH319 course details
Points
30 points
ANTH350
Travel, Tourism and Pilgrimage
Description
The course introduces students to Sociological and Anthropological approaches to travel and tourism. Through the study of topics such as travel literature, indigenous tourism, tourism and development, sex tourism and 'dark' tourism, it examines the way in which notions of the cultural 'self' and cultural 'others' have been both forged and sustained within various sorts of tourist encounter.
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2014 , 2015 , 2023 , 2024
For further information see ANTH350 course details
Points
30 points
ANTH388
Contested Heritage: Politics, Power and Practice
Description
This course provides students with a hands-on introduction to the study of heritage. We explore ways we might understand and interpret contemporary heritage practices in a range of contexts, including post-earthquake Christchurch.
Occurrences
Not offered 2026, offered in 2023 , 2024 , 2025
For further information see ANTH388 course details
Points
30 points