WELCOME TO THE Department of Anthropology Undergraduate Handbook 2019 Dates for your diary Welcome events 2019 – All Anthropology undergraduate students Attendance is compulsory unless otherwise stated. Date Time What Where From Monday, LSE Welcome for new students Across campus 23 September info.lse.ac.uk/current-students/your-first-weeks Tuesday, 9.30 – 10am Registration for BA/BSc Social Anthropology and BA Hong Kong Theatre, CLM 24 September Anthropology and Law students 3 – 4:30pm School Welcome presentation for all new UG students Peacock Theatre, PEA Thursday, 9 – 10am Introductory talk for all Anthropology department UG CLM 4.02 26 September students 10 – 11:30am BA/BSc Social Anthropology programme-specific OLD 6.05 orientation 11.30 – 1pm BA Anthropology and Law programme-specific orientation OLD 6.05 2 – 2.30pm Departmental introduction to e-resources (surnames A-L) OLD 6.05 3 – 3.30pm Departmental introduction to e-resources (surnames M-Z) OLD 6.05 4 – 5pm Follow up to the morning’s introductory talk CLM 5.02 5 – 7pm Anthropology welcome party OLD SDR (Senior Dining Room) Friday, 10.30 – Student laughter yoga workshop (optional) Shaw Library, OLD 27 September 11.30am 2 – 4pm BA/BSc student trip to/tour of Docklands Museum Docklands Museum Welcome events 2019 – BA Anthropology and Law students Note that first year BA Anthropology and Law students are required to attend the compulsory Law Department events listed below in addition to relevant sessions above. These events take place during LSE Welcome and Week 1. Date Time What Where Monday, 11am – 12 noon Welcome to LSE Law (compulsory) Sheikh Zayed Theatre, NAB LG.08 23 September 12 noon – 2pm LLB Lunch (optional) NAB Lower Ground 2 – 4pm Introduction to the LLB (compulsory) Sheikh Zayed Theatre, NAB LG.08 Tuesday, 8 – 9am LLB Breakfast (optional) NAB Lower Ground 24 September 9 – 10am The English Legal System (compulsory) Sheikh Zayed Theatre, NAB LG.08 Wednesday, 9 – 4pm Legal Walk/Library Induction (optional) In family groups 25 September 4 – 5pm How to Read English Cases: Part 1 (compulsory) Old Theatre, OLD G Thursday, 10 – 11pm How to Read English Cases: Part 2 (compulsory) Peacock Theatre, PEA 26 September 11 – 5pm Legal Walk/Library Induction (optional) In family groups 5 – 7.30pm Legal Lives (optional) Shaw Library, OLD Friday, 10 – 12 noon The Limits of Law (Group A) (optional) LSE Life (TBC) 27 September 1pm – 3pm The Limits of Law (Group B) (optional) LSE Life (TBC) Monday, 2.30 – 5pm LLB Afternoon Tea (optional) NAB Level 8 30 September Thursday, 6 – 8pm LLB Drinks Reception (optional) Law Society, Chancery Lane 3 October B Contents Dates for your diary inside front cover Advice Team 35 International Student Visa Advice Team (ISVAT) 35 Welcome to the LSE, and the Department of Anthropology 3 Student Representation 36 About the Department 4 Quality Assurance 36 Our background 4 Our teaching priorities 5 LSE Services to support you with Key academic staff 5 your studies and in your career 37 Letters of reference 6 LSE LIFE 37 Office hours 6 LSE Library 37 Departmental Office 6 Language Centre 38 Communication within the Department and LSE Careers 38 within the School 7 LSE Volunteer Centre 38 LSE Generate 38 About your degree programme 9 Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) 39 The Department’s undergraduate grade criteria 19 Your Wellbeing and Health 41 Plagiarism 23 Exams and Assessments 42 Taking notes 25 Results and Classification 43 Guidance for students on UK essay writing style 26 Fees and finance 44 Libraries 30 Codes and Charters 45 Associations of interest to Anthropology student 31 Systems and Online Resources 47 Key Information 33 Need IT help? 47 Term dates and LSE closures – LSE for You 47 Academic Year 2019/20 33 Student Hub 47 Registration 33 Moodle 47 Your LSE Card 33 Email 47 Inclusion Plans 33 Training and Development System 47 Student Status Documentation 33 Information Security Awareness Training 47 Interruption 34 Programme Transfer 34 Course Selection and Timetables 49 Change of Mode of Study 34 Withdrawal 34 The LSE Academic Code 51 Regulations 34 Campus map inside back cover Student Services Centre 35 What If… 35 studenthub.lse.ac.uk/welcome 1 2 Welcome to the LSE, and the Department of Anthropology This handbook is intended to provide you with some useful information about our undergraduate programmes, but it is not exhaustive. A great deal of up-to-date material about LSE support services, registration, timetabling, and library facilities is also available on the LSE web pages, so you would benefit from reading these. If you have just arrived at LSE and need some guidance, please take a look at the ‘Your First Weeks’ website (lse.ac.uk/yourFirstWeeks). The Anthropology Department web pages (lse.ac.uk/anthropology) provide information about members of staff including their research and publications, and special events. Also of relevance during your time as a student will be the Anthropology Department’s General Information for Students Moodle page. (moodle.lse.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=983) Please bear in mind that the information given here about course requirements and assessments is intended for guidance only. You should always confirm requirements by checking the definitive versions in official School publications (normally the Calendar lse.ac.uk/calendar) and if necessary checking with the Student Services Centre (on the Ground Floor in the Old Building or lse.ac.uk/ssc) and/or your Academic Mentor. As you will learn, ours is a relatively small department, and we maintain an informal, friendly, and supportive atmosphere for our students. If you do happen to encounter problems of any kind, be they academic, financial, or emotional, we very much hope that you’ll let us know at once. You can do this by informing your Academic Mentor (with whom you’ll have regular meetings throughout the year), by setting up an appointment with your Head of Year, or the Departmental Tutor, or by approaching any member of departmental staff, including our very capable administrators. Professor Laura Bear Head of Department LSE Department of Anthropology 3 About the Department Our background (ii) Commitment, conviction and doubt explores the forms taken by commitment – whether to received cosmologies, ontologies, Anthropology has been taught at the LSE since 1904. Following the and religious faiths and/or to modernity, secularism, or non-religion. arrival of Malinowski in 1910, the School became one of the leading Charles Stafford’s work in China views the current interest in ‘ethics’ centres for the development of modern social anthropology, and from alternative perspectives; Mathijs Pelkmans (on Post-Soviet many of the key figures in this evolving tradition – including Raymond countries), Harry Walker (on Amazonia) and Michael Scott (on Firth, Edward Evans-Pritchard, Hortense Powdermaker, Fei Xiaotong, Melanesia) have investigated and theorised affective states such Edmund Leach, Lucy Mair, Isaac Schapera, Maurice Freedman, Jean as happiness, wonder, irony and doubt. Fenella Cannell’s research La Fontaine, Maurice Bloch, Alfred Gell, Jonathan Parry, Chris Fuller, on Mormonism in the US raises comparative questions about Stephan Feuchtwang, Olivia Harris, John and Jean Comaroff, and Christianity as well as exploring its relationship to social theory. others – were at the LSE as students or teachers. (iii) Mind, learning and cognition centres on processes of childhood To this day, we retain a strong commitment to the radical empiricism learning (in the work of Catherine Allerton, Rita Astuti and Charles of anthropological research of the kind championed by Malinowski, Stafford); the self and conceptions of free will; affect and altered Firth, and Powdermaker. We have also long critically considered issues states of consciousness (as with Nicholas Long’s research on of decolonisation, colonial encounters, race, indigeneity and the politics hypnotherapy, trance), moral judgement, and human cooperation. We of fieldwork. Such debates are intrinsic to the past, present and future engage critically with psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary of the discipline. We also acknowledge that as we teach, critique theory. We examine (as with Harry Walker’s ERC-funded project on and suggest alternatives, we are simultaneously implicated in the justice in Amazonia which analyses concepts of equality, fairness, structures of power within the university and beyond. responsibility, and entitlement in comparative perspective) how evolved predispositions of the human mind (e.g. towards mutualism, Embedded in the ethnographic tradition, and with research outputs the sense of fairness, the perception of one’s agency) are shaped by based primarily on long-term participant observation fieldwork, our specific historical and cultural circumstances. Our expertise dovetails interests are very diverse. We conduct fieldwork in many different with recent developments in the Department of Psychological and places (including India, Bangladesh, mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, Behavioural Science. Caucasus, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Madagascar, Amazonia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Melanesia, Germany, the (iv) Generative vitality provides new perspectives on kinship, gender UK, the USA); and our projects address a wide range of concerns and generative or productive processes, and forms of redistribution. – including politics, inequality, development, disability, childhood, Alongside Fenella Cannell’s work on vital relations, this includes ritual religion