Pre-requisites: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course aims to provide honours students with a final opportunity to recollect, summarize and reorganise the disparate course in their four years of studying anthropology and sociology. The broad philosophical and pragmatic questions addressed in this course are: What is meant by thinking anthropologically and sociologically? How does one put anthropologically nuanced and sociologically framed analysis and subsequently knowledge derived to work at different scales in institutional activities. How does one practise anthropology and sociology in everyday life? In short, what does it meant to be an anthropologist or a sociologist? Note: The assessment for SC4101 Reflections on a Sociological Education is 100% CA, with no final examination.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language course, with a minimum CAP of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course maps out the main currents of contemporary social theories ranging from the legacy of the classical tradition, comparative-historical sociology, interpretative sociology, functionalism and neo-functionalism, rational choice, globalization theories and the macro-micro debates. In exploring the nature and status of social scientific theories we deal with the universalism/relativism debate and link it to the problems of globalized vs. indigenized social theories. This course is mounted for students with a keen interest in social theories.

Pre-requisites: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in MS, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

Ethnography involves doing fieldwork and writing about it. We examine the tensions between fieldwork, the crafting of the ethnographic text, and its reception within the discipline of anthropology. Following the ‘writing culture' debate, we aim to understand how ethnographers ‘construct' data, frame their analysis, and produce a text. We examine ethnographic ‘realism' as a style, how styles have changed over time, and how differently some researchers have written about the same culture area. The course will heighten students' critical skills and their awareness of how any representation of social reality has been put together.

Pre-requisite: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units,including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS, or 28 units in GL/GL recognised non-language course with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course deals with exciting theoretical and practical issues in the sociology of organizations. Some of the questions addressed are (1) What kind of 'animal' is this creature called organization? (2) What are its key characteristics: structure, culture, environment? (3) Who created this 'animal', or what goals, and with what strategies to achieve the goals set? (4)How does it influence the orientation and action of participants? (5) Is democracy possible within organizations? This course is mounted for students with interest in one of the most important social entities influencing key aspects of social, political, and economic life in modern societies.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL recognised non-language course with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

An analysis of approaches to social policy and social planning, with emphasis on the social context of planning and development; social indicators for development planning; the formulation and implementation of social policy; and strategies and experience of social planning in East and Southeast Asian countries. This course is mounted for students throughout NUS with interest in policies and planning.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course focuses on the linguistic and communicative elements of social interaction and their consequences. Topics covered include the nature of human communication, symbols and power, speech and social interaction, the politics of linguistic diversity, language and social structure, mass communication, and popular communication like family photography, gossip, rumour and oral culture. This courses is mounted for all students throughout NUS with interest in language and communication as a means of social interaction.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course explores the relevance and importance of anthropological approaches toward understanding urban life using the ethnographic field method. Issues to be critically examined include the construction and production of space and place in relation to the dynamic interplay of urban structures; the politics of gender, ethnicity, consumption, work and leisure; and processes that “globalise” cities and the urban nightlife. This course is useful for students who are interested in enhancing their analytical skills, conducting field ethnography and applying anthropology to analysing urban life.

Pre-requisites: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This is a methodology course which examines the various approaches to doing sociological interpretation. The methodological texts of major theorists form the reading material. The theorists studied include: Durkhiem, Weber, Foucault, Barthes, Freud and Habermas. The approaches to be examined include inter-subjective understanding, discursive analysis, semiotics, elements of psychoanalysis and Critical Theory. The aim of the course is to prepare students for the analysis of qualitative and textual data for their research projects, therefore, it will use students' research topics as substantive illustrations of the appropriateness of the different approaches.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course deals with the main contemporary issues and problems that have their roots in migration and its consequences at the individual, societal, and global level. It will focus on the following issues and processes: the migratory process and the formation of ethnic groups; postwar migration patterns, the globalization of international migration; new migration in the Asia-Pacific; migrants and minorities in the labour force; the migratory process: Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei compared; new ethnic minorities and society; immigration policies and politics; and migration in the New World order. This course is mounted for students with interest in human migration and its implications.

Pre-requisites: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course is a critical engagement with both anthropological and multi-angle analyses of tourism, culture and people. It examines diverse dimensions of tourism and its impact on host societies and local cultures. In particular, it probes interactions between tourists and local populations as well as locals’ identity reformation, cultural adaptability and strategies with respect to the transformative power of tourism, among multiple local and extra-local socio-political forces at work. Major topics to be covered include tourism imaginaries, tourism display, tourism hospitality, heritage and museums, tourism and nature and tourism, modernity and risk.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course examines new studies on memory as a social phenomenon. Not just for individuals, but for all kinds of social groups, memory is an indissoluble part of identity. Remembering is always a selective reconstruction, hence always political. 'Popular' (often oral) memory interacts with 'official' history, while itself containing differences relating to generation, class, gender and ethnicity. Memories of traumatic events of the C20th shape our moral universe and are driving developments in international human rights law. Our explorations of the politics of memory will be grounded in case studies of both regional and global relevance.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2012-2014: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or in EU/LA (French/ German)/recognised courses, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

Cohort 2015 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or in EU/LA (French/ German/Spanish) /recognised courses, with a minimum GPA 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This is a seminar and workshop course that provides an understanding of the value of qualitative research as well as a practical grasp of a variety of qualitative research strategies adopted by researchers in the social sciences. While the focus of the course is intended to allow the student to understand and appreciate key theoretical issues that confront qualitative research, it will also provide the space for learning, experiencing and practising actual research. The course is meant for students who are interested in the use of qualitative research methods in relation to the particular study they undertake.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS, or 28 units in GL/GL recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

The course focuses on developing a framework for constructing and rethinking factors (be they economic, political, cultural) that have led to the emergence, development, and maintenance of certain forms of collective behaviour. It will also examine these theories through various case studies of social movements such as historical revolutions, and the "new" social movements of Europe. Topics covered include the rationality of collective action; history of social movement theory; the role of individuals, social groups and institutions in social movements; and their impacts. This course is mounted for students with interest in social movements.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS, or 28 units in GL/GL recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course is designed to develop a nuanced understanding of forms of religiosity in the present. One aim of the course is to explore connections between the realms of religion and politics, particularly within the framework of secular states. The course examines the notions of ‘secularity’ and ‘post‐secularity’ and queries their relevance for the contemporary moment, within a comparative, historical perspective. Is it useful to invoke the concept of ‘secularism’ to make sense of encounters between religious and political domains? Do the ideas of the ‘separation of church and state’ and ‘state non-interference in religion’ help in these efforts?

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course is an introduction to the study of the causes and consequences of financial crises from a sociological perspective. The course will introduce students to major episodes of financial crises in history, with particular emphasis on crises in emerging and developing countries since the 1970s, the Great Depression, and the financial collapse of 2007-09. The focus of the course is in delineating the causal connections among inequality, class politics, accumulation patterns, the ascent of finance, globalization, and financial crises. The course surveys how financial crises affect domestic and international politics.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course explores the intersection of aging and health within multiple layers of social contexts. This course first introduces the theoretical orientations focusing on social construction of aging and health. It considers distribution of illness among older adults and its association with demographic characteristics and SES. Next, this course examines the role of social contexts, including marital and family relationships, social networks, and social participation, on health disparities in late life. Finally, it examines how demographic characteristics, social contexts, and health are dynamically associated across the life course, focusing on gender differences.

Precludes: SC4208A Comparative Analysis of Human Rights

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

Human rights are one of the most globalized, yet often vigorously contested, political values of our time. This course takes a critical and empirical approach and focuses on the following human rights issues: the ontology of being human; relativist versus universalist positions on human rights issues; empirical case studies of human rights violations associated with ethnic conflict and civil war; minorities' rights; the rights of children; transnational capital, development and local community/ indigenous rights; and human rights, the state and the international system.

Precludes: SC4208B Body and Society

Pre-requisites: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This is a course that surveys the enormous intellectual growth of studies of the human body in sociology, anthropology and other social science disciplines. It will focus on the diverse social meanings of the body situated within a range of social contexts. Sociocultural notions of the body are examined through analyses of corporeal experiences in relation to religion, the senses, health, spectacles, commodification, technology, and other substantive dimensions.

Precludes: SC4214A Health and Social Behaviour

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

The course explores interactions between a variety of social forces and the phenomenon of health/illness. First, an important goal of the course is to clarify the extent to which mental and physical health/illness have been socially constructed and unevenly distributed in society. The course further identifies the effects of such social conditions as socioeconomic status, education, gender, and social networks on patterns of health inequality. Finally, it delves into specific issues like social epidemiology, stress process, and health care where possible causal relationships between a variety of social forces and health/illness are explored.

Precludes: SC4215D Welfare and Social Justice

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

The term justice is used with many different meanings. Social justice concerns justice as it refers to the societal distribution of scarce goods and necessary burdens. One of the most important aspects of social justice is the way in which societies deal with the collective provision of welfare for their members. Following a brief introduction to influential theories of justice, this course will look at the historical roots of the welfare state and at the central features of various presently existing welfare regimes. Cases will be drawn from Europe, the United States, and East Asia.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course covers the sociology of urban development planning in Asia at local, regional and global scales. We will assess the livability of cities: which includes looking at social lifeworlds, poverty, and the environment. We will discuss rural‐urban linkages and transitions, uneven spatial development, peri‐urban development and transborder intercity networks. Additionally we will explore national experiences in East, Southeast Asia and South Asia. This course is designed as a gateway for professional careers in applied research for urban planning.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course considers cultural production as an arena of contestation for voice and visibility. It explores how creative performances and productions have been used to express, subvert, or redefine social realities and values, constitute publics, and initiate change. A variety of forms, such as street theatres, music, cartoons, community and online media, will be explored through an anthropological engagement with the everyday politics of recognition, narration, belonging, and indeed the valuation of one's voice. Power, performance, agency, creativity, audiences, art worlds and aesthetics are among the key concepts explored.

Pre-requisites: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

All societies are organized around gender and sexuality. Everywhere, the sex/gender system has implications for the relative power of men and women in society. Human societies have a tendency toward patriarchy. Some societies are relatively gender-egalitarian. Others are strongly patriarchal. But none are strongly matriarchal. This course examines the social, cultural, psychological and biological arguments, including feminist and non-feminist theories for how and why sex and gender relate to the distribution of power in society. It examines these questions in terms of broad comparison across cultures, in evolutionary history, in modern state societies and in today's transnational, globalizing world.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL or GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

What is violence? How is violence materialized, contested and reproduced? What can anthropology offer to understandings of violence? Exploring phenomena ranging from war, genocide and terrorism to domestic abuse, poverty and crime, this course examines violence as a domain of cultural understanding and a mode of social action. Involving both overt and spectacular expressions and implicit and everyday forms, our understandings of violence will span the intimacy of the family, the nationalisms of states and the economics of global corporations. Through the comparison of cross-cultural ethnographies, we look critically at the theoretical, empirical, methodological and ethical implications of analysing violence.

For cohort 2020 and before: SC4401HM Honours Thesis is worth 15 units in total
For cohort 2021 onwards: SC4401 Honours Thesis is worth 8 units in total

Pre-requisite for Cohort 2016 onwards: Completed 110 units including 44 units of SC major requirements with a minimum SJGPA of 4.00 and GPA of 3.50. Students may seek a waiver of the SJGPA pre-requisite from the department if they have a minimum GPA of 4.25 after completing 110 units.

Cohort 2015 and before: Completed 110 units including 60 units of SC major requirements with a minimum SJGPA of 4.00 and GPA of 3.50. Students may seek a waiver of the SJGPA pre-requisite from the department if they have a minimum GPA of 4.25 after completing 110 units.

This course requires students to conduct an independent research project on an approved topic under the supervision of an academic staff. The research project, which usually includes some fieldwork, will be submitted as an Honours Thesis.

Note: With effect from AY2019/2020 Semester 1, the Honours Thesis (HT) will be a year-long course. The HT accounts for 15 units in total for the entire acad year (not 15 units for each semester). Students must forecast their study plan accordingly to ensure that they obtain the sufficient units for graduation. Students can write to the FASS Dean’s Office to overload for the semester (if necessary).

Precludes SC4401

Pre-requisite for Cohort 2016 onwards: To be offered subject to the agreement of the Supervisor and Department. Completed 100 units, including 44 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20

Pre-requisite for Cohorts 2012-2015: To be offered subject to the agreement of the Supervisor and Department. Completed 100 units, including 60 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20.

The Independent Study Course is designed to enable the student to explore an approved topic within the discipline in depth. The student should approach a lecturer to work out an agreed topic, readings, and assignments for the course. A formal, written agreement is to be drawn up, giving a clear account of the topic, programme of study, assignments, evaluation, and other pertinent details. Head's and/or Honours Coordinator's approval of the written agreement is required. Regular meetings and reports are expected. Evaluation is based on 100% CA and must be worked out between the student and the lecturer prior to seeking departmental approval.

Precludes SC4208

Pre-requisites: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course deals with specialized topics reflecting the expertise of staff members or emerging issues in the field of Sociology and/or Anthropology.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course analyses the links between social structure and popular forms of communication like rumour, gossip and humour. How do group formation and social hierarchies facilitate rumour, gossip and humour? In turn, how do rumour, gossip and humour reflect social inequality, socio-political values, dynamics of conflict, and organizational environments? How do cultural forms of communication (satire, parody, irony, camp) underscore gender, ethnic, religious, political and national divisions? What constitutes the offensive, the derogatory, the taboo? What is the impact of hate humour on social life in regard to free speech, artistic expression and social order?

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

The topic is an advanced sociological analysis of Singapore society. Throughout the undergraduate years, sociology students would have read and thought about Singapore society in almost all the substantive courses they have taken. This course provides an opportunity to bring further focus and reflection on students’ knowledge of Singapore society. It aims to examine in depth the historical and ongoing developments of various social cultural institutions, public policies and everyday practices of contemporary Singapore society, including globalization, multiracialism, real estate speculation, family, NGOs and consumerism.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

What is cultural heritage and how it is defined today in various societies? Is heritage a human right? What are the relationships between conservation and sustainable development? What are the existing threats to cultural heritage and how does it relate to tourism? These are some of the questions that this course will tackle. After introducing students to the concept of cultural heritage and how it is operationalized on the ground, we will look at various theories and politics regarding cultural heritage from a comparative and multidisciplinary perspective.

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

What are the different histories, institutions, logics, and experiences of security regimes globally? Who polices who, for whose sake, on what scales and sites? What is militarism? What ideas of national security have become normalized in our everyday lives? This course introduces the concept of security, broadly taken to be one of the fundamental logics underlying the governmental functions of the modern state. To explore these questions, students will read ethnographic studies of policing, national security, militarism, and surveillance.

Precludes: SC4214

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL or GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course discusses in detail selected healthcare issues that concern individuals, families, organizations and society. These issues are: (1) the ethical and policy aspects of healthcare delivery including organ donation and transplantation; (2) privacy and confidentiality in medical records and doctor-patient relations with particular attention to genetic testing and HIV/AIDS; (3) culture and lifestyle changes affecting perceptions of health and illness and health-related behaviour; and (4) social transformations in healing systems including the incorporation of traditional systems of healing into the formal healthcare services. Students with previous exposure to medical sociology are highly recommended to read this course.

Precludes SC4215

Pre-requisites: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course deals with specialized topics focusing on the state as an actor, institution, and/or arena for politics as well as related issues pertaining to globalization, citizenship, nation-building, war, democracy, welfare and social justice.

Precludes SC4215A

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in PS with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in PS or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

What is the impact of globalization on the state, and how can we come to terms with these two concepts? What is the future form of state-society relations, and do concepts such as democracy, civil society, national identity and rethinking as we move into a highly connected world? Using cases from around the globe, students will be exposed to the very broad perspective offered by comparative and historical analysis. The course will initiate thinking about social welfare options and citizenship in a globalized world. Through historical and comparative analyses, critical questions about the role of the state in welfare provisions, economic development, and democratic development will be examined. This course is mounted for students throughout NUS with interest in the state-society relationship.

Precludes SC4215B

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in PS, or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

The concept of citizenship has been understood as the mechanisms through which the individual is linked to the nation, involving a variety of processes, such as rights, culture, or race. There are new claims that with globalization, there has been the re-definition of the idea of the citizenship and the nation, leading to new concepts such as flexible citizenship and de-territorialized nation-states. This course will examine how that movement of people, capital, and ideas are affecting citizenship, and how this affects the relation between state and society. This course is mounted for students throughout NUS with interest in the concept of citizenship.

Precludes SC4208E

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course explores the relations between three lines of thought, respectively surrounding the concepts of state, governance and governmentality. Drawing on empirical examples from the global history with a focus on modern Asia, the course demonstrates how the different sets of theories may be integrated and further developed in addressing specific issues in modern social political life. Specific topics include paperwork, legality, market mimicry as a mode of governance, policy, rights, borders and boundary, intermediary.

Precludes SC4216

Pre-requisites: Cohort 2020 onwards: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.
Cohort 2019 and before: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in SC, or 28 units in GL/GL-recognised non-language courses, with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course aims to increase students' breadth of empirical knowledge and the depth of their theoretical understanding on issues of law, justice and society. With urbanization and industrialization, modern societies have increasingly depended upon law to regulate the behaviour of its members and the activities of its institutions. In contemporary Singapore society, law underpins social policies from housing to marriage, political behaviour and economic activities. Among the wide variety of significant topics are policing theories, state violence and social justice, crime and punishment to the legal profession. This course is mounted for students with interest in law and justice.

Preclusion: SC4226

Pre-requisites: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in AN with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track

This course considers cultural production as an arena of contestation for voice and visibility. It explores how creative performances and productions have been used to express, subvert, or redefine social realities and values, constitute publics, and initiate change. A variety of forms, such as street theatres, music, cartoons, community and online media, will be explored through an anthropological engagement with the everyday politics of recognition, narration, belonging, and indeed the valuation of one's voice. Power, performance, agency, creativity, audiences, art worlds and aesthetics are among the key concepts explored.

Preclusion: SC4227

Pre-requisite(s): Completed 80 units, including 28 units in AN with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track

All societies are organized around gender and sexuality. Everywhere, the sex/gender system has implications for the relative power of men and women in society. Human societies have a tendency toward patriarchy. Some societies are relatively gender-egalitarian. Others are strongly patriarchal. But none are strongly matriarchal. This course examines the social, cultural, psychological and biological arguments, including feminist and non-feminist theories for how and why sex and gender relate to the distribution of power in society. It examines these questions in terms of broad comparison across cultures, in evolutionary history, in modern state societies and in today's transnational, globalizing world.

Pre-requisite(s): Completed 80 units, including 28 units in AN with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track

This course critically engages theorising about material culture. Objects have biographies and histories and carry different resonances as they are used by actors who develop complicated relationships with these apparently inanimate, passive and inert entities. Students of material culture have spoken of the “material turn” and have nudged towards rethinking how “materiality” itself is to be understood and theorised. This course makes a call for unpacking materiality analytically and thus transcending the “material”/“non material” binary. Important work on “agency of materiality” is foregrounded here, presenting an alternative narrative that approaches things as animated, spirited and energised.

Pre-requisite(s): Completed 80 units, including 28 units in AN with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track

This course examines key themes and issues associated with death and dying from the historical through the contemporary periods. Cultural practices surrounding death have embedded information to offer not only about the deceased, but also shift in ideologies of living populations. This course explores the social and cultural nature of life and death and the variety of debates and assumptions surrounding the biological phenomenon. This course will present a wide range of topics relating to the beliefs and treatment of the dead, across cultures and through time. Examples include: mortuary rituals, funerary behaviour and the cultural construction of death.

Pre-requisite: Completed 80 units, including 28 units in AN with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

This course examines the changing nature of the political economy of music in shaping opportunities and challenges for individuals and families in the age of neoliberalism and cultural globalization. Developments of music genres are linked to self- identities, labour practices, senses of time and place, gender dynamics, ethnic attitudes, state policies, socio-economic structures, religious beliefs, political ideologies, national aspirations, and technological changes. These issues will be explored via the education, equipment and employment aspects of the music industry vis-à-vis the policymaking, production, performance processes of vocals/choral music; blues and jazz; popular music; and classical music.

Pre-requisite(s): Completed 80 units, including 28 units in AN with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track

This course examines the three cultures of belonging that have driven the transformation of contemporary human societies and underpinned our primary identities: nation, empire, world. We will interrogate the relationship between anthropology and empire, 1870-1950, in the production of race, religion, gender and sexuality in the colonies. We will examine the extent anthropological knowledge of these subjectivities became practical problems for the transition of colonies into nations. We will then move to the ethnography of the nation to understand the contradictions at the heart of its making in postcolony and the tendency for it to bleed into the world.

Pre-requisite(s): Completed 80 units, including 28 units in AN with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track

This course is a critical engagement with both anthropological and multi-angle analyses of tourism, culture and people. It examines diverse dimensions of tourism and its impact on host societies and local cultures. In particular, it probes interactions between tourists and local populations as well as locals’ identity reformation, cultural adaptability and strategies with respect to the transformative power of tourism, among multiple local and extra-local socio-political forces at work. Major topics to be covered include tourism imaginaries, tourism display, tourism hospitality, heritage and museums, tourism and nature and tourism, modernity and risk.

Pre-requisite(s): Completed 80 units, including 28 units in AN with a minimum GPA of 3.20 or be on the Honours track.

In recent years, businesses have increasingly turned to anthropology to understand their organisational  processes and cultures, as well as to understand consumer life-worlds and develop user-centred products. This course introduces this emerging new field of practical anthropology by discussing the contribution of anthropological theory to business practices and the adaptation of ethnographic research to corporate settings. Drawing on case studies of anthropological applications to businesses from tech companies to social enterprises, the course equips students with conceptual tools and holistic ethnographic methods to address issues such work processes, diversity, globalization, product design, user behaviour, and corporate social responsibility.

Pre-requisite(s): Completed 110 units including 44 units of AN major requirements with a minimum SJGPA of 4.00 and GPA of 3.50. Students may seek a waiver of the SJGPA pre- requisite from the department if they have a minimum GPA of 4.25 after completing 110 units.

This course requires students to conduct an independent research project on an approved topic under the supervision of an academic staff. The research project, which usually includes some fieldwork, will be submitted as an Honours Thesis. The maximum length of the thesis is 12,000 words.

Pre-requisite(s): To be offered subject to the agreement of the Supervisor and Department. Completed 100 units, including 44 units in AN with a minimum GPA of 3.20.

The Independent Study Course is designed to enable the student to explore an approved topic within the discipline in depth. The student should approach a lecturer to identify an agreed topic, readings, and assignments for the course. A formal, written agreement is to be drawn up, giving a clear account of the topic, programme of study, assignments, evaluation, and other pertinent details. Head's and/or Honours Coordinator's approval of the written agreement is required. Regular meetings and reports are expected. Evaluation is based on 100% Continuous Assessment and agreed between the student and the lecturer prior to seeking departmental approval