MA Anthropology of Food

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or part-time

Our MA programme in the Anthropology of Food offers you the opportunity to explore historically and culturally variable foodways, from foraging to industrial agriculture, from Europe and North America to Africa, Asia and South America.

You will study the passage of food from plant to palate, and examine who benefits, and who suffers, from contemporary modes of food production, exchange, preparation, and consumption. You will also explore the role of food in human migrations and investigate the formation of regional and national cuisines. As well as examine food fears and food safety and concerns over ‘nutrition transition’.

Debates over the impact of agricultural biotechnology on agrarian livelihoods and knowledge systems, as well as on the natural environment, are assessed. Movements toward organic agriculture, veganism and vegetarianism, fair trade, and slow food are also analysed. An anthropological approach to the study of food draws upon and challenges the perspectives of other disciplines, whether agronomy or nutritional science, economics or law, history or literature. This programme has a first-rate graduate employability record, with graduates moving on to find employment in food-related government ministries, international organisations, development agencies, or non-governmental associations.

Structure

The programme consists of 180 credits in total: 120 credits of modules and a dissertation of 10,000 words at 60 credits.

All students are expected to take the core and compulsory modules listed below, except for students with a previous Anthropology degree, who are not required to take the Theoretical Approaches to Social Anthropology module but may wish to select this as part of their 120 credits from the options lists.

Students without a previous Anthropology degree will be required to take 30 credits from the Anthropology and Sociology options list.

The remaining credits can be selected from the Department of Anthropology and Sociology or relevant options from other departments or a language module. See below for a detailed programme structure.

Compulsory Modules

• Ethnographic Research Methods
• Theoretical Approaches to Social Anthropology
• Anthropology of Food: Politics, Place and Mobility
• Anthropology of Food: Diet, Society and Environment

and

Guided Module(s) from the lists below, to the value of 15 credits.

and

Guided Module(s) from the lists below, OR from the Postgraduate Open Options List to the value of 30 credits.

Dissertation

Students must complete a Dissertation (10,000 words) worth 60 credits.

• Dissertation in Anthropology and Sociology

List of modules (subject to availability)

• Anthropology and Sociology
  • African and Asian Diasporas in the Contemporary World: Cultures of Resistance and the Dissolution of Boundaries
  • African and Asian Diasporas in the Contemporary World: Migration, Space, Identities
  • Anthropology of Development and Sustainability: Global Challenges and Alternative Futures
  • Anthropology of Development and Sustainability: History, Politics and Culture
  • Body politics: the anthropology of "race", gender and desire
  • Culture and Society of Near and Middle East
  • Culture and Society of East Africa
  • Directed Practical Study in the Anthropology of Food
  • Issues in Anthropology and Climate Change
  • Issues in Anthropology and Film
  • Issues in Mind, Culture and Psychiatry
  • Medical Anthropology: Global Perspectives
  • Medical Anthropology: Bodies and Cultures
• Centre for Gender Studies
  • Gender in the Middle East
  • Queering Migrations and Diasporas
• Development Studies
  • Agrarian Development, Food Policy and Rural Poverty
  • Energy Transition, Nature, and Development in a Time of Climate Change
  • Gender and Development

Learn a language as part of this programme

Degree programmes at SOAS - including this one - can include language courses in more than forty African and Asian languages. It is SOAS students’ command of an African or Asian language which sets SOAS apart from other universities.

Important notice

The information on the programme page reflects the intended programme structure against the given academic session.

Our Anthropology Department is ranked 6 in the UK and 16 in the world in the 2019 QS World University Rankings.

Why study MA Anthropology of Food at SOAS?

• We draw on the exceptional regional expertise of our academics in Asian, African, and Middle Eastern languages and politics, many of whom have joined us with practical working knowledge of their disciplines.
• You will be joining our thriving community of alumni and academics who have an impact on the world outside of academia.
• You will be able to flexibly structure your programme using our optional modules and/or optional modules from other departments, including the opportunity to learn a regional language.
• We are specialists in the delivery of languages. Your command of a second language at SOAS will set you apart from graduates of other universities.