Social anthropology covers diverse topics to do with human culture and societies. In a way, the field is defined less by what we study, and more by how we study it. This section aims to help you get a feel for what makes an anthropological approach distinctive or unique.

To do so, we’ve broken it into three sections, about ‘Thinking’, ‘Researching’ (i.e. gathering data) and ‘Communicating’ like a social anthropologist. In practice, these three aren’t separate at all, or linear, but we move in and out of all these activities when we ‘do’ social anthropology.

As you explore the concepts and links under each section, keep in mind that the more we immerse ourselves in our practice, the more it becomes less of a collection of concepts and more ‘a way of being in the world’.