BA in Social Anthropology

Background of the Program

Education is one of the most important factors that determine people’s living standard and the realization of general development goals for any society. The role of higher education is even more critical for socio-economic advancement and transfer of technology.

In Ethiopia, the number of higher educational institutions has been limited for long time, and this has restricted the contribution of the sector to nation building. Cognizant of this, the government of Ethiopia is taking substantive measures to increase the number of universities by upgrading the existing colleges/institutes and also establishing a number of new Universities.

However, the curriculum that was given in each university was developed by the individual universities without significant communication with one another. These results, the variation in number of courses among the same departments that was given in different universities, ways of delivery and it also did not consider the others countries experience. Therefore, to solve such problems, ministry of education started a movement in each university to change the existing curriculum and make it a modular based curriculum or modularization system at undergraduate level that might be solving the existing problems.  

Bahir Dar University has begun the move on the dynamic changes of the curriculum for the department of social Anthropology in 2012, as a modularized curriculum by clustering the previously existing course. After a year in 2013, the Minister of Education directives indicated the need for the modularization policy. Therefore, the department of Social Anthropology tried to modularize its curriculum by the representatives that came from different universities. On the harmonization of the curriculum at the national level, the representatives of six universities that are delivering the Social Anthropology program harmonized the curriculum. Therefore, this curriculum is the nationally harmonized curriculum for Social anthropology program designed by the Six Universities in Ethiopia. Bahir Dar University is one of the six Universities in Ethiopia, hosting Social Anthropology program during the preparation of this nationally harmonized curriculum in undergraduate level.  

Anthropology is extremely diverse subject that provides multifaceted information and an excitement in learning for students. It gives learners the basic insights that a thoughtful student ought to have as part of a contemporary liberal education. These include not only facts and theories but, most importantly, the anthropological attitudes of commitment to understanding and appreciating cultural diversity. This will prepare students to live in a culturally diverse and increasingly interdependent world.

Anthropology is a discipline through which we seek to understand human nature and the broad implications of social interaction.  An anthropologist study societies at firsthand with a humanistic interest in their cultures and customs but uses a scientific approach to gather information that they hope will ultimately lead to a greater appreciation and acceptance of the diversity in human societies.

It is a broad science sharing a great deal with sociology and other social sciences, which enlightens understanding the essence of the human reality, understanding and analyzing a human way of life with some degree of objective accuracy.  Anthropology is an exciting mix of diverse approaches that exploring the origin of human being, the adoption of cultures within diversified habitats, the adaptation and livelihood of different societies within extremely diversified ecology, the construction of gender within different societies of the world and its influence on social power, awareness of interpersonal processes…etc.

Considering these diversity, in the past decades anthropologists have focused their interest to the role of gender in society, the rights of indigenous peoples, agricultural and economic developments, origins and development of languages and other contemporary concerns like HIV/AIDS, poverty…etc. Anthropology unites these and other diverse topics into a single field by taking as its goal the most complete understanding of the human condition possible.

A major strength of anthropology is that, it focuses on cross–cultural-research that bases its conclusion on data drawn from many diverse ways of life. As a science, anthropology has its own distinctive research methods involving fieldwork and the comparative method taking the form of participant observation and cross-cultural comparison. Practitioners of anthropology would be, therefore, objective social servants in various capacities in the governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Needless to mention, Ethiopia encounters diverse and multifaceted socio-economic and political problems and there is an imperative need for documenting, understanding, and, scientifically exploring them. Thus, disciplines like Social Anthropology with holistic characters are more than indispensable to explore, document and analyze the cultures of indigenous societies of our country, and to also to take part in solving the different socio-economic and political problems of the country with collaboration of other disciplines.  Despite these, the discipline is at an infant stage in Ethiopia; it was established at undergraduate level in 2008/9 academic year in a few Ethiopian universities such as Addis Ababa University and Bahir Dar University. Thus, opening up a Social Anthropology program at Bahir Dar University is a very reasonable motion given the extreme relevance of socio-cultural anthropology to the University and the country’s objective realities. Therefore, Bahir Dar University is taking the lead in offering basic Anthropological training in the nation. The envisioned program in the field takes at the bachelor degree level.

Program Rationale

The need for opening the program is certainly justified by the fact that Ethiopia is the cradle of humankind with diverse cultures and groups having great potential for anthropological studies. Consideration has also been made regarding the availability of resources for the training program. Therefore, opening Social Anthropology program will:

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Give the Universities an exclusive opportunity to build up a center of excellences in this area in the country

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Provide human-power equipped with the basic broader anthropological theoretical knowledge and skills in research methods.

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Provide manpower trained in social anthropology that fulfill the immense duties that face the federal, regional, and local governments as well as national and international NGOs working in the sphere of socio-cultural lives of Ethiopia that are demanding a large size of graduates in social anthropology.

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Fill the gaps in knowledge of socio-cultural, economic and political aspects of the country. The rich social, cultural, linguistic, ethno-biological, archeological phenomena, systems of livelihood, religion, politics, law and conflict management… etc in Ethiopia  in particular have not been adequately studied; though the program in social anthropology will contribute significantly to deal with the gaps in these arena.

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Help to enrich the study and documentation of our indigenous knowledge systems and traditions. The rich indigenous knowledge systems, traditional institutions, and the impacts of human activity, particularly in development-related interventions need to be studied and documented. 

List and Distribution of Social Anthropology Program Modules

        Core Modules

Supportive Modules

Generic/Common Modules

Grand Total CP=185