Program awarded with the official Recognition of Quality by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MCD 2004-00150)

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Course structure of doctorate program 2006-08 (pdf)
Information: alopezbargados@ub.edu / doctorat.antropologia@ub.edu

The program leading to the title Doctorate in Social and Cultural Anthropology offered by the Department of Cultural Anthropology and History of America and Africa at the University of Barcelona is currently being given with the structure in place as of the 2000/01 academic year.

The doctorate program in Social and Cultural Anthropology seeks to provide students with the knowledge of theory and methodology necessary for researching contemporary social processes as “complete social facts” or, to cite the words of theorist Marcel Mauss, as “phenomena that involve all of society and its intuitions (…) facts that are at the same time religious, economic, aesthetic, morphologic, etc.” This idea is the framework which guides the program, taking into account as well current debates in the field of anthropology.

As such, one of the principle priorities of the program is to integrate coursework with the research that is being carried about by the department’s research groups, both in its own projects as well as those in cooperation with other universities and European research centers. Thus, in addition to the department’s own professors, guest lecturers from other universities in Catalonia, Spain and abroad take an active part in all of the program’s courses. (Please consult the pages of each course cycle to see a list of the guest professors in that course).

Immigration, biotechnology, new modes of production, new distribution and consumption processes, and tourism all represent new realities which redefine social processes—ranging, among others, from the structure of the family to the political and legal organization of society—and, in this sense, demand the attention of the social sciences and anthropology in particular, including them in the challenges of today’s world. The anthropological approach, one of the dominating themes in the doctorate program, provides and array of theories and methods useful for satisfying the need to understand and interpret these contemporary social processes which have a marked effect on social identities.

By adopting an interdisciplinary and more accommodating approach when aligning teaching and research objectives with current social processes, this doctorate program looks to provide the necessary theoretical and methodological background for the complex study of relations, social actors and social interventions that make up the local environments that both structure and are structured in conjunction with the current global system. In addition, all courses in the doctorate program include clear reflection, at the level of both methodology and theory, on the topic of interdisciplinary cooperation, focusing especially on the specific contributions that anthropological analysis makes on the interdisciplinary debate essential for understanding contemporary realities.

Furthermore, this doctorate program has been recognized both for its organization and academic content as a Quality Doctorate Program by the University Department of the Generalitat de Catalunya (ADQUA 2003) and received the official Recognition of Quality by the Ministry for Education and Culture (MCD 2004-00150). Participants in the program come not only from the University of Barcelona but also from other Spanish universities and abroad (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Russia, Switzerland, the United States).