With its wide range of areas of inquiry and flexibility in choosing ethnographic material, the IB Social and Cultural Anthropology syllabus can often feel overwhelming for students. However, in this post, we’ll break it all down and provide you with everything you need to gain a clear understanding of what to expect from the course.

IB Social and Cultural Anthropology is the comparative study of culture and human societies . Throughout the course, you will explore how people understand and organize their worlds, how societies change, and how human experiences differ across cultural contexts. A distinctive feature of anthropology is its emphasis on ethnography and participant observation , meaning that much of what you study comes from anthropologists' detailed research with particular communities and social groups.

The course is available at both Standard Level (SL) and Higher Level (HL) . The IB recommends 150 teaching hours at SL and 240 hours at HL . Both levels are organized into three interconnected parts:

The main difference in syllabus breadth is that SL students study three areas of inquiry , while HL students study four . SL students choose one area from each of three groups , while HL students choose one from each group plus an additional area from any group . Each area must be supported by at least one complete ethnography alongside supplementary ethnographic material.

Social and cultural anthropology

Part 1 introduces the foundations of anthropological thinking and provides the tools you will use throughout the remainder of the course. It is organized around three main elements:

The course is built around nine key concepts . These provide the analytical framework through which you examine ethnographic material and the different areas of inquiry. The IB emphasizes that these concepts should not be treated as rigid definitions. Their meanings and uses can change according to historical, theoretical, and cultural context.

This concept explores the convictions, values, ideas, and viewpoints that members of a social group may understand as true. You may examine how different communities determine:

The course encourages you to question whether knowledge can ever be completely objective and to consider how cultural experiences shape what people believe to be true.

Change refers to the alteration of social or cultural elements within a society . You may investigate how change results from:

Anthropologists are particularly interested in understanding how people respond to change and why certain cultural practices continue while others are transformed or abandoned.

Culture refers broadly to the systems of meanings, beliefs, symbols, and practices through which people organize their lives. You will consider culture as something that is:

Contemporary anthropology generally rejects the idea that cultures are completely homogeneous or clearly bounded . Instead, cultures are understood as fluid, changing, and internally diverse .

Identity concerns how people understand themselves and how they are understood by others. You may explore:

Anthropologists investigate how identities are produced through social relationships and how they may change according to context, migration, political circumstances, or interactions with other groups .

Materiality focuses on the relationship between human beings and the objects, resources, bodies, and physical environments that form part of social life. Anthropologists may examine how objects:

Rather than treating objects as simply physical things, anthropology considers the social relationships and meanings connected to them .

Power concerns the ability of individuals or groups to influence the behaviour of others and the distribution of resources . You may examine:

Some anthropological approaches understand power as operating throughout society rather than simply being controlled by governments or political leaders.

Social relations refer to relationships between individuals and groups and form the foundation of social organization . You may examine relationships involving:

These relationships involve both individual agency and social expectations , meaning that people make choices while also being influenced by the societies in which they live.

Society concerns the ways humans organize themselves into groups, networks, institutions, and relationships . You may investigate:

Anthropologists also question where one society ends and another begins, particularly in an increasingly interconnected world characterized by migration and globalization .

Symbolism explores the meanings people attach to objects, actions, ideas, and processes . Symbols can appear through:

By studying symbols, anthropologists attempt to understand the networks of meaning through which people interpret their worlds.

This area examines the ways humans organize and categorize themselves, other people, and the world around them . Categories can reflect cultural ideas about identity, morality, status, purity, power, and difference . Inquiry-specific concepts include:

This topic encourages you to ask not only how people classify the world, but also who creates categories, whose interests those categories serve, and how classification can produce inequality or exclusion .

This area explores how different societies understand the body, disease, health, suffering, and healing . Although biomedical explanations are influential around the world, anthropologists recognize that people's experiences of illness are also shaped by social relationships, psychological experiences, religion, culture, economics, and political structures . Inquiry-specific concepts include:

This area demonstrates why illness cannot always be understood purely as a biological condition. Anthropologists are equally interested in how illness is experienced, interpreted, treated, and shaped by wider social structures .

The body may appear to be purely biological, but anthropology explores the many ways bodies are given social, political, symbolic, and cultural meaning . Inquiry-specific concepts include:

This area encourages you to question whether the body can ever be understood independently from culture, social expectations, political power, and personal identity .

Engaging with anthropology

The language of anthropology

Another major part of the course is understanding how anthropologists actually produce knowledge. Anthropology distinguishes itself from many other social sciences through its strong tradition of ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation . Anthropologists often spend extended periods interacting with and observing the communities they study while participating, where appropriate, in everyday activities. You will explore ideas such as:

A particularly important issue is representation . Anthropologists must decide which experiences and voices to include in their ethnographies and how to interpret what they observe. You will therefore consider how the anthropologist's own background and position may influence the research process. Ethics are equally important. Anthropologists must consider their responsibilities toward the people they study, including issues surrounding informed consent, confidentiality, possible harm, power differences, and the wider public interest .

How are we the same and different from each other?

To what extent is knowing others possible? Ethnography is not anthropology Although no anthropologist should underestimate the value of ethnographic study, ethnography is not anthropology. There should not be a conflation of anthropology and ethnography, as if they are one and the same. Students will spend a lot of time getting into ethnography, but they also need to consider how the data and insights provided by these ethnographies allow them to reflect on what is of central concern to the discipline of anthropology—that is, what makes us human?

The practice of anthropology

Anthropological theories provide different frameworks for interpreting the societies and cultures described in ethnographic material. Unlike some IB subjects, there is no prescribed list of theories that every student must learn . The theories studied should instead be appropriate to the ethnographies and areas of inquiry selected by the teacher. At HL, students are expected to explore anthropological theories in greater range and depth than at SL. The course also encourages you to consider six broad anthropological questions throughout your studies:

Anthropological thinking

Part 2 forms the largest section of the course and is built around nine areas of inquiry . These are divided into three groups:

SL students choose one area from each group , giving them three areas in total. HL students also choose one from each group but then study one additional area from any group , giving them four areas in total. Each chosen area must be explored using ethnographic material . Students read at least one full-length ethnography for each area , supported by shorter pieces from journals, edited books, or other ethnographic works .

Belonging examines how people become members of communities and how identities and social relationships are created through inclusion and exclusion . Inquiry-specific concepts include:

You may also investigate how migration, globalization, and digital technologies allow people to create forms of belonging across national borders and physical distances.

This area explores communication as a cultural practice and examines how language, media, performance, technology, and symbolic expression help people construct social reality . Inquiry-specific concepts include:

This topic is particularly relevant to contemporary life because it allows you to investigate how digital technologies and media reshape identities, relationships, political participation, and cultural expression .

This area examines how movement, space, and time are understood differently across societies and how these ideas shape people's experiences. Inquiry-specific concepts include:

One important idea in this topic is that time and space are not necessarily neutral or universal experiences . Their meanings can be produced through social relationships, rituals, memories, and cultural practices .

Conflict explores political anthropology and the ways power operates between individuals, groups, institutions, and states . Inquiry-specific concepts include:

Rather than treating conflict only as warfare, anthropology allows you to examine everyday conflict, resistance, inequality, political institutions, and less visible forms of power .

Development examines attempts to improve people's economic and social conditions while questioning who defines improvement and whose interests development serves . Inquiry-specific concepts include:

A major anthropological question is whether development programmes genuinely improve people's lives or sometimes reproduce unequal power relationships . You may therefore examine issues such as neo-colonialism, indigenous knowledge, aid, and who gets to decide what communities actually need .

The final area examines economic life from an anthropological perspective . Rather than assuming that all people make economic decisions according to the same principles, economic anthropology investigates how production, exchange, labour, consumption, and value are shaped by social and cultural contexts . Inquiry-specific concepts include:

This topic helps you understand that economic activity is never purely about money. Production, exchange, and consumption can also express identity, social relationships, morality, cultural values, and power .

Part 3 – Engaging in Anthropological Practice

The final part of the syllabus allows students to apply anthropology themselves through the Internal Assessment. At SL, this involves limited fieldwork, including observation, a second data-collection activity, and critical reflection . At HL, students undertake a more extensive fieldwork project . The fieldwork element reflects one of the most distinctive features of anthropology – anthropological knowledge is produced not simply by reading about people, but through carefully observing, interacting with, and attempting to understand social life . Students must consider ethical questions throughout this process, particularly issues such as informed consent, confidentiality, researcher influence, representation, and responsibility toward research participants . At HL, the course additionally places greater emphasis on anthropological ethics, theoretical depth, and independent fieldwork .

Engaging with ethnography

What do the Diploma Programme subject groups and the areas of inquiry within social and cultural anthropology reveal about the culture of the IB education?

How do categories reveal ontological assumptions?

How are categories contested and subverted?

In what ways is the act of categorization an expression of power?

How might the categorization of groups as “other” lead to ethnocide?

How does categorizing foodstuffs lead to food being edible or taboo?

How does the categorization of people result in discrimination? Social and cultural anthropology guide` 44

Classifying the world

How do biomedical, social or cultural understandings of the body affect the understanding of health and illness?

How does religious belief influence healing practices?

How do structural forces create or shape health and illness?

To what extent is illness a socially constructed phenomenon?

How do some understandings of the body facilitate the commodification of body parts?

To what extent has the curing of illness become largely a political and economic pursuit rather than the relief of suffering and pain?

What differences in the aetiology of illnesses exist in the various systems of healing?

How does the use of healing substances vary across cultures? This area of inquiry requires a balance between conceptual understandings, which serve as analytical frameworks, and topic-based exploration. One approach to the teaching of this might be to explore the language and main ideas in medical anthropology and then to apply these in the reading of one full-length ethnography and several shorter case studies of health, illness and healing systems in different cultural settings.

Health, illness and healing

How are mechanized and medical technologies changing the ways in which people think about and experience the body?

Can we have persons without bodies and bodies without persons? In other words, what is the relationship between the body and the self?

How is the body used as a form of resistance to the mechanisms of power?

In what ways is the human body shaped by sociocultural, historical and political processes? How, in turn, does it shape them? Social and cultural anthropology guide` 52

The body

How are new reproductive technologies changing the ways in which people understand belonging?

How may choosing to belong to a social group be an expression of resistance?

To what extent are desires and emotions culturally produced and historically contingent?

Why do we need to belong to social groups and communities?

Why do some groups remain marginal or excluded from society?

How do nation states deal with internal diversity?

How is identity shaped by the experiences of migration and mobility?

What kind of belonging is possible in transnational or virtual spaces?

Is the exclusion of some people necessary in order to create a bounded group?

How does the social construction and delimitation of groups change over time? This area of inquiry requires a balance between conceptual understandings, which serve as analytical frameworks, and topic-based exploration. One approach to the teaching of this might be to examine classic works on kinship systems and ideas of “family”. This may then be rethought and re-conceptualized as more recent ethnographic work is introduced, which incorporates notions of complexity in identity formation and the work of social memory for understanding belonging.

Belonging

How have changes in communication and expression impacted globalization?

How are social hierarchies expressed and communicated?

Does the global spread of media technologies entail cultural homogenization?

Is it only older generations that make a clear differentiation between virtual and real?

How have youth cultures appropriated media technologies for their own uses?

To what extent can language relate to power differentials in gender, class or ethnicity?

What role do modern technologies of communication play in political mobilization? This area of inquiry requires a balance between conceptual understandings, which serve as analytical frameworks, and topic-based exploration. One approach to the teaching of this might be to examine classic works on expression and communication that focus on orality, writing and other types of cultural expression and older technologies of communication. These older technologies may then be rethought and re- conceptualized as more recent ethnographic work is introduced, which incorporates research on new technologies and their effects on the complexities of global communication.

Communication, expression and technology

How do time and space shape social practice in a particular society?

How are time and space produced through social activity, for example, in ritual?

How is space constructed to include some persons and exclude others?

How do some individuals and groups find ways to resist exclusion from particular times and spaces?

How is social movement understood and incorporated into social memory?

In what ways can movement or time be understood as forms of resistance?

What happens to time and space in a virtual community? This area of inquiry requires a balance between conceptual understandings, which serve as analytical frameworks, and topic based exploration. In approaching the teaching of this area of inquiry, it would be useful to begin with examining how time and space and the movement of people through time and across space (which could also be in spaces of dreaming or other altered states of consciousness) are understood in specific cultures at particular historical moments. Movement, time and space should be explored critically, drawing on both classical and contemporary theoretical work in anthropology.

Movement, time and space

Why is the same issue a source of conflict in one setting, but not in another setting?

Is the state the solution to, or the cause of, conflict?

Is conflict a natural result of our tendency to “other”?

What are the different ways in which conflict is manifest in one’s life and in society? This area of inquiry requires a balance between conceptual understandings, which serve as analytical frameworks, and topic-based exploration. One approach to the teaching of this might be to explore, for example, the issue of domestic violence in society, beginning with analysis of news stories, documentaries and print/electronic media articles (particularly prevalent during the global annual White Ribbon Day campaign). Discussion and debate can then be informed and supported by more sophisticated reading and analysis of anthropological text and ethnography, especially feminist writings .

Conflict

When does development become “non-development”?

To what extent is development the other side of the coin to “under-development”?

How might development anthropologists resolve ethical issues?

Who decides whose “needs” are to be provided for?

To what extent is indigenous knowledge relevant to development policymaking? This area of inquiry requires a balance between conceptual understandings, which serve as analytical frameworks, and topic-based exploration. One approach to the teaching of this might be to explore, for example, the relationship between a developed nation and a developing nation that were formerly connected as the colonizer and the colonized. To begin with, the nature of the relationship can be analysed through investigating data available on government and NGOs’ websites and also examining contrasting viewpoints expressed in print/electronic media. An anthropological framework can then be applied to evaluate the current relationship in terms of development and the notion of neo-colonialism, using specific ethnography and other writings. Also of interest will be the critical evaluation of the role of an anthropologist (particularly any ethical considerations) in advising a government or an NGO regarding a development project that affects a specific community in the developing nation being studied.

Development

How do anthropologists understand the relationship between culture and economy?

Is there one universal form of economic behaviour and rationality?

How do anthropologists explain poverty and inequality?

What do anthropologists say about work and labour?

What is reciprocity and how is it relevant in a capitalist society?

In what ways is capitalism considered a global phenomenon?

How does the capitalist system expand and relate to other economic systems? Social and cultural anthropology guide` 51

What is the process of commodification? This area of inquiry can be explored in a number of contexts and through a range of inquiry-specific concepts and varied analytical frameworks, considering a balance between classic and more contemporary readings.

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The language of anthropology

Syllabus concepts to know