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

Group 1

• Classifying the world
• Health, illness and healing
• The body

Group 2

• Belonging
• Communication, expression and technology
• Movement, time and space

Group 3

• Conflict
• Development
• Production, exchange and consumption

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:

• Community
• Ethnicity and race
• Family
• Globalization
• Ideology
• Kinship
• Nation-state
• Social and biological reproduction
• Personhood
• Socialization, enculturation, and acculturation

Possible topics include:

• Imagined communities – nationalism, diaspora, sports communities, youth cultures, professions, online communities, and religious groups.
• Contemporary families – adoption, fosterage, reproductive technologies, sexuality, divorce, transnational families, and domestic labour.
• Politics of inclusion and exclusion – citizenship, nationalism, ethnicity, racism, Islamophobia, diversity, and religious belonging.
• Childhood, youth, and ageing – peer groups, education, work, child labour, human rights, and care of older people.
• Emotions and belonging – friendship, love, trauma, support groups, shared interests, and everyday violence.

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:

• Communication
• Commodification
• Exchange
• Globalization
• Hegemony
• Hybridity
• Performance
• Technology
• Transnationalism

Possible areas include:

• Communication in global times – social networks, mobile phones, digital technology, diasporic media, and transnational communication.
• Media and popular culture – television, radio, music, social media, vlogging, gaming, and representations of different social groups.
• Symbolic language – clothing, food, and other practices that communicate identity and meaning.
• Writing and orality – oral traditions, writing technologies, language, and relationships between language and power.
• Symbolic production – myth, ritual, ideology, theatre, festivals, play, and performance.
• Political discourse – social movements, hate speech, lobbying, activism, testimony, and collective memory.

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:

• Boundaries
• Exclusion
• Globalization
• Inclusion
• Liminality
• Movement
• Space
• Time

Possible topics include:

• Migration and mobility – refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, tourism, pilgrimage, and transnational movement.
• Space and boundaries – social constructions of place, identity, heritage, and political difference.
• Diasporas and imagined communities – transnational and virtual communities and the compression of time and space.
• Spaces of modernity – airports, refugee camps, transport terminals, tourism, and virtual spaces.
• Urban anthropology – cosmopolitan communities, enclaves, landscapes, and social exclusion.
• Memory and time – heritage, remembrance, history, nostalgia, and the reinvention of cultural traditions.
• Ideas of the future – utopias, millennial movements, science, and virtual communities.

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 .

Group 3

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

• Authority
• Conflict
• Consensus
• Governmentality
• Hegemony
• Ideology
• Resistance
• Social control
• State

Possible topics include:

• Violence and suffering – structural, symbolic, institutional, and gendered violence, as well as war, torture, terrorism, and genocide.
• The state – citizenship, nationalism, law, bureaucracy, human rights, biopolitics, and post-colonial states.
• Performances of power – political rituals, leadership, deference, resistance, and hidden forms of opposition.
• Policing and security – prisons, surveillance, privatized security, and states of emergency.
• Human rights – refugees, indigenous peoples, marginalized communities, governments, and NGOs.
• Social movements – environmentalism, labour rights, women's rights, civil rights, anti-racism, youth movements, and anti-globalization.
• Indigenous issues – land rights, displacement, reconciliation, reparations, and human rights.
• Political systems – egalitarian, authoritarian, democratic, ranked, stratified, and state-based systems.
• Systems of inequality – class, caste, race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, and religion.

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:

• Conflict
• Development
• Environment
• Exchange
• Globalization
• Ideology
• Modernization
• Neo-colonialism
• Sustainability

Possible topics include:

• The local and the global – national policies, international organizations, NGOs, and development agencies.
• Social movements – environmental activism, indigenous land rights, women's activism, grassroots movements, and anti-globalization.
• Economic and environmental sustainability – informal economies, ecotourism, and access to food, water, and land.
• Poverty and wealth – international aid, NGOs, the World Bank, migration, remittances, and microcredit.
• Development and health – infectious disease, hunger, refugees, indigenous healing, child mortality, and gender inequality.
• Development and underdevelopment – colonialism, post-colonialism, development policies, and policymakers.

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:

• Capitalism
• Colonialism
• Commodity
• Consumption
• Exchange
• Globalization
• Labour
• Production

Possible areas include:

• The place of the economy – economic rationality, morality, value, and culturally different meanings of economic behaviour.
• Production – hunter-gatherer systems, horticulture, peasant production, and capital.
• Commodification – bodies, culture, indigenous knowledge, and globally traded commodities.
• Consumption – material and symbolic goods, food, identity, popular culture, and global consumer cultures.
• Capitalism – transnational corporations, inequality, capital and labour, resource access, alternative economies, and subsistence insecurity.
• Work and labour – working conditions, child labour, slavery, human trafficking, migration, informal economies, workplace cultures, and precarious employment.
• Systems of exchange – reciprocity, redistribution, markets, money, gifts, ceremonial exchange, patron-client relationships, remittances, and microcredit.

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 .