Sociocultural anthropology is the study of the different ways in which humans experience the world around them and create a meaningful existence. Sociocultural anthropology provides an ample framework for explaining and understanding how individuals and communities relate to each other and to the world that surrounds them by looking at the relationship between ideas and practices, between discourse and action. The tools that sociocultural anthropologists use are varied and include ethnography, participant-observation, interviews, surveys, archival research, and multimodal methods. These tools can be applied to study small communities, social movements, governmental policies, regional differences, and nation-state ideologies and rituals.
At UNLV, sociocultural anthropology is a dynamic space that allows for diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives, both in research opportunities and in undergraduate and graduate courses.
Research and Teaching
Sociocultural anthropologists at UNLV engage in a variety of research topics such as:
- Environmental anthropology and the politics of ecological change;
- Gender, sexuality, kinship, romance, marriage and care;
- Migration, displacement, and belonging;
- Identity, violence, and resistance;
- Colonialism, race, racism, and the history of science and anthropology;
- Disasters, hazards, and climate justice;
- Social movements and political anthropology.
Our undergraduate and graduate course offerings invite students to think critically and expansively about these topics, while also emphasizing diverse methodological approaches such as ethnography, archival research, applied anthropology, and community engaged research.
Some of our specialized courses include: History of Anthropology; Race and Colonialism in the U.S.; Ethnography of Contemporary Mexico; Psychological Anthropology; Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion.
We maintain active collaborations with the Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies, and encourage students to pursue cross-listed courses.
Faculty
Sociocultural Anthropology faculty at UNLV includes Nicholas Barron, William Jankowiak, Maja Jeranko and Iván Sandoval-Cervantes
Explore our work
Barron, Nicholas. 2024. “The Limits of Control: Anthropology, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Federal Recognition in the United States.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 112 (3): 135–56.https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tap.2023.a918771
Barron, Nicholas. 2023. “Lessons in Safe Logic: Reassessing Anthropological and Liberal Imaginings of Termination.” Journal of Anthropological Research 79 (4): 492–521. https://doi.org/10.1086/727074.
-William Jankowiak (see Dr. Jankowiak’s faculty website for more information)
-Maja Jeranko (see Dr. Jeranko’s faculty website for more information)