Master Program Courses

Foundations of Socio-Cultural Anthropology

This course aims to deepen students’ understanding of the scope and fundamental concepts in socio-cultural anthropology. Topics include the history and subfields of anthropology, with an emphasis on cultural studies, ethnicity, religion, social and political organization, kinship, arts, technology, media, and other socio-cultural domains, as well as the relevance of anthropology in contemporary life.

Anthropological Paradigms A

This course introduces key concepts that shape the boundaries of research subjects in social anthropology. The term “social” here refers to the development of ideas about society, social structure, and social processes within anthropology, as both influencing and being influenced by the broader social sciences. The course draws on intellectual traditions from British, French, and German anthropology, reflected in paradigms such as structural-functionalism, functionalism, structuralism, exchange and transactionalism, power (Marxism–Foucauldian perspectives), practice theory, and actor-network theory (Latourian perspective).

Anthropological Paradigms B

This course introduces foundational concepts that define research subjects in cultural anthropology. The notion of culture here is shaped by hermeneutic and semiotic approaches, focusing on culture as a system of meaning and interpretation underlying social action. Key concepts include symbols, signs, meaning, values, experience, and affect, as developed particularly within the American tradition of cultural anthropology.

Anthropological Research Methods (Overview of Principles and Practice)

This course focuses on ethnography as the primary research method in anthropology. Students are introduced to ethnographic perspectives and methods, as well as recent developments such as multi-sited ethnography, autoethnography, collaborative ethnography, and visual and virtual ethnography. The course also covers stages of ethnographic research, various research techniques, and data sources, combined with hands-on practice. By the end of the course, students are expected to produce a Statement of Intent (SOI) aligned with their thesis or dissertation topic.

Selected Topics: Introduction to Thematic Clusters

This course provides an overview of approaches and key concepts offered in the program’s specialization tracks.

Academic Writing

This course helps students understand the process of preparing manuscripts for publication in academic journals based on their research topics.

Colloquium

This course is designed to equip students with essential skills in preparing and presenting research effectively, as well as engaging in critical discussion. It adopts a participatory approach, encouraging active involvement through discussions, group work, and idea exchange. The course fosters an open and productive academic environment in anthropology, promoting collaboration and intellectual exploration. Students are required to deliver at least two presentations during the course.

Dissemination

This course trains students to communicate their research ideas or anthropological work to relevant audiences, both academic and public. It emphasizes effective communication so that research can reach wider audiences. Activities include presenting papers in academic forums such as seminars, symposiums, and workshops organized by universities, government institutions, or civil society organizations. Publication outputs may include accredited national journal articles, popular scientific magazines, or book chapters.

Ethnographic Thesis / Literature-Based Thesis

This course guides students in developing their own anthropological research project. With supervision and support, students undertake independent work that is later evaluated through presentation and academic assessment. The process is intended not only to assess scholarly quality but also to provide constructive feedback, helping students grow as independent and critical researchers.

Politics, Culture, and Environment

The scope of this course includes, among others: the historical development of political ecology approaches within environmental anthropology; key concepts shaped by neo-Marxian, post-structuralist, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives; the plurality of perceptions, interests, and positions among various actors both within and beyond state institutions; contestations and conflicts over access to and control of natural resources; and the social, political, and cultural implications surrounding the control of knowledge production and its use in relation to nature and the environment.

It also addresses the roles and positions of practitioners and scholars in shaping power relations among actors in the governance and utilization of natural resources, as well as broader issues related to the commodification of nature and its impact on human–environment relations. Case studies are drawn from Indonesia and other parts of the world.

Critical Studies in Anthropology and Development

This course aims to provide an overview of various approaches in the social sciences, particularly anthropology, in addressing issues of economic development in the Global South. Readings are selected to engage with two key questions:
(a) How have theories, policies, and practices of development evolved in Asia, Africa, and Latin America since their emergence as international programs in the early 1940s up to the present?

Development: Space and Power

Why did Foucault theorize power through the prison, and Tania Li through the “tribal slot”? This course explores the politics of space in the practice of power and development. Topics include how the village is defined and redefined as a space of development, how domestic space is constructed in the service of patriarchal power, and how development facilitators navigate spatial dynamics within the state–society divide.

The course engages with both classical approaches to development anthropology (modernization perspectives) and more critical ones, including decolonial and plural frameworks.

Politics: Signs and Values

This course examines politics as a process of valuation mediated through systems of signification. Why is a forest classified as “state forest” versus “social forest”? Why might a mass murderer be labeled a “terrorist” when Muslim, but a “psychopath” when Western? Why is healing categorized as scientific when performed by doctors, but mystical when by traditional healers?

The course explores political anthropology from classical state-centered approaches to contemporary perspectives that emphasize value, meaning, and mediation.

State, Society, and Market: An Anthropological Perspective

This course introduces key theoretical frameworks and concepts used in contemporary social sciences, particularly anthropology, to examine the relationships between the nation-state, society, and the market. A central question discussed throughout the course is whether clear boundaries between these three domains actually exist in contemporary anthropological analysis.

Anthropology of Southeast Asia

This course aims to foster an appreciation of Southeast Asia as a distinct ethnological region. The region is characterized by a wide diversity of cultures that nevertheless share underlying similarities, making comparative analysis possible.

The comparative method—rather than statistical methods—serves as a foundational approach in anthropology for generating broader insights.

Organizational Culture

This course provides an understanding of how culture develops within organizations, particularly in corporate settings. Organizations, as systems composed of structures, procedures, and processes, actively shape and reproduce their cultures.

The course focuses on how these three elements influence the formation of organizational culture. Students are introduced to key organizational components as a basis for understanding different types of organizations as commonly discussed in organizational theory.

Technology and the Public

This studio-based course centers on students designing and producing independent research-artistic projects on technology and the public. Technology is approached not merely as a tool, but as an ideological articulation within socio-technical-material frameworks.

One of the key challenges addressed is the increasingly complex definition of “the public” in contrast to “the private.” By understanding the public not as a fixed political landscape but as a performative and narrative construct, students are encouraged to produce projects that critically engage with technological practices across various domains—from the environment to archiving, education to surveillance—while opening discussions on ethics, creativity, and power.

Media Stories and Mediation: Seminar

This course focuses on both classical and contemporary studies in the anthropology of media and mediation. Moving beyond simplistic dichotomies such as analog vs. digital, old vs. new, or offline vs. online, class discussions are driven by narratives not only from anthropologists but also from scholars in related fields, particularly proponents of Actor-Network Theory (ANT).

Health, Care, and the Body

This course examines changing experiences of health and well-being, sexual identities and regimes of the body, as well as the social and cultural factors that shape how scientific knowledge is applied in clinical settings. It also looks at care practices, self-care, and the ways biomedical power is exercised, including patterns of resistance to and acceptance of medical regimes, scientific knowledge, and technology. Topics covered include research on HIV/AIDS, the body and food, morality, sexual and reproductive health, pharmaceuticals, medical technologies and practices, as well as plastic waste.

Medical Anthropology and Global Health

This course explores the field of medical anthropology and global health. Why and how do people fall ill? How are illnesses understood and treated across cultures? How do health and well-being change over the life course? What inequalities exist between groups in relation to health and illness, and how do medical systems, political economy, and anthropology help explain these issues? How can recent events be understood through the lens of medical anthropology?

These are some of the key questions addressed in this course. Students will learn to approach them through biocultural, critical, medical, anthropological, and social justice perspectives. The course emphasizes moving beyond purely biomedical explanations and understanding health and illness within broader medical, anthropological, and biocultural contexts.

Cultural Psychology

This course introduces the field of psychological anthropology and its development, presented under the framework of Cultural Psychology. It covers:

1. The scope of psychological inquiry,
2. Key concepts, theories, and methods in cultural psychology,
3. Personality in cultural context and human development,
4. Cultural change—its challenges, transformations, and continuities in shaping individual and group psychology, and contemporary developments in cultural psychology.
5. Health Anthropology

This course aims to provide an understanding of the scope of health anthropology, focusing on the interaction between biological and cultural factors in shaping health. Students will learn to identify, understand, and analyze the relationship between behavior and illness, as well as the socio-cultural factors that support or hinder the implementation of public health programs.

Culture and Mental Health

This course examines:

1. Socio-cultural factors influencing mental health at both individual and group levels across different social settings,
2. Examples of classifications of mental disorders and how they are understood across cultures,
3. Culturally grounded ways of achieving and maintaining mental well-being, and
4. The development of mental health initiatives in Indonesia.

Gender, Sexuality, and Health

This course explores how sexuality, gender, and health are experienced, interpreted, and socially constructed. It introduces key concepts and theoretical approaches related to these themes. More established areas include the body, heteronormativity and gender, sexual and reproductive health practices, and healing in postcolonial contexts.

Contemporary topics include gender and sexuality among LGBTIQ+ communities, biotechnology and the redefinition of life and death, structural and symbolic violence, as well as the ethical and emotional challenges of fieldwork. Students will gain foundational theoretical and methodological skills, along with critical awareness of how health is lived, embodied, and shaped by broader economic, political, gendered, and sexual dynamics.