ISH » Study Programmes

I. ANTHROPOLOGY OF ANCIENT WORLDS

Programme coordinator: Svetlana Slapšak

PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION: As a part of historical anthropology, anthropology of the ancient worlds is connected with contemporary shifts in the science of history, especially in France (Annales, nouvelle histoire), and represents an important step aside from the tradition of classical studies. Anthropology of the ancient worlds conveys a pertinent and fertile approach to the research of ancient civilisations and exercises a considerable influence on scientific circles in numerous countries; it is quite eminent in the USA, for example. The group which initiated and expanded the anthropological approach to classical antiquity is active within the Centre Louis Gernet at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. It considers Louis Gernet the beginner of this trend, whereas its potentials were not fully unfolded until the 1960’s through the work of, among others, Pierre Vidal Naquet, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Claude Mossé and Nicole Loraux. Their works, which deal mostly with Greek antiquity, are much read and translated. Consequently, the radical changes incited by the discussions on subjects started by these experts can be observed today even in the conservative core of the discipline.

In order to initiate as effectively as possible graduate study and research in this field in Slovenia, the ISH has established co-operation with the Centre Louis Gernet within the Proteus Programme for scientific co-operation between France and Slovenia.

There is a rich and respectful tradition of classical studies in the fields of linguistics, philology, epigraphic, numismatics and archaeology in Slovenia. The current interest in classical education, as well as in studies of classical languages and culture at the university level, along with shifts in the concepts and methodological approaches in sociology, history and archaeology, forms an appropriate framework for the introduction of a new inter-disciplinary field dealing with the beginnings of the European culture.

Anthropology of the ancient worlds introduces important innovations in the field of humanities in Slovenia:

the extension of the areal cultural studies of the Mediterranean to the Afro-Eurasian space;

the launching of historic-anthropological views on the Byzantine, medieval and later European reception of antiquity;

an analysis of symbol inventions of strategies/texts and symbols/myths produced in the construction of the European identity and identities within Europe. Every study of Central European culture should take a standpoint on the ancient i.e. European inventions in order to successfully analyse collective constructs;

an analysis of images and texts, understanding myths outside the psychoanalytical paradigm, and the anthropological interpretation of all ancient cultures without privileging the “classical”, opens new ways of interpreting humanities in both historical and theoretical perspectives.

The innovative approach facilitates various constructions derived from different scientifically sound approaches and the free production of theory. The objectives of the study include the opening of horizons of knowledge techniques and mnemotechniques, an introduction to the history of organs, images, techniques, usefulness, ideologies and philosophies of knowledge in ancient cultures and beyond. In overviews and historical introductions, students will be equipped to create their own epistemological outlines, which they will consider and improve through their research, and discuss in seminars as well as presentations of their work and the work carried out by researchers and other students of the ISH. A two-way relation is of extreme importance in creating an epistemological discourse, contrived as the main intellectual activity of the studies, as well as research conducted at the ISH.

Specific features of epistemology of anthropology of the ancient worlds are complemented by topics and problems from other courses, thus a single subject does not infer an exclusive disciplinary orientation, let alone isolation. Quite the reverse, students are encouraged to contribute to all epistemological seminars and present their experience, theoretical models and arguments.

The introduction of graduate studies in the anthropology of the ancient worlds is also an inspiration for further considerable expansion of the aforementioned common specialist fields, bearing in mind the current theoretical orientation in Slovenian sociology, as well as in works of historical disciplines (which include the established contact networks, co-operation in European projects with similar orientations, etc.). In addition to all this, it represents an explicit innovation of Slovenian academia in the field of humanities in Central Europe.

Reading list:

M.R. Lefkowitz, B.F. Maureen (ed): Women’s Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation.

R.G.A. Buxton (ed.): Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford Readings in Classical Studies).

P. Connolly, H. Dodge: The Ancient City: Life in Classical Athens and Rome.

S. Slapšak: Za antropologijo antičnih svetov

S. Slapšak, D. Šterbenc (ur.): Podoba, pogled, pomen.

P. Brown: The Body and Society.

C. Sourvinou-Inwood: Tragedy and Athenian Religion (Greek Studies).

J.-P. Vernant, P. Vidal-Naquet: Mit in tragedija.

P. Dubois: Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being.

J. E. Salisbury, M. Lefkowitz: Encyclopedia of Women in the Ancient World.

F. Lissarrague: Le flot d’images.

MODULES
Module number	Module name	Responsible	Credit points
M01	Epistemology of Humanities	Rado Riha	15
M02	Introduction to the Anthropology of Ancient Worlds		15
M03	Anthropology of Public and Political Life		15
M04	Anthropology of Private Life		15
M05	Anthropology of Religion		15
M06	Anthropology of Image and Presentation		15
M07	Historical Grammar of Classical Languages	Svetlana Slapšak	15
M08	Anthropology of the Balkans from Antiquity to the Present	Svetlana Slapšak	15
M09	Inventions of the Antiquity – Images, Text and Ideology		15

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II. HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Programme coordinator: Jure Mikuž

PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION: Historical anthropology has been identified as a separate discipline within contemporary historiography for more than 20 years. The predecessor of today’s historical anthropology is mutatis mutandis what was referred to as history of customs back in the 17th and 18th centuries. That is, the history of something that lasts, as opposed to the history of unique events. The history of customs was, like historical anthropology today, the history of something that in itself never represented an event, i. e. movements rituals, indefinitely repeated reflections, views and knowledge or, in short, social practices. This history was also in contrast to the history of institutions and the history of decisions. Its classical reference was Herodot’s “ethnological” writing on the causes of the Persian wars, as well as the customs of Lydians, Persians and Egyptians. It was marked by names like Bodin, Pasquier, Guizot, Therry and, in Slovenia, Valvasor and Linhart. It existed for three centuries, from the 16th until the 19th, and was a pendant of the history of events and the history of institutions during that period. It was only at the end of the 19th century that the narrative history, or rather the history of events, overshadowed the history of customs. The reason being the political and, consequently, intellectual upswing, the basic characteristic of which was the increased dependence of intellectuals on the state government.

Regardless as to whether historical anthropology is considered a part of historiology or an autonomous scientific field, its close ties to other social sciences cannot be disregarded, whether it be topics, analytical tools and cognitive processes, or cognition and its effect on the appearance of the world and societies. Here, approaches of Anglo-Saxon social anthropologies, Levi-Strauss’s structural anthropologies, as well as innovations in the very historiology, are all at work. In general, Bourguiere’s characterisation of historical anthropology can be summarised. It concerns dealing with things that are fully submitted to the burden of the cultural system (ethnological aspect), which nevertheless also involves physical knowledge that is partly determined by biological and ecological mechanisms.

Andre Bourguiere distinguishes among four fields of historical anthropology:

1. Material and Biological Anthropology, including exploration of the body and its images, the hygiene of mortality, fertility, eating habits, sexuality, etc. These “phenomena” are not conceived as mere phenomena, but as specified areas in which the effects of historical processes accumulate at other levels. For example, relatively direct connections between climatic changes, demographic and economic movements on one hand, and eating habits on the other, can be established. At the same time, these effects fracture through culinary traditions and eating prohibitions.

2. Economic Anthropology deals with geneses of economic attitudes and their transformations. It emerged from three components: from historical and sociological research into the blockages of economic development, and from social-anthropological research of societies in which social activities, including economic activities, are subordinate to non-economic social objectives. Since Marcel Mauss, social switches cannot be limited to commodity and financial flows.

3. Social Anthropology, too, emerged from various sources. One of them is renewed discoveries by historians concerning the importance of the family in social life. Others are cognition and the conceptual apparatus of social anthropology as defined in Anglo-Saxon culture; however, the most important source is structural anthropologies as defined by Levi-Strauss. Both sources placed the system of kinship in the centre of historical interest.

4. Cultural and Political Anthropology: Here too, research is directed into the least evident and formulated expressions of cultural life: in folk beliefs, rituals which impregnate everyday life or are associated with religious life, in social practices that are most frequently performed as a matter of course. These practices (e. g. bodily hygiene, ways of dressing, the organisation of work and the scheduling of everyday chores) reflect pictures of the world which at the same time form a natural background to the most complex intellectual formulations.

Through historical-anthropological research, interrelations among various levels of social life and representations, as well as simultaneous transformations of these interrelations and the levels themselves become evident. Consequently, historical anthropology does not have a specific area of subjects existing in reality which are not, at the same time, the subjects of other social sciences and humanities. Nevertheless, it does have its cognitive objectives and procedures that go beyond these sciences and through which its cognitive subject is being constructed - total social systems in processes of historical transformations.

Accordingly, historical anthropology is foremost an approach, or a cognitive procedure, which is not defined by a geographical-cultural area, an area of phenomena, or the nature of the phenomena that are direct subjects of research. Historical anthropology is defined by the specific cognitive interest directed into the clarification of social entities in their mutual dependence and the historical process. The initial heterogeneity of origins, i.e. the inclusion of research processes common to various social sciences and humanities, does not result in a syncretic synthesis of all things possible, but into an integral conceptual revision of the fields of social sciences and humanities. It results in the establishment of internal relations among cognitive procedures in the field and its new integrations. Therefore, historical anthropology does not exclude a single subject; it merely considers some procedures irrelevant.

At the ISH, the study and research field is currently limited to a period which spans from antiquity to the present, and to the geo-cultural area of Europe and the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, the potential for historical-anthropological training is not appreciably dwindled. The acquired knowledge, as well as the comprehension of concepts, cognitive horizons and research procedures, enables students to begin studying without any great degree of difficulty, those periods and areas which are currently not dealt with in lectures and research activities organised by the ISH.

MODULES
Module number	Module name	Responsible	Credit points
M01	Epistemology of Humanities	Rado Riha	15
M10	Contemporary Anthropology		15
M11	Techniques and Approaches of Historical Anthropology		15
M12	Historical Anthropology of the Body	Darja Zaviršek	15
M13	Historical Anthropology and Theory of Ideologies – History of Media	Jože Vogrinc, Darko Štrajn	15
M14	Historical Anthropology of Visual Practices	Jure Mikuž	15
M15	Historical Anthropology of Beliefs and Religions	Jure Mikuž	15
M16	Historical Anthropology of the Mediterranean	Jure Mikuž, Svetlana Slapšak	15
M 17	Historical Demography		15

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II. A. HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF ART

Course coordinator: Jure Mikuž

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Through contemporary epistemological methodologies developed by anthropological and culturological disciplines, the course examines figurative and visual art practices through which the image world of a specific time, place, ethnic or social group are revealed. The modules explore various different modes of representation, as well as their relations and relevance in the broadest possible anthropological contexts. In contrast to the conventional history of art, the modules do not investigate the issues pertaining to artistic development, but instead investigate them within the framework of the latest findings in such diverse fields as history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis, feminist and gender studies, as well as political, religious and legal histories and natural sciences. Students will acquire the necessary skills for conducting a constructive dialogue and critical attitude to the traditional methodological approaches – such as style analysis, iconography – utilised in art history.

The genesis of visual art practices shall be considered, as is demonstrated by studies based on the more recent iconography from the USA, the new social history of art in the UK and the post-structuralist and deconstructivist treatment of figurative art in France. For more than two decades now, determining an attitude towards the traditional directions of art history has been the main precondition for the ideological disburdenment and broadening of contemporary approaches. Much research – which is based on style comparisons, Christian iconography, nationally- or geographically-defined art history, etc., – is often intentionally misleading, revealing concealment, one-sided superinterpretations, ideological tendencies or the moralizing disposition of researchers. Such suppressions can best be analysed, explained and exposed through the application of broader contemporary approaches, which devote equally serious consideration to the greatest monuments of world artistic creativity, as well as to the most modest artefacts. The first represent the highest spiritual and aesthetic achievements in the legacy of humanism, while the second being seemingly of no import are, in reality, material testimony and reveal wider symbol codes. It is precisely in understanding these, together with the study of the modes and manners of their communication that numerous contemporary approaches to the visual and the figurative are based.

The topics discussed by the proposed modules are not limited in terms of time or place, rather they interpret worthy phenomena emanating from all cultures and at all times, from pre-history to the present. Individual case studies are presented in the course of lectures, as are different analytical and interpretative practices. Special attention is devoted to theories of the visual and the figurative; on the one hand these are revealed through written sources and other material evidence, together with contemporary media, while on the other they are divulged through representative systems of various cultural-historical situations.

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III. ANTHROPOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Programme coordinator: Mojca Ramšak

PROGRAME DESCRIPTION: Anthropology of everyday life studies people’s living conditions. As a scientific field, it connects a number of disciplines that treat these objects from different angles – sociology, political and legal theories, psychology, economy, ecology and others, including natural sciences –, delimiting itself from them by their epistemological analysis (analysis of their principles, hypotheses and findings) from the point of view of everyday life, as well as by its own procedures in research and theoretical reflection.

AEL does not proceed from a normative concept of everyday life; inasmuch as such concepts affect everyday life, they are rather its objects of study. For AEL, everyday life is simply an answer to the question what people do and what is done to them, what ‘happens’ to and with them (ordinarily or – on this basis – extraordinarily). Thus it opens a vast but surveyable field of research which is a domain of anthropology.

The field in question encompasses on the one hand practices, institutions, relations and mechanisms by which people’s living conditions are reproduced, and on the other hand actual lives in which those conditions are brought into effect, as well as a variety of ‘intermediate’, now standard anthropological objects, such as social and kinship systems, discursive regimes and power structures, culture and subcultures, habits and customs, lifestyles, symbologies and imageries, emotions, beliefs, values, mentalities, identities, etc. The list is virtually endless, because everyday life incessantly produces new objects (and its study new concepts) that become ‘living conditions’ merely by virtue of their being in use.

Compared to social or cultural anthropology, AEL does not study its objects from the point of view of social and cultural systems but from that of people’s everyday life. The boundary is thin, but for significant reasons: because ‘social and cultural systems’ certainly participate in everyday life, as their research does in AEL, and because both social and cultural anthropologists who conduct ‘classical’ field research obtain the bulk of their data from their participation in everyday life of the people whose society or culture they study.

Compared to historical anthropology (and in the sense of Saussure’s division of linguistics to diachronic and synchronic), AEL is a synchronic science emphatically, because everyday life can only be conceived as the configuration effect of its concurrent conditions. To be sure, they all have a history, including the configuration itself (historians of everyday life have produced many volumes), but in its effects history, too, is one of the concurrent conditions of everyday life.

As a rule, research of everyday life is at once its critique, which relates AEL to the scientific trends that link research and social action. Researchers’ own living conditions are thematised, so that they may examine the construction of everyday life in their own case as well, especially since case study and analysis is the preferred research method in AEL.

MODULES
Module number	Module name	Responsible	Credit points
M01	Epistemology of Humanities	Rado Riha	15
M18	Anthropology of One’s Own World	Darja Zaviršek	15
M19	Anthropological Concepts and the History of Anthropology		15
M20	Psychoanalysis and the Theory of Desire	Mojca Ramšak (Matjaž Lunaček)	15
M21	Theory of Ideological Mechanisms (Political Anthropology)	Vlasta Jalušič	15
M22	Theory of the Subject		15
M23	Biography in Micro-Historical Perspective	Mojca Ramšak	15
M24	Technicised Home and the Family admist the Media – Anthropology of New Technologies	Melita Zajc	15

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III. B. MEDIA STUDIES

Course coordinator: Darko Štrajn

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Media studies at the ISH are conceived as a set of approaches inside the humanities. The media are studied as social practices and cultural elements in their different aspects, e.g. communications, technologies, institutions, cultural forms.

Media studies emerged in recent decades following the epistemological revolution in humanities initiated by structuralism, semiotics, critical theory and nouvelle histoire, as well as by more “local” developments in social history and studies of contemporary popular culture. Contrary to the mainstream of communication research in the USA anchored in empirical sociology (interested mainly in economic and political situation of mass media, as well as the psychological effect they exercise on their users), in media studies the media technologies, institutions and cultural forms, their production and application, are conceptualised from the perspective of social signifying practices, i.e. at their specific epistemic level.

This programme takes into consideration the multiplicity of contemporary media technologies and their social applications, communicative social relations which are established by their application, as well as the forms of culture they “convey”. It offers the opportunity of inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches to the challenges of media as a set of social phenomena implying various conditions of emergence, existence and impact in different historical moments and social formations. Past social relations and means of communicationare can only superficially seem to be »direct« or simple. Survival strategies of hunters and gatherers, for instance, should be seen as implying different levels and modes of connection pf communicative practices and techniques with other sectors and activities in society than e.g. societies of global consumer capitalism (rather than being »simpler« or »direct«). Accordingly, levels of exploration vary, and take into consideration multiplicity of social dimensions of “media” (ideological, political, technical, etc.), whereas the main emphasis lies on their involvement with the popular culture in everyday life. In individual subjects, sometimes one “medium” (e. g. television) is highlighted, whereas on other occasions focus is shifted to the historical constellation of media technologies and their social applications. On other occasions, special attention is paid to a common aspect of various media, e.g. technology, genre, identity, gender, modes of application, etc.

Special emphasis is laid on the epistemological dimension of the study because of its multifacity. Media studies can be successfully combined with study subjects of various ISH programmes, and in particular with discourse studies, gender studies, anthropology of everyday life and historical anthropology.

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IV. ANTHROPOLOGY OF GENDER

Programme coordinator: Svetlana Slapšak

PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION: Anthropology of gender is a part of historical anthropology and consequently related to contemporary changes in the sciences of history and gender, which relate various non-historical disciplines, such as psychology, political theory, philosophy and sociology. The study of gender is pertinent in examining the history of women, as well as relations between the genders, and consequently also the history of men, since it opens new common and border areas of research. The history of gender has proven to be extremely fruitful in the research of ancient civilisations (ancient women’s studies). Anthropology of gender directs the research in the history of genders to areal, regional and anthropological studies, as well as to studies of myths, literature, women’s writings, microhistory, etc. It thus creates a pioneer concept of a discipline which is nourished by the American tradition of gender studies, the French theory of women’s writing and the French school of historical anthropology, as represented at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Anthropology of gender is a part of a broader field of historical anthropology and thus related to the school of Annales and the nouvelle histoire. Consequently, it represents an important deviation from the canon in the prevailing trend of gender and women’s studies. It follows the idea of writing history anew, so that the history(ies) of women becomes a part of intellectual and academic canon. Furthermore, it condenses the achievements of academic and activist efforts of feminism during the last 50 years and critically inspects their starting points.

In order to begin a graduate study programme in anthropology of gender and develop relevant research in Slovenia, the ISH has established ties with the EHESS in Paris, the Rutgers, Harvard, Toronto and Jena Universities, as well as with centres for women’s studies in Zagreb, Belgrade and Budapest.

Slovenia has a notable tradition of women’s studies. The contemporary interest in upbringing, which is sensitive to gender issues, university studies of gender and the culture of gender, creates a favourable environment for the introduction of a new inter-disciplinary field which deals with gender in European and other cultures in a historical perspective. Simultaneously, there have been changes in the theoretical orientation and methodological approaches in sociology, history and archaeology.

The Anthropology of Gender programme introduces vital new dimensions to the study of humanities in Slovenia:

the expansion of gender studies to the European and Mediterranean areas, regions outside Europe, as well as exploration of the topics of colonialism and post-colonialism;

the opening of a historical-anthropological perspective through ancient, Byzantine/Medieval, European and specific minority concepts of gender;

an analysis of symbolic and intentional strategies and texts in the construction of European identity and identities in Europe. The study of Central European cultures should take a stand on gender inventions in order to be able to tackle its own collective constructs.

The programme places special emphasis on the challenges of the so called “canon studies”. It understands the process of study as identifying and defining the challenges, as well as research activities of expanding the canon of names and fixing the historical status of the topic as a basis for new interpretations. Thus, the programme initiates a relation to the prosopography and history of events and operates with them from a critical standpoint towards the construction of memory.

Reading list (general):

J. Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History.
M. M. Talbot, Language and Gender: An Introduction.
M. Gimbutas, M. Robbins Dexter (ed.), The Living Goddesses.
B. Achcroft. G. Griffiths, H. Tiffin (ed.), Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts.
R. Braidotti, Metamorphosis.
M. Donald, L. Hurcombe (ed.), Gender and Material Culture in Historical Perspective (Studies in Gender and Material Culture).
A. Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men.
L. Goodman, J. De Gay, F. Shaw (ed.), The Routledge Reader in Gender and Performance.
P. Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation, Identity.
F. E. Mascia-Lees, N. Johnson Black, Gender and Anthropology.
R. A. Schmidt, B. L. Voss (ed.), Archaeologies of Sexuality.

MODULES
Module number	Module name	Responsible	Credit points
M01	Epistemology of Humanities	Rado Riha	15
M25	Introduction to the History of Women, Feminisms and Concepts of Gender	Svetlana Slapšak	15
M26	Historical Anthropology of Women’s Writing	Svetlana Slapšak	15
M27	Gender and Religion – Historical Anthropology		15
M28	Psychoanalysis and feminism (Psychoanalysis, Body Politics)		15
M29	Historical Anthropology of Women’s Images – Women’s Myths and Utopias from Antiquity to the Present	Svetlana Slapšak	15
M30	History of Women’s Culture		15
M31	Women’s Reading – Film, Theatre, TV		15
M32	Women and War		15
M33	Language and Gender	Svetlana Slapšak	15
M34	Politics and Feminism, Policies of feminism	Milica G. Antić	15

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V. LINGUISTICS OF SPEECH AND THEORY OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATION

Programme coordinator: Janez Justin

PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION: Linguistics of speech became a subject of scientific examination after a Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure published his Cours de linguistique generale. In its original version, the book comprises research of those aspects of language functions which are not incorporated in the linguistics of language system. Because linguistics later diverged, in some of its theoretical trends (ranging from members of the Prague linguistic circles to the recent pragma-linguistic research), from the strict Saussurean division into the linguistics of language and the linguistics of speech, it caused a fading of the epistemological distinction between language and speech. Consequently, many contemporary schools and orientations in the science of language combine both analyses, the analysis of the language system and the analysis of its realisation in speech.

The linguistics of speech, which combines elements of general and theoretical linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmalinguistics, analysis of discourse and other disciplines, is, on the one hand, an extension of the structuralist paradigm in the science of language. On the other hand it allows for different research (and epistemological) approaches. This is characteristic of the research carried out in the USA and Europe (France, Germany) where the study of the language use in various contexts is added to a more descriptive type of linguistic research. There is little or no consistency in the naming of all these new types of research (discourse analysis, pragmatic linguistics, pragmatics, communication sciences, etc.).

In the middle of this century, linguistics became a paradigmatic science. Since the 1950’s, some of the most notable scientific research into the systems of social exchange and social intercourse have followed the models created by structural and functional linguistics, as well as glossematics. Naturally, the influence was mutual. Linguists became increasingly interested in the role that speech plays in various social and cultural contexts. They were not only intrigued by the academic issue of co-relations between the language and the social structures. Their attention was also drawn to the fact that language use reflects and, at the same time, constructs the social reality. Linguistics paved the way to a broader theory of social communication and social exchange which sometimes takes the form of a general theory of social communication. There is evidence to this claim in the work of linguists (Hjelmslev, Jakobsen, Martinet, Benvenisto, etc.), anthropologists (Malinowski, Lévi-Strauss, etc.), philosophers, epistemologists and historiographers (Husserl, Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Foucault, etc.), as well as in those areas of human science that have not yet been generally accepted in academic systems in Europe and America (e.g. in semiology and semiotics, theory of communication, cognitive anthropology, ethno-methodology, conversational analysis, applied epistemology, rhetoric and argumentational theory).

In Slovenia two different tendencies are present – one towards a firm disciplinary presentation of linguistic findings (e.g. in the study of general linguistics and individual philological disciplines), and in the other towards a creative expansion of realizations thus acquired (in particular in anthropology, sociology and philosophy) ¬– hence the graduate study of Linguistics of Speech and Theory of Social Communication provides an opportunity to develop research in both directions. Through mandatory modules students acquire the necessary linguistic knowledge, while through the electives they gain specific knowledge as well as skills necessary for a study of different aspects of language and semiotics.

Linguistic studies at the ISH introduce several important novelties:

analysis of the ideological dimension of human linguistic and semiotic activity;

analysis of the relation between language and different socially-relevant entities (from individual social groups to nation);

analysis of the social and psychological mechanisms involved in linguistic and other semiotic activity;

analysis of the pragmatic aspects of language, speech and non-verbal communication.

The changes occurring in former socialist societies today in transition – and in particular in the transformation of their symbolic and communication spaces – are attracting the attention of humanists and social scientists, this study programme facilitates the more active participation of Slovene science in this field.

The study of linguistics is among the most productive in contemporary humanities. Here strict linguistic analysis is coupled with global analyses of semiotics and communication activity. Students participate in internationally co-ordinated research, and have contact with international academic networks and research centres.

MODULES
Module number	Module name	Responsible	Credit points
M01	Epistemology of Humanities	Rado Riha	15
M35	Theoretical Linguistics		15
M36	Phonology and Theoretical Phonetics		15
M37	Social Semiotics and Semiology	Janez Justin	15
M38	Pragmatics	Tadej Praprotnik	15
M39	Sociolinguistics		15
M40	Anthropology of Communication – Communication Transfers of Cognitive Objects in Contemporary Societies	Janez Justin	15
M41	Models of Speech and Communicative Acts	Tadej Praprotnik	15
M42	Critical Discourse Analysis	Janez Justin, Jelica Šumić-Riha	15
M43	Rhetoric and the Theory of Argumentation	Svetlana Slapšak	15

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VI. SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Programme coordinator: Karmen Medica

PROGRAMME DESCRIPTION: This programme provides a thorough academic education in one of the central disciplines of anthropology. The philosophy behind the programme is founded on broad and thorough subject research, co-ordinated in the context of ongoing contact with international academic networks and research centres abroad.

Contemporary social anthropology has long since ceased to be a “comparative sociology of primitive societies” as once defined by Radcliffe-Brown, a classical British social anthropologist. At the same time, the dividing line between the local and the exotic is no longer pertinent either. Today anthropological research focuses on all human groups and communities, and not merely those defined as “exotic” in the context of a classically organized colonial perspective.

This programme is also specific as regards its tendency towards a wider and more holistic understanding of social anthropology, that is towards its articulation and linkages with biological anthropology (as part of the Anthropology and Racism and Anthropology of Food and Eating modules), with ethno-ecology (Anthropology of Science and Technology), as well as with non-anthropological sciences, for instance geography (Anthropology of Place) and history (Historical Anthropology of the Mediterranean Region). Thus designed the programme offers good possibilities for cross-discipline study.

Students will acquire the necessary skills to undertake empirical research in the field. A thorough understanding of social anthropology is difficult – and contextualization virtually impossible – without direct and informed experience in both theory and practical methodology of anthropological disciplines. The programme provides an optimum balance between theoretical instruction and fieldwork, whilst also supporting masters and doctoral projects with this orientation.

MODULES
Module number	Module name	Responsible	Credit points
M01	Epistemology of Humanities	Rado Riha	15
M44	Anthropological Fieldwork Methods		15
M45	Anthropology of Ethnicity, Nationalism and Borderness	Silva Mežnarič	15
M46	Anthropology of Place	Karmen Medica	15
M47	Socialist and Post-Socialist Studies		15
M48	Anthropology of Migrations and Trans-Nationalism		15
M49	Introduction to the Anthropology of Power		15
M50	Regional Ethnographies	Karmen Medica	15
M51	American Cultural Anthropology		15
M52	Anthropology and Racism	Darja Zaviršek	15
M53	Anthropology of Food and Eating		15
M54	Anthropology of Science and Technology	Melita Zajc	15