Social and Cultural Anthropology IB

Applications Open: 7th November 2025 at 9am

Applications Close: 30th January 2026 4pm

Entry Requirements: - 5 GCSE's Grade 4 and above, including Maths and/or English plus additional subject specific entry requirements.

How to Apply: - Please apply via KentChoices

This course is part of the IBCP Pathway and must not be chosen alongside A Levels.

Imagine you could have lived a thousand different kinds of lives, but you end up having lived only one (Geertz paraphrased in Eriksen, 2009: 11). Anthropology is about finding out about the thousand other lives you could have lived if you had been born in a different time or place. It is about “making sense of other people’s worlds, translating their experiences and explaining what they are up to, how their societies work and why they believe in whatever it is that they believe in” (Eriksen, 2006: ix). More than this, in an increasingly interconnected world, anthropology seeks to unravel the complexities of what makes us human by exploring what makes people as social beings in different cultures different from each other.

Students examine contemporary human experiences in different societies and cultures in a contextual way. Due to the interconnectedness of the 21st century world, many global challenges manifest themselves in students’ local or

otherwise significant communities as powerfully as at national and international levels. The ethos of the CAS programme is to engage students in experiential learning in a similarly contextual way. The course is broken into three separate learning sections: Engaging with anthropology, Engaging with ethnography and Engaging in anthropological practice.

Exam and controlled assessment

The general entry for the IBCP is five Grade 4's and above at GCSE level. IB subjects have the option of a higher or standard level. All students will initially be put forward for the higher level and final entry will be decided after student enrolment on the course.

Social and Cultural Anthropology will provide students with an understanding of what it means to live in society and also opportunities for research and exploration into cultural and social worlds. Like Sociology, the related courses are vast due to the analytical skills developed through learning.