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• Sociology & Anthropology

Major in Sociology & Anthropology

Academic Contributors

     Frank Fanselow (Leader)
     Anthony Walker
     Awang Hasmadi bin Awang Mois
     Mariam Mohd. Ali
     Asmali Hj Sulaiman
     Shariza Wahyuna Shahrin

Sociology & Anthropology: What are they?

Society becomes an object of curiosity when people feel the need to make sense out of rapidly changing social realities. As long as the social order in which we live seems stable and unchanging, we tend to take it for granted and think little about it; it appears so natural and normal to us. But when we are confronted with sudden changes in our social environment, our lives transformed by forces that we do not understand—when the normal can suddenly no longer be taken for granted—we are bound to ask questions such as: What causes such changes? Where will they lead us? Are they changes for the better or for the worse? At times of social change throughout history, these are some of the central questions that have motivated humans to think about society. Today, in a world that is rapidly being transformed through the force of new technologies and of economic globalization, they are burning issues once more.

In the Muslim world the most prominent forefather of the social sciences was the 14th century Arab thinker ibn Khaldun, who proposed a new “science of human culture”. He lived in North Africa at a time of great social and political instability, rooted in the conflict between old-established urban and newly-emerging tribal dynasties. Out of the observation of these conflicts, he developed a cyclical theory of history according to which civilizations go through an inevitable cycle of rise and decline. Ibn Khaldun insisted that this new science of culture must be based on an examination of facts and their rational analysis, independent of vested interests and ruling ideologies. Ibn Khaldun’s science of human culture did not find followers at the time, both because it was politically inopportune and because he was intellectually far ahead of his time. But there is some evidence that his ideas influenced early European social thinkers including Montesquieu, Comte and Engels.

Modern sociology and anthropology arose in Europe out of the historical experience of confrontation between different types of societies. Sociology developed out of attempts to understand the historical transformation of European societies from medieval feudal agrarian to modern industrial capitalist orders, marked in time by the Industrial and French Revolutions. Anthropology emerged out of the political and cultural confrontation between European and non-European societies within the context of colonial expansion. For a long time sociology was therefore about the West and anthropology about “the rest”.

Sociology is the study of human behaviour in its social context. By analysing social interaction at every level, from micro-group interaction to competition between nation states, its concern is with social institutions that are central to the maintenance of social orders: the state, the market and the educational system, as well as those forms of behaviour that challenge and change the social order, such as crimes, addiction, and other forms of deviance. Sociology occupies a central role in the social sciences because its primary concern is not the study of particular types of institutions, but rather with their interrelationships.

Anthropology is the comparative study of culture and society, including their variations in time and space. It occupies a key role in the social sciences because of its comprehensive and comparative perspective. Like history, it is concerned with the development of human societies, but unlike history it does not limit itself to literate societies but includes prehistory. Like economics, it is concerned with the systems of production and distribution in human societies, but unlike traditional economics it also looks at how production and distribution take place outside the market, both in contemporary and in pre-market societies of the past. Like political science, it is concerned with the institutions of public decision-making and conflict- management in society, but unlike conventional political science it also looks at how these functions are performed outside of as well as prior to the emergence of the state. Like geography, it looks at the role of the physical and social environment of human societies, but unlike conventional geography it also looks at the symbolic and cultural construction of the environment. Like linguistics it is concerned with language, but unlike linguistics it also looks as culture as a whole as a system of symbolic communication. Anthropology also bridges the gap between the humanities and the natural sciences, in that it raises the question of the relationship between the biological and cultural dimensions of human existence.

Both sociology and anthropology occupy a central role in the social sciences that bridges the division of labour between the more specialized social science disciplines. While the latter tend to look at human behaviour largely in terms of one dimension only, be it economic, political or spatial, sociology and anthropology look at social life in its totality and inter-relatedness. Whereas sociology was originally mainly concerned with the study of “modern” complex industrialized societies, anthropology tended to focus more on smaller “traditional” societies. However, in this era of globalization, it has become difficult to maintain such simple distinctions between different kinds of societies and cultures and the two subjects increasingly overlap in scope, theories and methods. For this reason they have now been integrated into a single programme at UBD.

Sociology and Anthropology at UBD

In 1996 Frank Fanselow from the American University in Cairo was recruited to establish a Unit of Sociology and Anthropology at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Initially, Fanselow began by teaching the two disciplines as separate minor programmes, assisted sequentially by Visiting Professors Donald Brown of the University of California, Santa Barbara (one semester, academic year 1998-1999) and Alan Maxwell of Alabama University (academic year 1999-2000). In 1999 Anthony Walker joined the Unit from the University of the South Pacific as Associate Professor and in 2003 Mariam Mohd. Ali, formerly a lecturer at the National University of Singapore, was recruited as Senior Lectuer. Asmali Sulaiman, a 2000 UBD graduate was appointed as a tutor in the Unit in 2000 and soon thereafter sent to the London School of Economics to read for his M.Soc. Sci. degree in Sociology. He was promoted to lecturer in 2003.

In 2005, following a major curriculum revision by Fanselow and Walker, the separate sociology and anthropology programmes were merged to become a single major programme in Sociology-Anthropology. In 2006 the Unit was upgraded to departmental status on a par with the other departments within the Faculty of Social Sciences. Meanwhile, Anthony Walker had been promoted as the University’s first Professor of Anthropology, Asmali Sulaiman had returned from London with his M.Sc. degree and Shariza Shahrin had been recruited as a tutor and sent for M.A. work at Cornell University. Hasmadi Mois, formerly of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, was appointed as Associate Professor in 2007.

The general philosophy of the programme is: (a) to integrate sociological and anthropological approaches, (b) to be broad-based in terms of geographical and sub-disciplinary coverage, and (c) to be responsive to the social and cultural environment within which the programme is taught.

In particular the programme seeks to strike a balance between:

a. Sociology and Anthropology. The conventional separation between sociology and anthropology has grown out of the historical development of social sciences in the West where, for a long time (and to a certain extent even today), sociology has involved the study of the West and anthropology the study of the rest. This distinction is arbitrary. In a non-Western context such as in Brunei, it does not make sense to perpetuate it.

b. Western social science and the indigenization of the social sciences. Mainstream modern sociology and anthropology grew out of the specific context of Western intellectual history; consequently, students need to be thoroughly familiarized with this intellectual tradition, if they are to be able to relate to the international scientific community. At the same time sociologists and anthropologists internationally are critically examining the intellectual roots of their disciplines, which can no longer be understood simply as specifically Western systems of knowledge as they have become internationalized and increasingly indigenized and localized within different religious, intellectual and cultural contexts. UBD’s programme, therefore, seeks to combine a thorough and critical understanding of the intellectual tradition of sociology-anthropology with its contextualization, particularly in Brunei and Southeast Asia.

c. The global and the local. In terms of regional coverage the programme is based on the recognition that sociology/anthropology are essentially cross-cultural disciplines and, as such, must adopt a comparative perspective. At the same time, the teaching of these disciplines must take into account the Department’s location in Southeast Asia and thus must strive to equip students with a deep sociological-anthropological understanding of their own society and culture.

d. Convention and innovation. The programme seeks to strike a balance between areas of interest that have long been covered in the conventional subdisciplines of sociology and anthropology (e.g. social psychology, social stratification, politics and law, economic anthropology and sociology, kinship and marriage, urban sociology) and newly-emerging areas of interest that are at the cutting edge of contemporary sociological-anthropological analysis (e.g. gender, race, ethnicity and nationalism, the environment, medical sociology, popular culture and the mass media).

e. Theory and application. The programme seeks to uphold the dual nature of sociology-anthropology, as both theoretical sciences of society and culture and as producers of knowledge that is relevant to practical and policy-related issues in present-day societies. As such it gives considerable weight to both classical and contemporary social thought, in order to make students aware that the usefulness of sociological-anthropological knowledge depends on a thorough examination of theoretical assumptions and the construction of a sound conceptual framework. At the same time, it proceeds from the assumption that sociologists and anthropologists cannot remain within the ivory tower of abstract theoretical reflection, but must concern themselves with practical issues of the day. This latter concern is reflected in courses on development, the environment, ethnic conflict, the power of the mass media and consumer society and globalization.

f. Teaching and research. The programme seeks not only to give students a thorough, all-round training in sociology-anthropology in the areas outlined above, but also to train them to conduct empirical social research and thus contribute to the production of sociological/ anthropological knowledge about their own society. For this reason many courses include as coursework small projects in which students are encouraged to apply the concepts and theories they have learned in the classroom to their own social environment. In their final year, students take a two-semester seminar on Social Research Methods as part of which they have to design and carry out a research project of their own.

Careers in Sociology and Anthropology

Sociology and anthropology have only been recently introduced into the education system in Brunei and the number of sociologists and anthropologists in the country is therefore limited. This means, on the one hand, that many potential students and employers are not fully aware of what a graduate in these disciplines can offer them, but it also means that compared to the much larger number of graduates in other social sciences, they are in short supply where they are needed.

There are two ways to plan for a career in sociology-anthropology. On the one hand, you can think in terms of becoming a professional sociologist or anthropologist involved in teaching and/or researching social and cultural issues. Professional sociologists and anthropologists are usually employed in schools and universities, in museums, and in community-development organizations in the public sector and in market research and related occupations in the private sector. In some cases a career as a professional sociology/anthropologist may also require a postgraduate degree. As with most other highly qualified specialists, the job market for professional social scientists is limited in Brunei.

However, unlike with many other specialized qualifications which are only relevant to a narrow range of occupations, a training in sociology-anthropology equips students with knowledge of a wide variety of cultures as well as a deeper understanding of their own society, in addition to analytical, communicative and methodological skills that are useful in a wide range of careers outside sociology and anthropology proper, such as in development, foreign affairs, the media and business.

Since the introduction of sociology and anthropology in UBD in 1996, former students have found employment as school teachers and university lecturers, as well as in other institutions, such as the Brunei Museum, the History Centre, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Anti-Narcotics Bureau, the Anti-Corruption Bureau and the media.