Anthropology is the academic discipline that engages with the subject of humanity in all its diversity across time and space. Anthropology is the original interdisciplinary discipline par excellence, with approaches that traverse the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences.
Sociocultural anthropology examines the range of human ways of life across the globe as well as the forces and consequences of rapid social change in the present. Sociocultural anthropologists at UTSC study such things as transnational migration, the significance of ritual and religious practices, the relationship of development projects to wellbeing, the historical causes and consequences of political violence, and the diverse ways in which we imagine who we are, as members of families, ethnic and religious communities, and nation states, and as gendered, feeling, and thinking persons, each carrying a particular historical heritage and facing new horizons. The primary methods are qualitative, emphasizing face-to-face relations with our research subjects, whether across the globe or in our own neighbourhood.
Evolutionary anthropology charts the biological emergence of the human species and its relation to non-human primates and other species. It also examines how human bodies have adapted to different environments and the ways in which social and biological factors intersect in the prevalence of diseases and in rates of reproduction and death. Evolutionary anthropology emphasizes quantitative methods, whether in statistical analyses of morbidity patterns, the discovery and measurement of ancient bones and artefacts, or the observation of non-human primate mating behaviours.
The Department of Anthropology at UTSC is among the best in Canada, composed of outstanding teachers and researchers. It is a centre of methodological excellence, specializing in the training of both sociocultural and evolutionary anthropology and both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Students can earn a BA or BSc depending on their area of specialization.