Social Anthropology explores and compares the ways different peoples live. Today anthropologists are as likely to work in Western urban contexts as they are to research in Alaska or on a tributary of the Amazon. Wherever they work, by being sensitive to social and cultural contexts, anthropologists can gain insights into different ways of being.

Social Anthropology's central methodology, ethnography, provides context-sensitive answers to why people think and behave the way they do. The anthropological contribution to understanding society is characteristically one of laying bare what we take for granted: making un-stated assumptions and beliefs visible and analysing their workings and consequences.

The St Andrews department of Social Anthropology is in the first rank of research-led departments in Britain. According to the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, its output of 'world leading' research was bettered only by the London School of Economics. Of the Scottish departments, work published by St Andrews Social Anthropology was ranked highest by a significant margin. Its three major research centres, the Centre for Amerindian, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies and the Centre for Pacific Studies foster innovative regional and theoretical perspectives and programmes. Alongside its regional focii on Africa, the Americas and the Pacific, the department is internationally recognised for its work on kinship, equality and hierarchy, for its child-centred and individual-centred theoretical concerns, for theorisations of cultural diversity and complexity, and for work that integrates historical, philosophical and ethnographic perspectives.