A step-by-step practice frame for the IB Social & Cultural Anthropology Internal Assessment — an Observation and critique. Directly observe a social setting ethically, write the observation, then critique your own methods, positionality and ethics reflexively (HL adds engaging with published anthropology) — with the assessment criteria built in.
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📄 Official IB subject brief (ibo.org ↗) — your teacher or IB coordinator can share the full subject guide.
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This is roughly how your exported DOCX / PDF will read. Use it to rehearse a focused, well-organised guided analysis that answers the guiding question.
The IB Social & Cultural Anthropology Internal Assessment is a short written study, roughly 1,500–2,000 words, built on first-hand engagement with anthropological practice. You make a focused observation of an everyday social setting or cultural practice you can watch ethically — a café counter, a queue, a shared meal, a market stall, a school or sporting routine — produce a rich descriptive account, or "thick description," and then analyse it through recognised anthropological concepts and theory. This examiner-written practice frame walks you through the method step by step: choose an observable, ethical setting; decide which concept or concepts will frame it; plan how you will observe, take field notes and handle consent; write a thick description that records not just what happens but what it appears to mean to the people involved; and analyse that description through concepts such as ritual, reciprocity, exchange, identity, kinship or symbolism.
The IA is internally assessed on the quality of your engagement with anthropological practice: how focused and ethical your observation is, how rich and concrete your description is, how aptly and insightfully you apply anthropological concepts and theory, and how genuinely reflexive your evaluation is. Top-band studies describe thickly, ground every analytical claim in observed detail, keep the emic view (how insiders understand the practice) distinct from the etic view (your outside analytical reading), and reflect honestly on how the observer's own position, assumptions and method shaped the account.
The study is built around observation, not opinion. Describe the setting concretely and respectfully before you interpret it; read that detail through anthropological concepts and theory rather than naming a concept and moving on; and distinguish the participants' own understanding from your analytical reading. Throughout, stay reflexive — aware that you are an observer with a position, assumptions and limits — and stay ethical: seek consent where needed, do no harm, and never identify private individuals. The strongest studies acknowledge their own limits rather than over-generalising about a whole society.
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