Difficulty Verdict: Nuanced and Concepts-Heavy
The November 2025 Standard Level Social and Cultural Anthropology exam presents a balanced but intellectually demanding assessment. Standard Level Paper 1 is centered on a highly contemporary ethnographic passage by Graham Willis (2022) focusing on the policing of 'whiteness' and racialization in São Paulo, Brazil. This passage is highly conceptual, requiring students to move beyond surface-level understandings of race as skin color and instead engage with 'whiteness' as an achieved, bureaucratic status linked to class, employment, and moral citizenship. Meanwhile, Paper 2 continues the IB's tradition of offering expansive, flexible prompts across all nine Areas of Inquiry, allowing students to apply their prepared ethnographies to real-world issues such as inequality, poverty, and violence.
Where the Marks are Won or Lost
In Paper 1, Question 1 (4 marks) demands a formal definition of 'status'—ideally incorporating Weberian notions of social honor, or the distinction between ascribed and achieved statuses—and its direct application to the passage's 'pizza-eating' versus 'ticket-thief' prisoners. Question 2 (6 marks) requires a rigorous analysis of power, which must be framed through concepts such as structural violence, hegemony, or Foucault's power/knowledge rather than simple physical coercion. For the 10-mark essays (Questions 3, 4, and 5), marks are heavily concentrated on the complete and detailed identification of comparative ethnographies (ethnographer, fieldwork location, group studied, and context) and the execution of a genuine comparative structure rather than consecutive summaries.
Key Examiner Pitfalls
- The 'Capping' Rule: In Questions 3, 4, and 5, failing to fully identify your comparative ethnographies automatically caps your score at a maximum of 8 out of 10 marks.
- Literalism in Race Concepts: Treating 'whiteness' and 'blackness' as simple biological traits rather than dynamic, bureaucratic, and socially constructed categories of privilege in the Brazilian context.
- Weak Conceptual Scaffolding: Discussing the big anthropological question in Question 5 ('What does it mean to be a person?') without using personhood as the central thread of the entire essay.
Strategic Recommendations & Predictions
To maximize marks, candidates must memorize complete ethnographic metadata for at least three core case studies. For compare-and-contrast essays, utilize a thematic matrix structure to ensure parallel points are critically debated. Looking ahead, core chapters like The body and Movement, time and space are highly overdue for prominent billing, as recent sessions have skewed heavily toward Belonging and Conflict.