Anthropology
-see wikipedia for further elaborations and links to additional sources
Anthropology: study of humanity. origins in the natural sciences, humanities, geography, and the social
sciences. Basic questions include:
 What defines homo sapiens.
 Who are ancestors of modern Homo sapiens?
 What are humans' physical traits?
 How do humans behave?
 Why are there variations and differences among different groups of humans?
 How has the evolutionary past of Homo sapiens influenced its social organization and culture?
English-world arts and sciences are often divided into three broad areas.
. natural and biological sciences seek to derive general laws through reproducible and verifiable
experiments.
. humanities generally study local traditions, through their history, literature, verbal stories, art and
music. Focus on understanding particular individuals, events, or eras.
. social sciences generally attempted to develop scientific methods to understand social phenomena in
a generalizable way.
. Anthropology does not easily fit into these categories, and different branches of anthropology
draw on one or more of these broad areas.
. Archaeology
. Physical/biological anthropology
. Cultural/Social anthropology
. Linguistics
Anthropology in West has generally taken a different path than in Europe. In the West, encountering
multiple, distinct cultures, often with very different organization and language from those of Europe, has led
to a continuing emphasis on cross-cultural comparison and to cultural relativism. Practitioners urge
objectivity and cultural relativism which has an influenced all the sub-fields of anthropology.
 particular cultures should not be judged by one culture's values or viewpoints
 all cultures should be viewed as relative to each other. There should be no notions, in good
anthropology, of one culture being better or worse than another culture.
 this is a moral and ethical stance at the root of the field, and that differentiates it from most
other sciences and arts, and the practices of related fields in other countries.
 Ethical commitments in anthropology include noticing and documenting social conflict (genocide,
“racism”, torture, exclusion, etc..) –with explanatory theories ranging from evolutionary and
biological determinants through to social constructions (states, power, control).
In continental Europe, anthropologists joined with folklorists and linguists to build national legends and
stories –with a focus on differentiating local ethnolinguistic groups, documenting local folk culture, and
representing the prehistory of what has become a “nation” through education (eg, museums).
Contemporary anthropology is established science with academic departments at most universities and
colleges. There are many sub-fields of anthropology that collaborate closely with various sciences, arts and
humanities. (synchronic and diachronic analysis –of the now and of history)
Physical anthropology: study of human populations using an evolutionary framework. Biological
anthropologists consider how the world was populated and try to explain geographical human variation.
Many study modern populations under sub-field of human ecology. Uses evolutionary theory. Another large
sub-field is primatology .
Cultural Anthroplogy(socio-cultural / social in UK). Study of culture, and mainly based on ethnography -a
methodology and a product of research (monographs. etc..), inductive method, relies heavily on participantobservation, and systematic comparison of different cultures. Focus on kinship and social
(economic/political/festivals/law/etc..) organization. The process of participant-observation can be especially
helpful to understanding a culture from an emic point of view; which would otherwise be unattainable by
simply reading from a book. Cultural anthropology is deeply influenced by structuralism, post-modern
theories, and a shift to analysis of modern societies. The fields shifted away from positivism in the 1970’s
and 1980’s -20-30 years before that shift began in archaeology. Questions about the nature and production of
knowledge became critical. Anthropology is said to now lack “cohesion”.
Archaeology –discussed in other lectures
Linguistics seeks to understand the processes of human communications, verbal and non-verbal, variation in
language, the social uses of language, and the relationship between language and culture. Subfields include:
descriptive linguistics (grammar, vocabulary) and historical linguistics (changes over time, reconstruction of
lost languages), ethnolinguistics –study of relation of language to culture, and sociolinguistics –the study of
the social function of language. Anthropological linguistics is also concerned with the evolution of the parts
of the brain related to language.
Basic trends
. comparatively more holistic approach to phenomena and
. tends to be highly empirical.
. study a particular place or thing in detail, using a variety of methods, over a more extensive period
than normal in many parts of academia.
Cultural anthropology
. has adjusted away from study of other cultures to study of culture and all communities.
. trying to clarify what constitutes a culture,
. how an observer knows where his or her own culture ends and another begins
. can view all human cultures as part of one large, evolving global culture.
Biological anthropologists
. interested in human variation and human universals (behaviors, ideas or concepts shared by virtually
all human cultures).
. use many different methods of study, but preference for participant observations leads many
anthropologists into field work
. human measurements, genetic samples, nutritional data may be gathered.
. drawn to the study of variation -human extremes, aberrations and other unusual activities
(headhunting, genital mutilation, etc..)
Boasian anthropology
Franz Boas established academic anthropology in the United States in opposition to evolutionary
perspectives. His approach was empirical, skeptical of overgeneralizations, and eschewed attempts to
establish universal laws. For example, Boas studied immigrant children to demonstrate that biological race
was not immutable, and that human conduct and behavior resulted from nurture, rather than nature.
Influenced by the German tradition, Boas argued that the world was full of distinct cultures, rather than
societies whose evolution could be measured by how much or how little "civilization" they had. He believed
that each culture has to be studied in its particularity, and argued that cross-cultural generalizations, like
those made in the natural science, were not possible.
post-World War II
Before the war British 'social anthropology' and American 'cultural anthropology' were still distinct
traditions. After the war, enough British and American anthropologists borrowed ideas and methodological
approaches from one another that some began to speak of them collectively as 'sociocultural' anthropology.
In the 1950s and mid-1960s anthropology tended increasingly to model itself after the natural sciences. Key
interests in this period include:
 modernization and post-colonialism
 economic anthropology –challenged classical economics
 Marxism
 Structuralism of Levi-Straus
Into the 1970’s and 1980’s key developments include:
 Impact of post-modernism
 Web of meaning, signification
 Politicization of the discipline related to colonial/post-colonial wars in Algeria, Vietnam, Nicaragua,
 Self-examination of the discipline related to authority, power, hegemony, sexuality, bigotry, sexism,
gender
 Agency, and the role of the individual and society in creating and influencing the other
In the 1980’s and 1990’s key developments include:
 Ethnographic authority
 Epistemological considerations concerning how we know what we say we know
 Hermeneutics –interpretation theory
 Feminism
 Reflexivity –self-positioning of authors/teachers to explain their inherent context and presumed
biases related thereto.