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Key International Baccalaureate Syllabus Details
Part 1 Underlying Principles (HL and SL)
The five Underlying Principles are central to the syllabus. They are intended to indicate critical
issues and understandings to be developed throughout the course. They represent complex ideas,
approaches and understandings that incorporate tensions inherent in any anthropological enquiry.
To clarify how and where the principles may be introduced, they have been organized into five
areas that often overlap.
1.1 Approaches to the Analysis of Society and Culture
1.2 Key Concepts
1.3 Methods
1.4 Construction of Ethnographic Accounts
1.5 Relevance of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Within each Underlying Principle some key ideas and issues have been identified and described
in short commentaries; these are neither exhaustive nor prescriptive and should not be treated as
definitions to be learned and taught. They are provided as tools to encourage a reflective and
critical attitude, helpful for organizing and thinking about other parts of the syllabus.
1.1 Approaches to the Analysis of Society and Culture
Anthropology explores particular approaches to its object of enquiry, which set it apart from
other social sciences. Any anthropological study should consider the following nine
approaches.
1.1.1
1.1.2
1.1.3
1.1.4
1.1.5
1.1.6
1.1.7
1.1.8
1.1.9
Comparative
Holistic
Emic and Etic
Qualitative
Cultural Relativism
Ethnographic
Individual and Society
Ideas and Behaviour
Society and Culture
1.1.1
Comparative
Anthropologists strive to capture the diversity of social action and its predictability by focusing
on the way in which particular aspects of society and culture are organized similarly and
differently across groups. While social action is frequently innovative, there are limits to its
diversity, and patterns identified in one group resemble patterns identified in another.
1.1.2
Holistic
Anthropologists recognize that all aspects of society and culture are interconnected through
causal, symbolic, functional, hierarchical and other types of relationships. The identification
and explanation of these interconnections as systems are fundamental goals of anthropology.
The commitment to holism focuses in particular on the relationships between seemingly
unrelated aspects of human experience, for example, material and symbolic aspects.
1.1.3 Emic and Etic
An 'emic' account of a feature of society or culture emphasizes the meaning of this feature in
the local context, while an 'etic' account of the same feature locates it in a comparative and
analytical context. Emic accounts are frequently associated with the insiders' view and etic
accounts with the outsiders' view, although these associations are oversimplifications.
1.1.4
Qualitative
The data that anthropologists gather during fieldwork comes in many forms because they are
trying to capture the complexity and diversity of social life. This may be textual (oral or
written), observational, impressionistic, or may take the form of images or sounds. Much of the
data cannot be reduced usefully to quantitative forms without losing the essence of the material
as perceived from an anthropological viewpoint.
1.1.5
Cultural Relativism
For anthropologists, cultural relativism is a methodological principle that emphasizes the
importance of searching for meaning within the local context. Non-anthropologists often
interpret cultural relativism as a moral doctrine, which asserts that the practices of one society
cannot be judged according to the moral precepts and evaluative criteria of another society. In
its extreme form this version of cultural relativism can lead to a non-analytic position which is
contrary to the critical commitments of the discipline.
For anthropologists cultural relativism attempts to recognize and address the problem of
ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to evaluate the practices of others in terms of
one's own criteria. Generally, ethnocentrism has the effect of giving greater worth to the social
or cultural context of the evaluator than to the context being evaluated, and hinders
understanding across social boundaries.
1.1.6
Ethnographic
Anthropology places considerable emphasis on its empirical foundation based on a direct
engagement with particular people and their social and cultural context. Ethnographic materials
are usually gathered through participant observation.
Ethnographically grounded anthropology can be contrasted with nineteenth-century 'armchair'
anthropology conducted by scholars with no first-hand acquaintance with the societies they
analysed, and with 'commonsense' or journalistic accounts of a particular society.
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