What is Anthropology?
•Anthropology is the broad study of
humankind around the world and throughout
time.
•It is concerned with both the biological and
the cultural aspects of humans.
Included in anthropology are four
main subdivisions:
Physical Anthropology
• Mechanisms of biological evolution, genetic inheritance, human adaptability
and variation, primatology, and the fossil record of human evolution
Cultural Anthropology
• Culture, ethnocentrism, cultural aspects of language and communication,
subsistence and other economic patterns, kinship, sex and marriage,
socialization, social control, political organization, class, ethnicity, gender,
religion, and culture change
Archaeology
• Prehistory and early history of cultures around the world; major trends in
cultural evolution; and techniques for finding, excavating, dating, and
analyzing material remains of past societies
Linguistic Anthropology
• The human communication process focusing on the importance of sociocultural influences; nonverbal communication; and the structure, function,
and history of languages, dialects, pidgins, and creoles
What would be the
best way to really get
to know another
society and its culture?
Why?
Participation-observation
• Anthropologists have learned that the best
•
way to really get to know another society
and its culture is to live in it as an active
participant rather than simply an
observer.
By physically and emotionally participating
in the social interaction of the host society
it is possible to become accepted as a
member.
Dian Fossey
• Dian Fossey believed that
•
in order to study gorillas
effectively she had to
immerse herself with
them in an effort to get
them to accept her
presence
She was murdered in her
cabin at Karisoke on
December 26, 1985. Her
death is a mystery yet
unsolved.
Why do we need social
scientists?
Don’t they tell us what we
already know to be true?
Why we need social scientists:
• Intuition is believing something to be true
because a person’s emotions and logic support it
• Intuition is not proof of fact – this is why we
need social scientists – they prove or disprove
what we BELIEVE to be true
• Question: According to your intuition, would
introducing the death penalty into a society
decrease the murder rate?
Anthropology:
The Question of Kinship
• Kinship is a family relationship based on what is
•
•
•
a culture considers a family to be
The family unit can vary depending on the
culture in which the family lives
Anthropologists have concluded that human
cultures define the concept of marriage in three
ways: mating (marriage), birth (descent) and
nurturance (adoption)
Most human societies are patrilineal (organized
through the father’s line). Examples?
Skills and Methods used by
Anthropologists
• Participation-observation
• Collection of statistics
• Field interviews
• Rigorous compilation of detailed notes
• Fieldwork on anthropologists is know as
“ethnography”: the scientific study of
human races and cultures
Anthropological Schools of
Thought
• School of thought: when a certain way of
interpreting a discipline’s subject matter
gains widespread credibility, it is considered
to be a ‘school of thought’
• Anthropology Schools of Thought
1. Functionalism
2. Structuralism
3. Culturalism
Comparing the Schools of Thought
Similarities
•
Functionalism
Structuralism
Cultural
Materialism
-attempts to
understand cultures
as a whole
-attempts to
understand cultures
based on common
properties of the
human mind
-attempts to
understand cultures
though technology
and economy
Differences
Investigates the social -seeks out and explains
functions of
rules that are based on
institutions
binary opposites (ie.
Day / night; male;
females)
-explores members’
decisions regarding
human reproduction
and economic
production
Criticisms
-presents societies as
being more stable
than they are and
downplays the
negative results of
some practices
-tries to establish
laws that apply to all
cultures and their
development;
observes cultures
through biased eyes
-overemphasizes logic
and stability in human
societies; societies
wouldn't die out if they
always met the needs
of their members
Social Change
• Refers to changes in
the way society is
organized, and in the
beliefs and practices of
the people who live in it
• Change in the social
structure and the
institutions of society
• Examples?
Anthropology and Social Change
• Anthropologists regard CULTURES, the
focus of their studies as constantly
changing organisms
• Key Questions
-What are the known basic mechanisms of
social change?
-What ideas or explanations can we use to
describe what causes cultures to change?
Three Major Sources of Cultural
Change (anthropology)
1) Invention: new products, ideas and social
patterns. Examples?
2) Discovery: finding something that was
previously unknown to a culture. Examples?
3) Diffusion: spreading of ideas, methods and
tools from one culture to another. Examples?
Four Classifications of Culture
• Anthropologists focus on the process of
ENCULTURATION (members of a culture learn
and internalize shared ideas, values and
beliefs)
• Culture is made up of 4 inter-related parts:
1)
2)
3)
4)
Physical Environment
Level of Technology
Social Organization
System of Symbols
Theories of Social Change
• Adaption to change or cultural change takes
place through three methods:
1) Diffusion- one culture borrows cultural
symbols from another
2) Acculturation- prolonged contact
between two cultures where they
interchange symbols, beliefs and customs
3) Cultural Evolution- cultures evolve
according to common patterns