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WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY?
ANTHROPOLOGY: CHAPTER 1
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: CHAPTER 1
PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY: CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
1.
Understand what it means that anthropology is the holistic and comparative study of
humanity.
2.
Know what distinguishes ethnography and ethnology.
3.
Be able to identify and distinguish between the four subfields of anthropology.
4.
Know what applied anthropology is and understand its relationship to academic
anthropology.
5.
Understand why anthropology is considered a social science and the role that hypothesis
testing plays in structuring anthropological research and explanation.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Human Adaptability
A. Anthropology is the study of the human species and its immediate ancestors.
1. Anthropology is holistic in that the discipline is concerned with studying the whole of
the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture.
2. Anthropology offers a unique cross-cultural perspective by constantly comparing the
customs of one society with those of others.
B. People share both society and culture.
1. Society is organized life in groups, a feature that humans share with other animals.
2. Cultures are traditions and customs, transmitted through learning, that govern the
beliefs and behaviors of the people exposed to them.
3. While culture is not biological, the ability to use it rests in hominid biology.
C. Adaptation is the process by which organisms cope with environmental stresses.
1. Human adaptation involves interaction between culture and biology to satisfy
individual goals.
2. Four types of human adaptation (see the illustration of these with regard to adjustment
to high altitude).
a. Cultural (technological) adaptation.
b. Genetic adaptation.
c. Long-term physiological or developmental adaptation.
d. Immediate physiological adaptation.
D. Humans are the most adaptable animals in the world, having the ability to inhabit widely
variant ecological niches.
1. Humans, like all other animals, use biological means to adapt to a given environment.
2. Humans are unique in having cultural means of adaptation.
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E. Through time, social and cultural means of adaptation have become increasingly
important for human groups.
1. Human groups have devised diverse ways of coping with a wide range of
environments.
2. The rate of this cultural adaptation has been rapidly accelerating during the last
10,000 years.
a. Food production developed between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago after millions of
years during which hunting and gathering was the sole basis for human
subsistence.
b. The first civilizations developed between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago.
c. More recently, the spread of industrial production has profoundly affected human
life.
II. General Anthropology
A. The four subdisciplines of American anthropology.
1. The academic discipline of American anthropology is unique in that it includes four
subdisciplines: cultural anthropology, archaeological anthropology, biological or
physical anthropology, and linguistic anthropology.
2. This four-field approach developed in the U.S. as early American anthropologists
studying native peoples of North America became interested in exploring the origins
and diversity of the groups that they were studying.
3. This broad approach to studying human societies did not develop in Europe (e.g.,
archaeology, in most European universities, is not a subdiscipline of anthropology; it
is its own department).
B. The four subdisciplines share a similar goal of exploring variation in time and space to
improve our understanding of the basics of human biology, society, and culture.
1. Variation in time (diachronic research): using information from contemporary groups
to model changes that took place in the past; and using knowledge gained from past
groups to understand what is likely to happen in the future (e.g., reconstructing past
languages using principles based on modern ones).
2. Variation in space (synchronic research): comparing information collected from
human societies existing at roughly the same time, but from different geographic
locations (e.g., the race concept in the U.S., Brazil, and Japan).
C. Any conclusions about “human nature” must be pursued with a comparative, crosscultural approach.
III. Cultural Forces Shape Human Biology
A. Cultural traditions promote certain activities and abilities, discourage others, and set
standards of physical well-being and attractiveness.
B. Culture has more to do with sports success than “race” does.
1. In Brazilian culture, women should be soft, with big hips and buttocks, not big
shoulders; since competitive swimmers tend to have big, strong shoulders and firm
bodies, competitive swimming is not very popular among Brazilian females.
2. In the U.S., there are not many African-American swimmers or hockey players, not
because of some biological reason, but because those sports are not as culturally
significant as football, basketball, baseball, and track.
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IV. The Subdisciplines of Anthropology
A. Cultural anthropology combines ethnography and ethnology to study human societies and
cultures for the purpose of explaining social and cultural similarities and differences.
1. Ethnography produces an account (a book, an article, or a film) of a particular
community, society, or culture based on information that is collected during
fieldwork.
a. Generally, ethnographic fieldwork involves living in the community that is being
studied for an extended period of time (e.g., 6 months to 2 years).
b. Ethnographic fieldwork tends to emphasize local behavior, beliefs, customs, social
life, economic activities, politics, and religion, rather than developments at the
national level.
c. Since cultures are not isolated, ethnographers must investigate the local, regional,
national, and global systems of politics, economics, and information that expose
villagers to external influences.
2. Ethnology examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares the ethnographic data
gathered in different societies to make generalizations about society and culture.
a. Ethnology uses ethnographic data to build models, test hypotheses, and create
theories that enhance our understanding of how social and cultural systems work.
b. Ethnology works from the particular (ethnographic data) to the general (theory).
B. Interesting Issues: Even Anthropologists Get Culture Shock
1. “Culture shock” is alienation that results from stepping outside one's own cultural
frame and into a different one.
2. The example of Kottak’s work among the Arembepe suggests that culture shock eases
once we begin to grasp the logic of a culture that is new to us.
C. Archaeological anthropology reconstructs, describes, and interprets past human behavior
and cultural patterns through material remains.
1. The material remains of a culture include artifacts (e.g., potsherds, jewelry, and
tools), garbage, burials, and the remains of structures.
2. Archaeologists use paleoecological studies to establish the ecological and subsistence
parameters within which given groups lived.
3. The archaeological record provides archaeologists the unique opportunity to look at
changes in social complexity over thousands and tens of thousands of years (this kind
of time depth is not accessible to ethnographers).
4. Archaeology is not restricted to prehistoric societies.
a. Historical archaeology combines archaeological data and textual data to
reconstruct historically known groups.
b. William Rathje’s “garbology” project in Tucson, Arizona.
D. Biological, or physical, anthropology investigates human biological diversity across time
and space.
1. There are five special interests within biological anthropology:
a. Paleoanthropology: human evolution as revealed by the fossil record.
b. Human genetics.
c. Human growth and development.
d. Human biological plasticity: the body’s ability to change as it copes with stresses
such as heat, cold, and altitude.
e. Primatology: the study of the biology, evolution, behavior, and social life of
primates.
2. Biological anthropology is multidisciplinary as it draws on biology, zoology, geology,
anatomy, physiology, medicine, public health, osteology, and archaeology.
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E. Beyond the Classroom: The Utility of Hand and Foot Bones for Problems in Biological
Anthropology.
1. Alicia Wilbur studied hand and foot bones to determine the stature and sex of
individuals who had been buried in a burial mound in west-central Illinois.
2. After taking a series of measurements, she used statistical methods to predict the sex
of the individuals with accuracies of over 87%.
3. Based on a series of skeletal anomalies on a female skeleton, Ms. Cook argues that
this individual suffered from a rare genetic syndrome called Rubinstein-Taybi
Syndrome.
F. Linguistic anthropology is the study of language in its social and cultural context across
space and time.
1. Some linguistic anthropologists investigate universal features of language that may be
linked to uniformities in the human brain.
2. Historical linguists reconstruct ancient languages and study linguistic variation
through time.
3. Sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation to
discover varied perceptions and patterns of thought in different cultures.
V. Applied Anthropology
A. Anthropology, as defined by the American Anthropological Association (AAA), has two
dimensions: (1) theoretical/academic anthropology and (2) practicing or applied
anthropology.
1. Theoretical/academic anthropology includes the four subfields discussed above
(cultural, archaeological, biological, and linguistic anthropology).
a. Directed at collecting data to test hypotheses and models that were created to
advance the field of anthropology.
b. Generally, theoretical/academic anthropology is carried out in academic
institutions (e.g., universities and specialized research facilities).
2. Applied anthropology is the application of any of anthropological data, perspectives,
theory, and techniques to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems.
a. Some standard subdivisions have developed in applied anthropology: medical
anthropology, environmental anthropology, forensic anthropology, and
development.
b. Applied anthropologists are generally employed by international development
agencies, like the World Bank, United States Agency for International
Development (USAID), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United
Nations.
B. Applied anthropologists assess the social and cultural dimensions of economic
development.
1. Development projects often fail when planners ignore the cultural dimensions of
development.
2. Applied anthropologists work with local communities to identify specific social
conditions that will influence the failure or success of a development project.
VI. Anthropology and Other Academic Fields
A. Anthropology's own broad scope has always lent it to interdisciplinary collaboration.
1. Anthropology is a science, in that it is a systematic field of study that uses
experiments, observations, and deduction to produce reliable explanations of human
cultural and biological phenomena.
2. Anthropology is also one of the humanities, in that it encompasses the study and
cross-cultural comparison of languages, texts, philosophies, arts, music,
performances, and other forms of creative expression.
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B. Cultural anthropology and sociology.
1. Formerly, sociology focused on “western” societies while anthropology looked at
“exotic” societies.
2. Cultural anthropological methodologies have primarily been in-depth and qualitative
(e.g., participant observation).
3. Sociological methodologies tended to be mainly quantitative (statistically based).
4. The trend toward increasing interdisciplinary cooperation (deconstruction) is causing
these differences to disappear.
C. Anthropology, Political Science, and Economics.
1. While other disciplines have looked at such institutions as economics and politics as
distinct and amenable to separate analysis, anthropology has emphasized their
relatedness to other aspects of the general social order.
2. Anthropology has tended to emphasize cross-cultural variation in such institutions, in
contrast to the almost exclusively Western orientation of the other disciplines.
D. Anthropology and the Humanities.
1. The anthropological concept of “culture” has gained increasing influence in the
humanities' treatment of human artifacts.
2. In turn, cultural studies have brought a fuller recognition of the influence such
artifacts may exert on human behavior.
E. Anthropology and Psychology.
1. Anthropology has contributed a cross-cultural perspective to concepts developed in
psychology.
2. The school of cultural anthropology known as culture and personality has emphasized
child-rearing practices as the fundamental means for transmitting culture.
F. Anthropology and History.
1. The convergence between the disciplines of anthropology and history has been
marked, particularly during the last decade.
2. Recent treatments of colonial history have emphasized the importance of
understanding the cultural contexts of historical texts.
3. Kottak argues for some continued distinction between history and anthropology, on
the basis of history's focus on the movement of individuals through roles, as opposed
to anthropology's focus on change in structure or form.
VII. Science, Explanation, and Hypothesis Testing
A. Science is a way of viewing the world.
1. Scientists strive to improve understanding by testing hypotheses showing how and
why the object of study is related to other objects of study.
2. Hypotheses are suggested explanations of things and events.
3. Explanations show how and why the thing to be understood is related to other things
in some known way.
4. Associations are the observed relationships between two or more measured variables.
5. A theory is more general, suggesting and implying associations and attempting to
explain them.
B. Social sciences
1. Associations are usually stated probabilistically: two or more variables tend to be
related in a predictable way, but there are exceptions.
2. A theory is an explanatory framework that helps us understand why something exits.
3. Theories cannot be proved, we evaluate them through the method of falsification.
a. If a theory is true, certain predictions should stand up to tests designed to disprove
them.
b. Theories that have not been disproved are accepted because the available evidence
seems to support them.
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LECTURE TOPICS
1.
Discuss what it means that anthropology is holistic. Provide examples of the
pervasiveness of culture. Discuss why it is important to understand and preserve cultural
diversity.
2.
Discuss the origins and development of anthropology. Be sure to discuss the rise of
American anthropology and what distinguishes it from European anthropology.
3.
Bring anthropology out of the ivory tower and National Geographic. Discuss how
anthropology is more than traveling to distant places, eating strange foods, and speaking
foreign languages. Make anthropology relevant to the lives of your students.
4.
Discuss anthropology’s dual identity as a member of both the social sciences and the
humanities. Explore the advantages and problems rooted in this dual identity. Trace the
origins of this identity and explain the implications it has for the future of anthropology.
For example, is the split of Stanford University’s Department of Anthropology into two
new departments, Anthropological Sciences and Cultural and Social Anthropology, a
sign of things to come or a unique event?
SUGGESTED FILMS
Series: Strangers Abroad
Six parts, 52 minutes each
This series explores the origins of modern anthropological fieldwork by presenting the lives and
research of some the field's important pioneers. Titles in the series: Sir Walter Baldwin
Spencer: Fieldwork; Franz Boas: The Shackles of Tradition; William Rivers: Everything Is
Relatives; Bronislaw Malinowski: Off the Veranda; Margaret Mead: Coming of Age; Sir Edward
Evans-Pritchard: Strange Beliefs. From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
The Rise of Anthropology: Haddon and Rivers
1988 50 minutes
This film traces the ethnographic expedition of Drs. Alfred Haddon and W. H. Rivers to the
Melanesia. Drawing on journal entries, archival footage, photos, and interviews with a modern
researcher, this film contextualizes the importance and impact of this early expedition. A BBC
production. Original BBC broadcast title: Dr. Miller and the Islanders.
Paradise Lost: Traditional Cultures at Risk
53 minutes
This film compares the life of two traditional cultures whose existence is threatened by the
spread of Western society. It presents the Nenetsi nomads of the Yamal Peninsula, Siberia, and
the Caribou Indian tribe of Canada. The Nenetsi are depicted as faring better both economically
and socially than the Caribou Indian tribe, who see the infiltration of Western conveniences as
the cause for the deterioration of their traditional culture.
From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Series: Our Developing World: Regional Political Geography
This series investigates global civics in a range of developing nations from all over the world.
Some of the themes discussed in the series include human rights; minority rights; health;
economic and environmental challenges and advances. 10-part series, each runs about 30
minutes. Titles in the series: Central America: Costa Rica; Central America: Cuba; South
America: Brazil; South America: Paraguay; Africa: Tunisia, Libya, Egypt; Africa: Sierra Leone,
Ghana, Kenya; Africa: Tanzania, Mozambique, Lesotho; Asia: Mongolia, China, Nepal; Asia:
Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam; South Pacific-Oceania: The Philippines, Kiribati. From Films for the
Humanities and Sciences.
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Series: Global Issues in Our Developing World
This series presents case studies that address problems and issues common to various developing
countries around the world. Each film compares a common theme in three different developing
countries. 4-part series, 30-33 minutes each. Titles in the series: Ecology and the Environment:
Galapagos, Mauritania, Madagascar; Economic Development: Colombia, Bolivia, India; Human
Rights: Haiti, Turkey, Oman; Drugs and Health: Peru, Uganda, Turkey. From Films for the
Humanities and Sciences.
Bones of Contention: Native American Archaeology
1991 49 minutes
This film explores the relationship between researchers and Native American groups and the
human remains of Native Americans that are in museum collections around the U.S. A BBC
Production.
Cry of the Yurok
1991 58 minutes
This film presents the Yuroks, California’s largest Native American tribe, from their arrival in
California to their struggles with whites in the 19th century to their modern existence. From
Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Our Identity, Our Land
1994 60 minutes
This film depicts the struggle of the Kanaka Maoli, an indigenous community on Big Island of
Hawaii, and their attempts to keep the area sacred. From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
USING THE ATLAS
In this chapter, Kottak discusses the cultural and biological aspects of human
adaptability. Using this map of world topography, explore adaptations that humans have
developed around the world. Talk about the important role environment plays establishing the
ecological parameters in which a community lives, but be sure to explain the fallacy of
environmental determinism. This map can serve as a way of leading into topics presented later in
the textbook.
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