Download Third Edition

Window on Humanity
Conrad Phillip Kottak
Third Edition
Chapter 1
What Is Anthropology?
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
Overview
• Human adaptability
• Human biological diversity and the race
concept
• Subfields of anthropology
• Anthropology as a member of the sciences
and the humanities
• Applied anthropology
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Anthropology
– Study of the human species and its immediate
ancestors
– Holistic discipline: concerned with human
biology, society, language, and culture in the
past, present, and future
– Unique cross-cultural perspective
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Human Adaptability
– Humans are among the most adaptable animals in the
world, able to inhabit widely variant ecological niches
• Humans use biological means to adapt to a given environment
• Humans are unique in having cultural means of adaptation.
– Humans share both society and culture
• Society: organized life in groups, a feature that humans share
with other animals
• Cultures: traditions and customs, transmitted through learning,
guide the beliefs and behaviors of people exposed to them
• Culture is not biological, but ability to use it rests in features of
human biology
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Adaptation, Variation, and Change
– Adaptation: process by which organisms cope with
environmental forces and stresses
– Human adaptation: interaction between culture
and biology to satisfy individual goals
– Four types of human adaptation
•
•
•
•
Cultural (technological) adaptation
Genetic adaptation
Long-term physiological or developmental adaptation
Short-term or immediate physiological adaptation
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Adaptation, Variation, and Change
– Social and cultural adaptation have become
increasingly important for human groups
• Diverse ways of coping with a wide range of
environments.
• Rate of cultural adaptation has been rapidly accelerating
during the last 10,000 years
– Food production developed 12,000 - 10,000 y.a.
– First civilizations developed 6,000 - 5,000 y.a.
– Spread of industrial production profoundly affected
human life
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Human biological diversity and the race concept
– Racial classification – the attempt to assign humans to
discrete categories based on common ancestry
– Biological race – a geographically isolated subdivision
of a species
– Biological races do not exist among humans
• Human populations have not been isolated enough from one
another to develop into discrete groups
• Biological variation between human populations involves
gradual shifts (clines) in gene frequencies and other biological
features, not sharp breaks
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Human biological diversity and the race concept
– Race supposedly reflects genetic ancestry, but racial
classifications are usually based on phenotypical traits
(e.g., skin color)
– Phenotype refers to an organism’s evident traits, its
“manifest biology”
– Problems with phenotype-based racial classifications:
• Impossible to determine which trait(s) should be considered
primary
• Racial classifications do not accurately represent the wide
range of skin colors and other biological diversity among
human populations
• Particular traits (e.g., skin color, stature, skull form, facial
features) do not necessarily co-occur
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Human biological diversity and the race
concept
– Problems with phenotype-based racial
classifications:
• Assumption that phenotypical traits reflect shared,
unchanging genetic material is problematic
– Phenotypical similarities and differences do not
necessarily have a genetic basis
– Range of phenotypes in a population may change without
any genetic change because environmental variables can
greatly affect the growth and development of individuals
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Explaining skin color
– Melanin – primary determinant of skin color
– Natural selection provides an explanation for the
geographic distribution of different skin colors
• Light skin is selected against in the sunny tropics
– Risk of sunburn, increased susceptibility to disease, decreased
ability to sweat, skin cancer
• Vitamin D production stimulated by sunlight
– Lighter skin helps to ensure adequate production of vitamin D in
cloudy, cold environments
– Darker skin helps to prevent overproduction of vitamin D in the
sunny tropics
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Cultural forces shape human biology
– Biocultural: inclusion and combination of
cultural and biological perspectives to address a
particular problem
– Culture is a key environmental force that
shapes how human bodies grow and develop
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Subdisciplines of American anthropology
– Cultural anthropology
• Ethnography – fieldwork-based accounts of particular
communities, societies, or cultures
• Ethnology – examines, analyzes, and compares the results of
ethnography
– Archaeological anthropology – studies human behavior
and cultural patterns through material remains
– Biological (or physical) anthropology – studies human
biological diversity
• Evolution, genetics, biological plasticity, primatology
– Linguistic anthropology – studies present and past
languages
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Anthropology and other academic fields
– Anthropology is both a scientific and a
humanistic discipline
– Besides its links to the natural sciences (e.g.,
geology) and social sciences (e.g., sociology),
anthropology has strong ties to the humanities
(e.g., comparative literature)
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 1
What Is Anthropology?
• Dimensions of American anthropology:
– Academic or theoretical anthropology
– Applied anthropology
• Applied anthropology
– Application of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and
methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social
problems
– All four subdisciplines
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.