Download What is Anthropology?

1
Overview
This chapter introduces students to the textbook by discussing how
Anthropology is defined and how it relates to other academic fields. It
also discusses the different subfields and dimensions that exist within
Anthropology.
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What is Anthropology
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Anthropology
• Anthropology is the study of the human species and its immediate
ancestors.
• 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.
• Anthropology offers a unique cross-cultural perspective by constantly
comparing the customs of one society with those of others.
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People share both society and
culture.
• Society is organized life in groups, a feature that humans share with
other animals.
• Cultures are traditions and customs, transmitted through learning, that
govern the beliefs and behaviors of the people exposed to them.
• While culture is not biological, the ability to use it rests in hominid
biology.
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Adaptation
• Adaptation is the process by which organisms cope with environmental
stresses.
• Human adaptation involves interaction between culture and biology to
satisfy individual goals.
• Four types of human adaptation (see the illustration of these with
regard to adjustment to high altitude).
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Cultural (technological) adaptation.
Genetic adaptation.
Long-term physiological or developmental adaptation.
Immediate physiological adaptation.
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Human Adaptation
• Humans are the most adaptable animals in the world, having the ability
to inhabit widely variant ecological niches.
• Humans, like all other animals, use biological means to adapt to a
given environment.
• Humans are unique in having cultural means of adaptation.
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History of Adaptation
• Through time, social and cultural means of adaptation have become
increasingly important for human groups.
• Human groups have devised diverse ways of coping with a wide range
of environments.
• The rate of this cultural adaptation has been rapidly accelerating during
the last 10,000 years.
– 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.
– The first civilizations developed between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago.
– More recently, the spread of industrial production has profoundly affected
human life.
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The four subdisciplines of American
anthropology.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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).
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Subdisciplines of Anthropology
• 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.
• 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).
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Subdisciplines of Anthropology
• 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).
• Any conclusions about “human nature” must be pursued with a
comparative, cross-cultural approach.
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Cultural Forces Shape Human
Biology
• Cultural traditions promote certain activities and abilities, discourage
others, and set standards of physical well-being and attractiveness.
• Culture has more to do with sports success than “race” does.
– 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.
– 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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Cultural Anthropology
• Cultural anthropology combines ethnography and ethnology to study
human societies and cultures for the purpose of explaining social and
cultural similarities and differences.
• 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.
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Ethnographic Fieldwork
• 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).
• Ethnographic fieldwork tends to emphasize local behavior, beliefs,
customs, social life, economic activities, politics, and religion, rather
than developments at the national level.
• 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.
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Ethnology
• Ethnology examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares the
ethnographic data gathered in different societies to make
generalizations about society and culture.
• Ethnology uses ethnographic data to build models, test hypotheses, and
create theories that enhance our understanding of how social and
cultural systems work.
• Ethnology works from the particular (ethnographic data) to the general
(theory).
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Archaeological Anthropology
• Archaeological anthropology reconstructs, describes, and interprets
past human behavior and cultural patterns through material remains.
• The material remains of a culture include artifacts (e.g., potsherds,
jewelry, and tools), garbage, burials, and the remains of structures.
• Archaeologists use paleoecological studies to establish the ecological
and subsistence parameters within which given groups lived.
• 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).
• Archaeology is not restricted to prehistoric societies.
– Historical archaeology combines archaeological data and textual data to
reconstruct historically known groups.
– William Rathje’s “garbology” project in Tucson, Arizona.
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Biological or Physical Anthropology
• Biological, or physical, anthropology investigates human biological
diversity across time and space.
• There are five special interests within biological anthropology:
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Paleoanthropology: human evolution as revealed by the fossil record.
Human genetics.
Human growth and development.
Human biological plasticity: the body’s ability to change as it copes with
stresses such as heat, cold, and altitude.
– Primatology: the study of the biology, evolution, behavior, and social life
of primates.
• Biological anthropology is multidisciplinary as it draws on biology,
zoology, geology, anatomy, physiology, medicine, public health,
osteology, and archaeology.
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Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic anthropology is the study of language in its social and
cultural context across space and time.
• Some linguistic anthropologists investigate universal features of
language that may be linked to uniformities in the human brain.
• Historical linguists reconstruct ancient languages and study linguistic
variation through time.
• Sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic
variation to discover varied perceptions and patterns of thought in
different cultures.
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Applied Anthropology
• Anthropology, as defined by the American Anthropological
Association (AAA), has two dimensions: (1) theoretical/academic
anthropology and (2) practicing or applied anthropology.
• Theoretical/academic anthropology includes the four subfields
discussed above (cultural, archaeological, biological, and linguistic
anthropology).
– Directed at collecting data to test hypotheses and models that were created
to advance the field of anthropology.
– Generally, theoretical/academic anthropology is carried out in academic
institutions (e.g., universities and specialized research facilities).
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Applied Anthropology
• Applied anthropology is the application of any of anthropological data,
perspectives, theory, and techniques to identify, assess, and solve
contemporary social problems.
– Some standard subdivisions have developed in applied anthropology:
medical anthropology, environmental anthropology, forensic
anthropology, and development.
– 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.
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Applied Anthropology and
Economic Development
• Applied anthropologists assess the social and cultural dimensions of
economic development.
• Development projects often fail when planners ignore the cultural
dimensions of development.
• Applied anthropologists work with local communities to identify
specific social conditions that will influence the failure or success of a
development project.
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Anthropology and Other Academic
Fields
• Anthropology's own broad scope has always lent it to interdisciplinary
collaboration.
• 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.
• 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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Cultural anthropology and sociology.
• Formerly, sociology focused on “western” societies while
anthropology looked at “exotic” societies.
• Cultural anthropological methodologies have primarily been in-depth
and qualitative (e.g., participant observation).
• Sociological methodologies tended to be mainly quantitative
(statistically based).
• The trend toward increasing interdisciplinary cooperation
(deconstruction) is causing these differences to disappear.
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Anthropology, Political Science, and
Economics.
• 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.
• Anthropology has tended to emphasize cross-cultural variation in such
institutions, in contrast to the almost exclusively Western orientation of
the other disciplines.
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Anthropology and the Humanities.
• The anthropological concept of “culture” has gained increasing
influence in the humanities' treatment of human artifacts.
• In turn, cultural studies have brought a fuller recognition of the
influence such artifacts may exert on human behavior.
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Anthropology and Psychology.
• Anthropology has contributed a cross-cultural perspective to concepts
developed in psychology.
• The school of cultural anthropology known as culture and personality
has emphasized child-rearing practices as the fundamental means for
transmitting culture.
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Anthropology and History.
• The convergence between the disciplines of anthropology and history
has been marked, particularly during the last decade.
• Recent treatments of colonial history have emphasized the importance
of understanding the cultural contexts of historical texts.
• 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.
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Science, Explanation, and
Hypothesis Testing
• Science is a way of viewing the world.
• Scientists strive to improve understanding by testing hypotheses
showing how and why the object of study is related to other objects of
study.
• Hypotheses are suggested explanations of things and events.
• Explanations show how and why the thing to be understood is related
to other things in some known way.
• Associations are the observed relationships between two or more
measured variables.
• A theory is more general, suggesting and implying associations and
attempting to explain them.
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Social sciences
• Associations are usually stated probabilistically: two or more variables
tend to be related in a predictable way, but there are exceptions.
• A theory is an explanatory framework that helps us understand why
something exits.
• Theories cannot be proved, we evaluate them through the method of
falsification.
– If a theory is true, certain predictions should stand up to tests designed to
disprove them.
– Theories that have not been disproved are accepted because the available
evidence seems to support them.
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