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What Is Anthropology?

What Is Anthropology?. Overview. Anthropology confronts basic questions of human existence and survival. How we originated. How we have changed. How we are changing still. Anthropology is holistic. Interested in the whole of the human condition. Past, present, and future Biology Society

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What Is Anthropology?

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  1. What Is Anthropology?

  2. Overview • Anthropology confronts basic questions of human existence and survival. • How we originated. • How we have changed. • How we are changing still.

  3. Anthropology is holistic • Interested in the whole of the human condition • Past, present, and future • Biology • Society • Language • Culture

  4. Four subfields • Cultural anthropology – examines cultural diversity of the present and recent past. • Archaeology – reconstructs behavior by studying material remains

  5. Four subfields • Linguistic anthropology – considers how speech varies with social factors and over time and space • Biological anthropology – study of human fossils, genetics, and bodily growth and nonhuman primates

  6. Human Adaptability • Culture – traditions, customs and innovations that govern behavior and beliefs • Distinctly human • Transmitted through learning • Society – organized life in groups

  7. Adaptation, Variation, and Change • Adaptation – process by which organisms cope with environmental forces and stresses • Humans adapt using biological and cultural means

  8. Adaptation, Variation, and Change • Rate of change accelerated during the past 10,000 years • Foraging sole basis of human subsistence for millions of years • Only took few thousand years for food production – cultivation of plants and domestication (stockbreeding) of animals

  9. Adaptation, Variation, and Change • First civilizations arose between 6000 and 5000 B.P. (Before the Present) • More recently, spread of industrial production profoundly affected human life • Today’s global economy and communications link all contemporary people, directly or indirectly, in modern world system

  10. Table 1.1 Forms of Cultural and Biological Adaptation (to High Altitude)

  11. General Anthropology • Academic discipline of anthropology includes: • Sociocultural (cultural anthropology) • Archaeological • Biological • Linguistic

  12. Four-field Approach • Developed in U.S. • Early American anthropologists studying native peoples of North America combined studies of customs, social life, language, and physical traits

  13. General Anthropology • Sound conclusions about “human nature” cannot be derived from studying a single nation, society, or cultural tradition

  14. Cultural Forces ShapeHuman Biology • Culture key environmental force in determining how human bodies grow and develop • Cultural standards of attractiveness and propriety influence participation and achievement in sports • Biocultural – inclusion and combination (to solve a common problem) of biological and cultural perspectives and approaches

  15. Cultural Anthropology • Describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and differences • Ethnography – Fieldwork in a particular culture; provides account of that community, society, or culture • Ethnology – cross cultural comparison; the comparative study of ethnographic data, of society and of culture

  16. Table 1.2 Ethnography and Ethnology – Two Dimensions of Cultural Anthropology

  17. Archeological Anthropology • Study of human behavior and cultural patterns and process through material remains • Artifacts (e.g., potsherds, jewelry, and tools) • Garbage • Burials • Remains of structures

  18. Archeological Anthropology • Archaeologists use paleoecological studies to establish ecological and subsistence parameters within which given groups lived • Archaeological record provides unique opportunity to look at changes in social complexity over time

  19. Archeological Anthropology • Archaeologists also study the cultures of historical and living people • Historical archaeology combines archaeological data and textual data to reconstruct historically known groups • Rathje’s garbology shows what people report may contrast with real behavior

  20. Biological Anthropology • Study of human biological variation in time and space • Includes evolution, genetics, growth and development, and primatology • Draws on biology, zoology, geology, anatomy, physiology, medicine, public health, osteology, and archaeology

  21. Biological Anthropology • Special interests: • Paleoanthropology – human evolution as revealed by the fossil record • Human genetics • Human growth and development • Human biologicalplasticity– Body’s ability to change • Primatology – study of biology, evolution, behavior, and social life of primates

  22. Linguistic Anthropology • Study of language in its social and cultural context across space and time • Historical linguists – reconstruct ancient languages and study linguistic variation through time • Sociolinguistics – investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation [anthropological linguistics:] to discover varied perceptions and patterns of thought and practice in different cultures

  23. Anthropology and Other Academic Fields • Systematic field of study or body of knowledge that aims, through experiment, observation, and deduction, to produce reliable explanations of phenomena with reference to the material and physical world • Anthropology is a science

  24. Anthropology and Other Academic Fields • Encompasses study of and cross-cultural comparison of languages, texts, philosophies, arts, music, performances, and other forms of creative expression • Form of knowledge is often intersubjective • Anthropology is an art

  25. Anthropology and Other Academic Fields • Share an interest in social relations, organization, and behavior • Originally, sociologists focused on industrial West • Anthropology and Psychology • Malinowski contended that cultural context molds individual psychology • Cultural Anthropology and Sociology

  26. Science, Explanation, and Hypothesis Testing • Explains how and why the thing to be understood (the explicandum) is related to other things in some known way • Associations – observed relationships between two or more measured variables • Scientists strive to improve understanding by testing hypotheses that suggest explanations of things and events

  27. Science, Explanation, and Hypothesis Testing A theory is more general • Explanatory framework, containing a series of statements, that helps us understand why (something exists or happens in a particular way) • Theories suggest patterns, connections, and relationships that may be confirmed by new research

  28. Science, Explanation, and Hypothesis Testing • Theories cannot be proved; we evaluate them through the method of falsification • Theories that are not disproved are accepted because the available evidence seems to support them • Associations usually state probabilistically with two or more variables that tend to be related in a predictable way, but there are exceptions

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