What Is Anthropology?

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