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What Is Anthropology?

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Overview

– How we originated.– How we have changed.– How we are changing still.

• Anthropology confronts basic questions of human existence and survival.

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Anthropology is holistic

– Past, present, and future– Biology– Society– Language– Culture

• Interested in the whole of the human condition

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Four subfields

• Cultural anthropology – examines cultural diversity of the present and recent past.

• Archaeology – reconstructs behavior by studying material remains

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• Biological anthropology – study of human fossils, genetics, and bodily growth and nonhuman primates

Four subfields

• Linguistic anthropology – considers how speech varies with social factors and over time and space

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Human Adaptability

• Culture – traditions, customs and innovations that govern behavior and beliefs– Distinctly human– Transmitted through learning

• Society – organized life in groups

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Adaptation, Variation, and Change

• Adaptation – process by which organisms cope with environmental forces and stresses

• Humans adapt using biological and cultural means

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– 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

Adaptation, Variation, and Change

• Rate of change accelerated during the past 10,000 years

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– 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

Adaptation, Variation, and Change

• First civilizations arose between 6000 and 5000 B.P. (Before the Present)

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

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General Anthropology

– Sociocultural (cultural anthropology)– Archaeological– Biological– Linguistic

• Academic discipline of anthropology includes:

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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

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General Anthropology

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

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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

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Cultural Anthropology

– 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

• Describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and differences

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Table 1.2 Ethnography and Ethnology – Two Dimensions of Cultural Anthropology

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Archeological Anthropology

– Artifacts (e.g., potsherds, jewelry, and tools)– Garbage– Burials– Remains of structures

• Study of human behavior and cultural patterns and process through material remains

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Archeological Anthropology

– Archaeological record provides unique opportunity to look at changes in social complexity over time

• Archaeologists use paleoecological studies to establish ecological and subsistence parameters within which given groups lived

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Archeological Anthropology

– 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

• Archaeologists also study the cultures of historical and living people

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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

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Biological Anthropology

• Special interests:

– Paleoanthropology – human evolution as revealed by the fossil record

– Human genetics– Human growth and development – Human biological plasticity– Body’s

ability to change– Primatology – study of biology, evolution,

behavior, and social life of primates

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– 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

Linguistic Anthropology

• Study of language in its social and cultural context across space and time

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Science, Explanation, and Hypothesis Testing

– 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

A theory is more general

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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