The Essence of Anthropology

Anthropology 1102 Georgia Perimeter College

What is Anthropology?
Anthropos = Man (i.e. humanity) logia = discourse What makes human cultures different from each other? In what ways are all humans similar to each other? To what extent does our environment shape our culture & behavior? How did language evolve and how does it effect our culture? Did we really evolve from apes? How did past societies live?

Anthropology Is

Anthropology is the study of human cultural and biological diversity across time. (Book: The study of the human species and it s immediate ancestors). Anthropology seeks knowledge about what makes people different, and about what they all have in common. Anthropology seeks to uncover principles of behavior that apply to all human communities. Diversity is the key; body shapes & sizes, customs, clothing, speech, religion & worldview to name a few.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUGiSXXdse0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7p_whtOtQ&feature=related

What Do Anthropologists Do?

Anthropologists are concerned with the description and explanation of reality. They formulate and test hypotheses concerning humankind so they can develop theories about our species. Holistic: encompasses past, present, and future; biology, society, language & culture.

Two Key factors for Anthropologists

Anthropologists look for things that are represented universally in all human societies (i.e.,
marriage systems, kinship, art, religion etc.).

2.

And that vary across cultures.

The /nakailenga /(initiation ceremony) of Sari Amaring Napes, Ongaia village, Kilenge, West New Britain, Papua New Guinea, during a 1982 occurrence of the Sia ceremonial cycle. Photo by M. Zelenietz

The Development of Anthropology

Anthropology as a distinct field of inquiry is relatively recent (since late 1800 s). The roots of anthropology can be traced to initial accounts of early traders such as Marco Polo, which focused attention on human differences. Europeans gradually came to recognize that despite all the differences, they might share a basic humanity with people everywhere.

Edward Burnett Tylor

Bronislaw Malinowski

Franz Boaz

Culture-bound

Anthropologies unique cross-cultural and holistic perspective protects it from culture-bound theories or realities based on the assumptions and values of one s own culture.

Example: Co-sleeping with parents in infants

Infants in the United States typically sleep apart from their parents, but cross-cultural research shows that co-sleeping is the rule. The photo on the right shows a Nenet family sleeping in their tent. The Nenet are arctic reindeer pastoralists in Siberia.

4 - Sub-Fields of Anthropology
Cultural Linguistics Biological Archaeology

Biological (Physical) Anthropology

Biological anthropologists study the current, historical, and pre-historical, bio-cultural aspects of humans to understand human nature. They focus on humans as biological organisms (Homo sapiens), tracing their biological origins, evolutionary development, genetic diversity, and variation. They analyze fossils and observe living primates (including modern humans) to reconstruct the ancestry of the human species.

Sub-Fields of Biological Anthropology

Molecular Anthropology Uses genetic and biochemical techniques to test hypotheses about evolution, adaptation, and variation. Paleoanthropology The study of the origins of the human species.

Sub-Fields of Biological Anthropology

Biocultural Focusing on the interaction of biology and culture. Forensic anthropology Specializes in the identification of human skeletal remains for legal purposes. http://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=H-lso0JL3Z8 Primatology The study of living and fossil primates.
Dr. Bettina Shell-Duncan studies maternal & child health in sub-Saharan Africa

Jane Goodall

Cultural Anthropology

The study of customary patterns in human behavior, thought, and feelings. Focuses on humans as culture-producing and culture-reproducing creatures.

Three main components: fieldwork, ethnography and ethnology.

Ethnology

The study and analysis of different cultures from a comparative or historical point of view, utilizing ethnographic accounts and developing anthropological theories that help explain why certain important differences or similarities occur among groups.

Fieldwork
The term anthropologists use for on-location research. Participant observation - The technique of learning a people s culture through direct participation in their everyday life over an extended period of time.

Ethnography

The systematic description of a particular culture based on firsthand observation.

Culture

A society s shared and socially transmitted ideas, values, and perceptions, which are used to make sense of experience and which generate behavior and are reflected in that behavior. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhCruPBvSjQ

Archaeology

Studies material remains in order to describe and explain human behavior. Study tools, pottery, and other features such as hearths and enclosures that remain as the testimony of earlier cultures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjcDU1LxH4&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj-Oq8vk3N4

Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island)

A tiny volcanic island in the middle of the southern Pacific Ocean, also known as Easter Island. The landscape is punctuated by nearly 900 stone heads, some towering to 65 feet, called moai by the islanders.

Linguistic Anthropology
Studies human languages (The hallmark of the human species!):

Description of a language - the way a sentence is formed or a verb conjugated. Historical linguistics: the way languages change over time. Sociolinguistics: The study of language in its social setting.

Babel was a city that united humanity, all speaking a single language.

It is upon language that culture itself depends and within language that humanity's knowledge resides.

Empirical
Based on observations of the world rather than on intuition or faith. Theory An explanation of natural phenomena, supported by a reliable body of data. Hypothesis A tentative explanation of the relation between certain phenomena.

Comparative Method

Uses the methods of other scientists by developing hypotheses and arriving at theories. Anthropologists make comparisons between peoples and cultures past and present, related species, and fossil groups.

The Scientific Method

Conclusions
Anthropology contributes to a students growth in three ways:
1.

It broadens your understanding of the human experience across cultures and time.

2.

It encourages new skills of inquiry and provides tools for understanding and analyzing the diversity of the human condition both past and present.

3.

It provides an interdisciplinary approach to teaching that spans from the arts to the sciences and offers both real field-based and laboratory-based research and vibrant theoretical debate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xErJAsZo2Pw