Chapter 1

Anthropology

Asking Questions about Humanity

Why Study Anthropology?

• Each student on the EvCC campus is asked to take at least one diversity class.

• There is a pragmatic reason for this: employers have a list of skills they look for in

their employees:

• Math skills.

• Computer skills.

• Communications skills:

• Writing is one form of such skills.

• The other they look for is the ability to speak in public.

• Also they want their employees to be able to work well in diverse cultural,

economic and political groups.

• So what does the study of anthropology contribute? Anthropology:

• expands our understanding of people in various places and at different social

levels

• helps us avoid misunderstandings.

• combats racial and ethnic stereotypes and bigotry.

• expands our understandings of cultures different from our own.

• teaches us how to live in our multicultural society.

• makes us better guests in other countries, thus avoiding the “ugly American”

issues (with its origins in the concept of exceptionalism). Watch this

Humans are a Source of Study 1

• “Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and

circumstances.” - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

• Humans are really among the most adaptable of species.

• The single most important adaptive strategy? Culture.

• Humans must be understood in terms of shared learned behavior (culture) as

well as biology.

• 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 hominin biology.

• What is the difference between culture and society?

• Society is organized life in groups, a feature that humans share with other

animals.

• The capacity for sociality (ability to form social groups) is biological.

• We also see our species as quite variable.

• This can be supported when we outline our differences in the environment,

language, beliefs, and social organization.

• As to appearance, even though you book suggests our physical appearance differ

greatly, in fact, our species is very homogenous, genetically.

Humans are a Source of Study 2

• The biocultural approach

• Cultural forces shape human biology

cultural traditions promote certain

activities and abilities, discourage

others, and set standards of physical

well-being and attractiveness.

• The biocultural approach means one

looks at environmental factors and the

role of biology, as well as culture.

Biology

CultureEnvironment

• Local example:

• Vitamin D deficiency is common in the Pacific Northwest.

• Cultural factors: Diet, indoor living, clothing, and sunblocks.

• Environmental factors: Sun, what sun?

• Biological factors: Skin tone, a multiple number of diseases (cancers

and rickets among them).

• What other examples might you suggest?

What is Anthropology and is it Relevant?

• Many explorers recorded their views and observations on the new peoples they

encountered.

• But, they did not do so in a systematical manner.

• They learned (at least some of the time) that getting along with others is valuable.

• 3 M’s of colonialism

• The first encounter is often between diverse groups looking to trade (merchants)

• When trouble occurs, the dominant group brings in the military

• For more “permanent” changes (“pacifying the natives”) the missionaries arrive:

religious groups, educators, and other agents of the dominant culture.

• Anthropology offers a powerful framework for posing questions about humanity and

grasping the complexity of the human experience. It also provides important

knowledge to help address many social problems.

• What is anthropology, and why is it relevant in today’s world? This question leads to

others:

1) How did anthropology begin?

2) What are the four subfields of anthropology, and what do they share in common?

3) How do anthropologists know what they know?

4) How is anthropology put to work in the world?

5) What ethical issues does anthropology raise?

How Did Anthropology Begin? 1

• During the nineteenth century, anthropology emerged as an academic discipline devoted to the

observation and analysis of human variation, built on advances in the natural sciences during the

age of reason (late 1600s–1700s).

• During the 16th and 17th centuries, major changes in scientific thought occurred thought

(called the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment)

• Physics introduced ideas about motion and gravity.

• Medicine introduced the concept of the circulation system.

• Other inventions included the telescope, barometer, and the microscope.

• Geological principles were introduced

• Early naturalists (biologists) explored living species.

• The early researchers viewed the world from a fixity of species perspective (static

worldview).

• As a result, many of the early naturalists are known for their contributions to

descriptive biology

• Human differences were not the main focus of research; ancient Greek/Roman views

dominated.

• During the 1800s, anthropology emerged as an academic discipline devoted to the observation

and analysis of human variation.

• Three key concerns shaped the foundation of professional anthropology in the 1850s:

• Disruptions caused by industrialization in Europe and America.

• The rise of evolutionary theories.

• The spread of European colonialism.

How Did Anthropology Begin? 2

• The disruptions of industrialization

• Industrialization refers to the economic process of shifting from an agricultural

economy to a factory-based one.

• Industrialization disrupted American and European societies by bringing large

numbers of rural people into towns and cities to work in factories.

• Asking about how European villages and cities were structured and how they

perpetuated their cultures ultimately led to questions about how all sorts of non-

Western societies worked as well.

• This is where sociology and cultural anthropology overlapped in the “early days”

• Students of both disciplines read the founders: Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim,

and Max Weber.

• In fact, the first chapter of most sociology textbooks begin with the changes

that result from the Industrial Revolution

• The focus of this course is not taught the same in the US as compared to Europe:

• Social anthropology: focuses on social organizations, especially as influenced

by kinship (British anthropology). In some ways this strongly overlaps with

how sociology is taught in the US.

• Cultural anthropology: focuses more on meanings and symbolism of culture

(American anthropology)

How Did Anthropology Begin? 3

• A second key influence on the development of anthropology was the rise of

evolutionary theory to explain biological variation among and within species.

• The theory of evolution

• Evolution refers to the adaptive changes organisms make across generations.

• Contrary to popular perception, Charles Darwin did not “discover” evolution.

• He contributed the mechanism of natural selection to explain evolutionary

changes.

• His contribution was the concept of natural selection:

• Natural selection shapes populations because individuals with locally

advantageous traits tend to have more offspring.

• Those offspring carry the genes of their parents and, over time, genes that code

for “well-adapted” traits increase within the population.

• Natural selection has been called Darwin’s “dangerous idea” because when he

published On the Origin of Species in 1859 it challenged religious beliefs about

the age of the earth and the assumption that all animal species (including humans)

had been created in their present form.

• Evolution by natural selection remains politically and religiously controversial

to the present day in some parts of the world.

• But it is no longer scientifically controversial, and nearly all anthropologists and

biologists accept evolution as fact.

How Did Anthropology Begin? 4

• The theory of evolution (continued)

• During 19th century evolutionary models allowed early anthropologists to rank societies on

a tiered scale, on which technologically “advanced” societies had passed through more

“primitive” stages with simpler technologies.

• Today, anthropologists agree that such models of unilineal cultural evolution do not fit the

observed facts.

• But Herbert Spencer (and others) created the pseudoscience of social Darwinism by which

they justified European and Euro-American superiority.

• Within anthropology, two researchers most represent this view:

• Edward Burnett Tylor (1870, Researches into the early history of mankind and the

development of civilization).

• Lewis H. Morgan (1877, Ancient society: Researches in the lines of human progress from

savagery through barbarism to civilization).

• FYI: These categories, today, are renamed, but the concepts not as gone as one would expect.

• First World, Second World, Third World.

• Developed, Less Developed, Least Developed.

Biological Evolution Cultural Evolution Technological Evolution

Caucasoid Civilized Advanced, Industrial

Mongoloid Barbaric Peasant-based, Pre-industrial

Negroid Savage Primitive

How Did Anthropology Begin? 5

• Colonial origins of cultural anthropology

• A third driving force behind anthropology was colonialism, the historical practice of more powerful

countries claiming possession of less powerful ones.

• At various times non-Western societies had/have colonies, but the majority in the last 500 years have

been under the control of Western peoples.

• There are two major types of colonialism:

• External colonialism is where the colonizers remove the colonized to a new location or the invasion

by a foreign country.

• Internal colonialism refers to colonizing one or more groups in one’s own country.

• An example of internal colonialism is the plight of the 700+ American Indian cultures after

Western contact.

• Remember the ditty?: In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue … Some suggest that the second

line should be: “And then he stole, murdered, and raped the indigenes”.

• The combination of Spencerian views and of colonialism led to the concept of the savage paradigm

• The salvage paradigm held that it was important to observe indigenous ways of life before

knowledge of traditional languages and customs disappeared.

• Another term for this type of effort is called museum anthropology:

• Material culture was the emphasis, rather than non-material culture ( the intangibles)

• Material goods are not sufficient to represent the richness of a culture.

• Anthropology as a global perspective

• By the end of the nineteenth century, anthropology was already an international discipline, whose

practitioners were mainly based in western Europe and the United States.

• Today, anthropology is a truly global discipline, with practitioners in countries around the world.

The 4 Subfields of Anthropology 1

• Anthropology has traditionally been divided into four subfields: archaeology,

biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology.

• Archaeology studies past cultures, by excavating sites where people lived.

• Their data primarily consist of artifacts (objects or materials altered by humans) and

paleoecological data.

• Some archaeologists study prehistory (the time period before written records). Two

themes have been traditional concerns of prehistoric archaeology:

• The transition from foraging to farming

• The rise of complex cities and states

• Another branch of archaeology is historical archaeology, in which archaeologists

excavate sites occupied during historical times. Such excavations explore

perspectives not recorded in historical documents.

• Biological anthropology focuses on the physical aspects of the human species.

• This subfield was once called physical anthropology (and sometimes still is)

• Biological anthropologists explore:

• Human evolution, both through the use of genetic research and paleoanthropology

• Health and disease, including diet and nutrition, and the impact of social stress on

the body.

• The behavior of nonhuman primates (primatology).

The 4 Subfields of Anthropology 2

• Linguistic anthropology studies one of the most fundamental human traits: language.

• Linguistic anthropology is the study of language in its social and cultural context across

space and time.

• It traditionally seeks to understand the linguistic categories used by study populations and

how they order their natural and cultural environments.

• Linguistic includes 4 areas of study:

• Descriptive linguistics (also called theoretical or structural linguistics) is where one

might look at grammatical systems and similar work.

• Historical linguistics where the reconstruction of an ancient language or looking for

language origins are only two options. How languages change over time and how they

may be related

Sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation to

discover varied perceptions and patterns of thought in different cultures.

• Ethnolinguistics has the focus of looking at how language influences our cultural

understandings.

• Cultural anthropology focuses on the social lives of living communities.

• Prior to the 1970s, most cultural anthropologists conducted fieldwork in non-Western

communities.

• In the twenty-first century, anthropologists still study non-Western societies but are apt

to study the ethnic groups, occupations, institutions, advertising, or technology of their

own cultures as well.

The 4 Subfields of Anthropology 3

• National culture to cultural themes

• Many other attempts have been made to describe the general cultural make-up of a people. To bring

these studies into context, we need to look at both national character and national culture as

concepts.

• National character studies grew out of an effort by anthropologists to make their discipline

relevant to the World War II war effort, helping the United States to understand its enemies, its

allies, and its citizens better. It argued a cultural group has a shared psychology.

• National culture remains a topic of discussion (unlike national character).

• It is the idea of that which is shared by most of the people of a nation, overarching regional

culture, promoted by radio and television.

• “Water cooler discussions” of latest popular TV show. So what happens with more channels?

• Sameness and othering

• In Cambodia, the Khmer were known as a gentle, friendly, artistic people.

• They were Theravada Buddhists who valued all life.

• When the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975-1979 they instituted a genocide wherein priests,

intellectuals, former government officials and the entire middle class was massacred.

• This was accomplished by murder, starvation and forced labor.

• An estimated 1.7 million people were killed.

• How did this massacre become validated by the Khmer Rouge?

• Othering: The process by which the basic principles of another culture (sub-culture or group)

are demonized.

• The Khmer Rouge used the hierarchical aspects of Cambodian society to reinforce their

message.

The 4 Subfields of Anthropology 4

• Anthropology is by nature an interdisciplinary field.

• Its subfields are intertwined with many other social and natural sciences.

• One reason that anthropology remains a broad, four-field discipline, rather than splitting

up, is that all anthropologists recognize the importance of the following concepts: culture,

cultural relativism, diversity, change, and holism.

• Culture

• Culture has many different meanings (polysemic)

• There is the folk ethnographic version of culture such as the use of the phrase

“American culture”.

• Problem with this term, American culture, is it glosses over regional differences, class

differences and subcultures. Here is an example of gloss: 101 characteristics of

Americans/American culture

• Culture is both an abstraction and a tangible.

• Culture (with a big C is the abstraction); a culture (the manifestation of the abstraction)

is tangible.

• The boundaries of a culture are very hard to define. In anthropology, culture refers to

these taken-for-granted notions, rules, moralities, and behaviors within a social group

that feel natural and the way things should be.

• The idea of culture has been an integral part of anthropology since the beginning.

• The term was first applied in the 1870s by British anthropologist Edward Burnett

Tylor.

The 4 Subfields of Anthropology 5

• Cultural relativism

• Like all people, anthropologists are subject to ethnocentrism: assuming our way of doing

things is correct, while simply dismissing other people’s worldviews as inferior or

misguided.

• But anthropologists must be especially mindful of these assumptions because they can

provoke intolerance and make cross-cultural understanding impossible.

• To avoid such misunderstandings, anthropologists emphasize cultural relativism, the moral

and intellectual principle that one should withhold judgment about seemingly strange or

exotic beliefs and practices.

• I remember a conversation with a colleague many years ago where s/he equated cultural

relativism was the same as the concept of “anything goes”.

• I confess I was confused by this statement; I had never encountered this view within

anthropology.

• This person was confused. They mingled the concepts of cultural relativism and

ethical relativism and came to an incorrect understanding.

• Cultural relativism is NOT the same as moral relativism.

• Cultural relativism is descriptive; it simply observes that different groups HAVE

differing standards.

• Many confuse this concept with moral relativism (also called ethical relativism,

which discusses how people OUGHT to behave).

• Want to read more? Visit this link.

The 4 Subfields of Anthropology 6

• Diversity

• Another of anthropology’s major contributions to knowledge has been to describe and

explain human diversity, the sheer variety of ways of being human around the world.

• The anthropological meaning of diversity is somewhat different from its popular

usage.

• In anthropology it refers to multiplicity and variety, which is not the same as

difference.

• Within multiplicity and variety, there is both difference and similarity.

One example is what has been called the Coca cola culture or also called the

one world culture.

• This is the idea that as Western ideas and goods spread globally, all cultures

will become more homogenized.

• As the late anthropologist David Maybury-Lewis said, just because an

Amazonian is wearing shorts and drinking a Coke this does not mean he sees

the world the same way.

• The text gives another example: In the 1940s, the Tztotzil (tso-tseel) Maya

replace alcohol with Coke when alcoholism was recognized as a major

health issue, along with conversion to Protestantism.

The 4 Subfields of Anthropology 7

• Change

• What are the forces of change?

• Change due to contact through trade by diffusion (ideas and practices spread)

• Innovation is an internal force of change.

• Culture loss is another force of change. How many of us can shoe a horse? My cousin can, but

he is the only relative I know who does.

• Acculturation is when one culture is forced to change, such as is seen under colonialism.

• Culture is the single most important human adaptation because it allows for change within one’s

own lifetime (remember the term meme?).

• All cultures change continuously, although not all parts at the same rate and not always well.

• Some parts can remain stable for long periods of time. Others change at a rapid pace.

• Maladaptation may be shown with the overdependence on fossil fuels or rare earths (used in

cell phones and other electronics).

• Anthropologists in each of the four subfields are specialists in studying human change (discussed

on p. 14).

• Anthropology also reflects our changing world.

• As new topics, issues, and problems emerge, anthropologists shift toward studying these new

concerns.

• As with many academic disciplines, the public face of anthropology has changed in recent

years.

• European and American men dominated the field since its inception.

• Now anthropology is increasingly practiced by everyone, including members of many

minority groups and women.

The 4 Subfields of Anthropology 8

• Holism

• Holism is often referred to as the ‘glue’ that holds anthropology together.

• By uniting the study of human prehistory, social life, language, and biology in one broad

discipline, anthropology provides powerful tools for understanding the whole human experience

in context.

• Holism is the effort to synthesize these approaches into a single comprehensive explanation.

• The term holism was coined by Franz Boas; he also coined the term cultural relativism.

• Franz Boas, the first professor of anthropology in the United States.

• An immigrant from Germany, his first fieldwork was with the Inuit of Baffin Island

• Later he conducted fieldwork among the Kwaka’ Waka‘ Wakw (formerly called the

Kwakiutl) of British Columbia.

• He created the School of Historical Particularism which looks at individual cultures rather than

“evolutionary trends”.

• Although he was extremely influential in American anthropology, perhaps his most important

work was in his attacks on the racist views of both most of the anthropological world, but also of

most of rest of the Western world.

• Example of holism is the seen in the work of Stanley Ulijaszek

• He has worked on coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG) for decades with a people who harvest the

sago palm for its starch content.

• It is low in nutrients and must be processed to remove toxicity.

• The toxicity is linked to a red blood cell mutation (ovalocytosis).

• This same mutation is linked to protection from malaria.

• Local example: Blue tarp camper

How Anthropologists Know 1

• Scientific method in anthropology

• Anthropology employs a wide variety of methodologies, or systematic strategies for collecting and

analyzing data, including the scientific method.

• The goal of this established method is to develop, test, and disprove hypotheses.

• Answering philosophical questions—like “What is the meaning of life?” or “Why do bad things

happen to good people?”—is not the purpose of science.

• Science is a process of understanding phenomena through observation, generalization, verification and

refutation.

• This requires an objective, empirical approach

• Interestingly, in cultural anthropology they have challenged (I think well) the concept that we are

objective.

• The inductive approach is a research method whereby a problem is identified, a hypothesis is stated

and that hypothesis is tested through the collection and analysis of data.

• Inductive approach

• Observation first, then data collection; it is a very time consuming practice, but is typical of

fieldwork

• Think pattern recognition; think what is called ‘very deep people-watching’

• Observation → Pattern → Tentative hypothesis → Theory

• Deductive approach

• Deductive approach begins with theory → hypothesis → observation →> confirmation

• This is often what one does in the laboratory in chemistry class. You learn the theory than test it.

• Of course science needs both approaches. One never really conducts research using one and not the

other. educated guess” I call this a perspective (as compared to an opinion)

How Anthropologists Know 2

• Scientific method in anthropology (continued)

• Steps taken in the inductive approach”:

• Step 1: State the research problem.

• Gather information to resolve it (the observation component) in the form of data (facts from

which conclusions can be drawn; scientific information)

• Can be quantitative (numbers based) or can be qualitative (based on descriptions as is common in

cultural anthropology)

• Step 2: Develop a hypothesis.

• Hypotheses as plural; hypothesis is a provisional explanation.

• Some call this an ‘educated guess” I call this a perspective (as compared to an opinion)

• Step 3: Test the hypothesis through data collection and analysis.

• Repeated testing is required.

• (Re)test the hypothesis/hypotheses

• Step 4: Propose a theory

• In science, theories are tested and repeatedly supported hypotheses, not “guesses” as the word is

popularly used.

• Theories are key elements of the scientific method.

• They not only explain things but also help guide research by focusing the researchers’

questions and creating a constructive framework for their results.

• A theory and a fact are NOT the same thing

• A fact is another name for an observation

• A theory is a set of hypotheses that supports a well-substantiated explanation of natural

phenomena.

• Do not mix up hypothesis and theory as in ‘I have a theory’. No! One has a hypothesis.

How Anthropologists Know 3

• Anthropologists use a range of techniques for gathering and processing data.

• Quantitative data collection

• Some of these techniques use quantitative methods, which classify features of a

phenomenon, count or measure them and construct mathematical and statistical models

to explain what is observed.

• Numbers are the “stuff’ of science (or the stereotype of it); based on objective

knowledge.

• To understand quantitative it helps to know the language of statistics.

• Strongly linked to the concept of positivism (the system of thought that deals with the

measurable facts and phenomena that can be perceived by the senses).

• Qualitative data collection

• Cultural anthropologists began to challenge this idea in the 1990s when they began to

highlight the subjectivity of the research by focusing on the researcher’s experiences.

• They are comfortable with subjective knowledge.

• Qualitative research depends on subjective interpretations of an event or material.

• Anthropologists also employ qualitative methods, in which the aim is to produce an in-

depth and detailed description of social behaviors and beliefs.

• The ethnographic method, which involves prolonged and intensive observation of and

participation in the life of a community, is a qualitative methodology and a hallmark of

cultural anthropology.

How Anthropologists Know 4

• Comparative method

• The comparative method allows anthropologists to derive insights from careful

comparisons of two or more cultures or societies.

• It is a general approach, which holds that any particular detail of human behavior or

particular social condition should not be seen in isolation

• Data should be considered against the backdrop of the full range of behaviors and

conditions in their individual social settings.

• When anthropology is NOT science

• Because of the broad scope of this discipline it rests both in the sciences and the

humanities.

• Some anthropologists see limits to the application of science in anthropology.

• In 1961, E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902–1973) argued that human culture and social

behavior are too complex for the completely objective analysis of science.

• By the 1960s, the post-modernism movement appeared: 1) Data is subjective; 2)

objectivity is not possible , and 3) non-anthropologists challenging the role of

anthropology in its entirety.

• Anthropologists aim to see things from multiple perspectives, but they are,

ultimately, humans themselves. Thus, their interpretations of cultural practices

remain partial and situated in important respects.

Anthropology at Work

• Anthropological research suggests practical solutions to many real-world social problems.

• Some emphasize the importance of this research by calling it “anthropology’s fifth

subfield,”

• These include applied anthropology: anthropological research commissioned to serve an

organization’s needs

• Practicing anthropology, the broadest category of anthropological work, in which the

anthropologist not only performs research but also gets involved in the design,

implementation, and management of some organization, process, or product.

• The largest organization, in the United States, involved in this work is the National

Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA):

http://practicinganthropology.org/

• Not all anthropologists agree that applied anthropology is a 5th subfield. They argue that:

• Just like theory, application should be a valued part of every field of anthropology.

• The dimension of anthropology ranges from completely academic to completely

applied (academic →applied) but remain inside the 4 subfields.

• On pp. 22-24, the text provides a number of examples of applied anthropologists and their

work.

Ethical Issues

• Anthropologists often encounter ethical dilemmas during their fieldwork.

• Ethics in anthropology—the moral principles that guide anthropological conduct— are

organically connected to what it means to be a good anthropologist.

• Because anthropologists work with peoples whose views are often different from their own,

the American Anthropological Association (AAA), 1971, created its first Statements on

ethics: Principles of professional responsibility.

• Determined that anthropologies do not condone “undercover” research.

• The anthropologist’s main responsibility is to ensure the safety of the people being studied

• In 2009 the American Anthropological Association’s code of ethics was updated.

• Synopsis:

• Determined that anthropologies do not condone “undercover” research.

• The anthropologist’s main responsibility is to ensure the safety of the people being studied

• As in medicine, “Do no harm” is a foundational principle of the Code of Ethics

• Many modern anthropologists believe “Do no harm” is setting the bar too low.

• They assert that anthropologists are ethically obligated to aim higher and actually “do

good,” especially when they work with marginalized or powerless communities.

• Anthropologists have been killed, as well as villagers, due to the presence of anthropologists in

the field. Once of the most recent was an anthropologist who was working for the US military.

• The anthropologist was working in the HTS (Human Terrain System Project).

• This connection with military organizations is highly controversial and the AAA has officially

opposed anthropologists working for this governmental organization.