Chapter 1

What Is Anthropology

and Why Should I Care?

• What is Anthropology?

• What about Cultural Anthropology?

Anthropology

• The scientific and humanistic study of human beings

• Encompasses:• the evolutionary history of humanity• physical variation among humans• the study of past societies • comparative study of current day

human societies and cultures

Society• A group of people who depend on one

another for survival or well-being

• A set of social relationships among people

• Contains statuses and soles

• Contains institutions• Occupy geographic

locations

Culture • The learned behaviors and symbols that

allow people to live in groups• The primary means by which humans

adapt to their environment• The ways of life characteristic of a

particular human society• Body Ritual among the Nacirema

Goal of Anthropology

• Describe, analyze, and explain different cultures to show how groups live in different physical, economic, and social environments, and to show how members give meaning to their lives.

Holistic Approach

• Anthropologists bring a holistic approach to understanding and explaining.

• Anthropology combines the study of human culture, history, language, and biology to understand human societies.

• Holism separates anthropology from other academic disciplines which generally focus on one factor as the explanation for human behavior.

Anthropologists generally focus on typical characteristics of a population.•When describing a group of people, anthropologists may discuss:

• the history of the area in which they live,

• the physical environment, • the organization of family life, • the general features of their language, • their political and economic systems, • their religion, • their diet, or • their styles of art and dress.

Sub-disciplines of Anthropology

• Cultural anthropology• Anthropological linguistics• Archaeology• Biological or physical anthropology

Cultural Anthropology• The study of human thought, behavior,

and lifeways• Cultural anthropologists attempt to

understand culture through the study of its origins, development, and diversity. • Sex, After or before emotional connection?• Breastfeed, Your own or your neighbor’s as well?• Loved dies, Bury her or eat her?

• Why is this important?

Cultural Anthropology

• Ethnography is the description of society or culture. • An emic ethnography attempts to capture

what ideas and practices mean to members of a culture.

• An etic ethnography describes and analyzes culture according to principles and theories drawn from the Western scientific tradition such as ecology, economy, or psychology.

Archaeology• The key focus of archaeology is to look at the

material remains people leave behind to try to infer their cultural patterns from it.

• Archaeology is about interpreting patterns to provide insights into the lives and cultural ways of other people in other times.

Anthropological Linguistics

• The study of language and its relation to culture

• Humans have a huge number of words and complex patterns that we use to put them together.

• We form communities of speech.• The use of complex language is central to

being a human being.

Physical or Biological Anthropology

• Physical and biological anthropologists study humans as physical and biological entities.

• All human culture rests on a biological base.

Human Paleontology• Human paleontologists

search for fossils to discover and reconstruct the evolutionary history of our species.

• They extract biological and chemical data from ancient bones or from living humans to help discover the biological histories of humanity and the relationships among different human groups.

Primatology

• Humans are primates.• Other primates: apes, Old World and New

World monkeys, and prosimians• Biologically very close to us

• We share about 98% of our genes with our closest ape relations.

• Studying these relatives may give us insights into the behavior of our evolutionary ancestors.

Applied Anthropology

• The application of anthropology to the solution of human problems

• Forensic anthropology – uses the tools of physical anthropology to aid in the identification of skeletal or badly decomposed human remains

• Forensic anthropologists identify the victims of crimes, warfare, and genocide.

Anthropology and Other Social Sciences

• Anthropology focuses on understanding other groups of people.

• Anthropology attempts to observe, collect, record, and understand the full range of human cultural experience.

• Anthropology presents many useful ways of thinking about culture.