Chapter 1: Anthropology

Chapter 1: Anthropology

1. The Study of Humanity 1.1

   • Anthropology
     • how people organize their lives and relate to one another in interacting, interconnected groups that share basic beliefs and practices
     • Anthropoligists
       • interested in society’s material foundations—how people produce and distribute food and other goods
       • interested in how people structure their relations in society—in families, at work, in institutions
       • interested in how people structure their relations in society—in families, at work, in institutions
       • interested in power and authority: who has them and how they are allocated.
       • interested in individual development and the interaction between society and individual people.
       • interest in human evolution and human anatomy
       • interest in the past of peoples and communities
       • interest in how people express themselves with students of literature, art, and music.
       • the diversity of human philosophical systems, ethical systems, and religious beliefs.
     • key features distinguish it as a separate area of study
       • the concept of culture
         • the role of culture in shaping human behavior.
           • Culture
             • The learned values, beliefs, and rules of conduct that are shared to some extent by the members of a society, and that govern their behavior with one another.
               • Symbolic Culture
                 • people’s ideas and means of communicating those ideas
                 • aspects of symbolic culture can be molded in ways that promote material culture
               • Materialistic Cullture
                 • the tools, utensils, clothing, housing, and other objects that people make or use
                 • material culture can be developed and adapted in ways that promote symbolic culture.
               • Popular forms of entertainment, promote cultural values by dramatizing the types of families and relationships that are deemed acceptable or unacceptable.
               • values of individualism, personal achievement, and competition for wealth and prestige are also transmitted.
       • A Holistic Perspective
         • A perspective in anthropology that views culture as an integrated whole, no part of which can be completely understood in isolation.
           • related to their marriage and family patterns
           • considers the interconnections among factors that contribute to people’s behavior helps us understand the kinds of homes in which they live.
             • cultural norms and values guide but do not dictate people’s behavior.
         • attempt to understand all aspects of human culture, past and present.
         • What they study
           • interested in people’s economic lives and in learning about the food they eat, how they obtain their food, and how they organize their work.
           • study people’s political lives to know how they organize their communities, select their leaders, and make group decisions.
           • investigate people’s social lives to understand how they organize their families
           • study people’s religious lives to learn about the kinds of deities they worship, their beliefs about the spirit world, and the ceremonies they perform.
             • people often idealize their own practices, projecting beliefs about what they do even though their actual behavior may differ from those ideals
       • A comparative perspective
         • Anthropology is fundamentally comparative, basing its findings on cultural data drawn from societies throughout the world and from throughout human history.
           • collect data about behavior and beliefs in many societies to document the diversity of human culture and to understand common patterns in how people adapt to their environments, adjust to their neighbors, and develop unique cultural institutions.
         • An approach in anthropology that uses data about the behaviors and beliefs in many societies to document both cultural universals and cultural diversity.
         • Only through systematic comparison can we hope to determine what aspects of marriage and family—or any other aspect of culture, for that matter—might be universal (found in all human societies) and which aspects vary from society to society.
         • The Comparative Perspective and Culture Change.
           • The comparative, or “cross-cultural,” perspective also helps people reexamine their own culture
             • Cultures are not static. They change in response to internal and external pressures
           • comparative perspective is a powerful tool for understanding culture change
             • culture change
               • Changes in people’s ways of life over time through both internal and external forces.
         • The Comparative Perspective and Globalization.
           • Globalization
             • The spread of economic, political, and cultural influences throughout a very large geographic area or through a great number of different societies. Through globalization, many countries and local communities are enmeshed in networks of power and influence far beyond their borders, exchanging goods and services, forms of entertainment, and information technologies.
               • no one country or region of the world controls the process of globalizing. Rather, many powerful countries contribute to globalization.
           • one of the distinctions of globalization today is the speed with which it is transforming local cultures as they participate in a worldwide system of interconnected economies and polities.
           • influences are also changing other aspects of culture, including family structures, religious practices, and aesthetic forms.
           • export of products and technologies, rapid communications and information systems also spread attitudes and values throughout the world, including capitalist cultural practices, consumerism, cultural icons, and media and entertainment
           • globalization is uneven, both in the degree to which goods and services are exchanged in different places and in the way it creates inequalities as well as similarities.
           • changes in beliefs and practices help to strengthen societies and to endow them with the resilience to survive.
     • Definition
       • The study of humanity, from its evolutionary origins millions of years ago to its current worldwide diversity
   • Societies
     • Populations of people living in organized groups with social institutions and expectations of behavior.

2. The Four Subfields Of Anthropology 1.2

   • Cultural Anthropology
     • the study of cultural behavior, attitudes, values, and conceptions of the world.
     • Careers
       • Ethnographer
       • Ethnologist
       • Museum Curator
       • Professor
       • International business consultant
       • Cross-cultural researcher
     • ethnology
       • Aspect of cultural anthropology involved with building theories about cultural behaviors and forms.
     • ethnography
       • Aspect of cultural anthropology involved with observing and documenting peoples’ ways of life.
     • ethnographic research
       • live among the people they are studying to compile a full record of their activities
       • a significant part of the preservation of indigenous cultures
       • such as how people acquire culture, how culture affects personality, how family structures and gender roles vary, the role of art and religion, and the impact of global economic forces on local cultures
     • indigenous societies
       • peoples who were once independent and have occupied their territories for a long time but are now usually minority groups in larger states
       • a small, comparatively homogeneous society could serve as a kind of laboratory for understanding humanity.
     • Ethnocentrism
       • The widespread human tendency to perceive the ways of doing things in one’s own culture as normal and natural and that of others as strange, inferior, and possibly even unnatural or inhuman.
     • cultural relativism
       • An approach in anthropology that stresses the importance of analyzing cultures in each culture’s own terms rather than in terms of the culture of the anthropologist. This does not mean, however, that all cultural behavior must be condoned.
       • ethical relativism
         • The belief that all rights and wrongs are relative to time, place, and culture, such that no moral judgments of behavior can be made.
   • Linguistic Anthropology
     • The study of language and communication, and the relationship between language and other aspects of culture and society.
     • Careers
       • International business consultant
       • Diplomatic communications worker
       • Administrator
       • Ethnographer
       • Domestic communications worker
       • professor
     • historical linguistics
       • document how language changes over time within a culture.
       • The study of changes in language and communication over time and between peoples in contact.
   • Archaeology
     • The study of past cultures, both historic cultures with written records and prehistoric cultures that predate the invention of writing.
     • careers
       • Cultural resource management worker
       • Museum curator
       • Professor
       • State archaeologist
       • Historical archaeologist
       • Environmental consultant
       • Zoo archaeologist
       • ethnoarchaeology
     • Judging from the density of settlements and household refuse like fragments of pots, archaeologists can estimate the population of a region at a particular time.
     • tell us about people’s relationships with members of other communities
     • provides a richer understanding of how people lived and worked than do documents alone.
   • Biological (Physical) Anthropology
     • The study of human origins and biological diversity
     • Careers
       • Primatologist Geneticist University or college professor Medical researcher Genetic counselor Forensic specialist Government investigator Human rights investigator Biomedical anthropologist
     • paleoanthropology
       • The study of the fossil record, especially skeletal remains, to understand the process and products of human evolution.
     • medical anthropology
       • A discipline that bridges cultural and biological anthropology, focusing on health and disease in human populations.

3. Applied Anthropology 1.3

   • definition
     • An area of anthropology that applies the techniques and theories of the field to problem solving outside of traditional academic settings.
   • forensic anthropologists
     • Biological anthropologists who analyze human remains in the service of criminal justice and families of disaster victims.
   • cultural resource management (CRM)
     • The application of archaeology to preserve and protect historic structures and prehistoric sites.
     • contract archaeology
       • The application of archaeology to assess the potential impact of construction on archaeological sites and to salvage archaeological evidence.
     • . Cultural Survival