Cultural Anthropology A Perspective on the Human Condition

Cultural Anthropology A Perspective on the Human Condition Emily A. Schultz Robert H. Lavenda

Chapter 1 The Anthropological Perspective

Anthropology aims to describe in the broadest sense what it means to be human. Anthropology The study of human nature, human society, and the human past.

The anthropological perspective is • • holistic comparative field based evolutionary

Holism Describes how anthropology tries to integrate all that is known about human beings and their activities at the highest and most inclusive level.

Comparison Requires anthropologists to consider similarities and differences in as wide a range of human societies as possible before generalizing about human nature, human society, or the human past.

Evolution Anthropologists place their observations about human nature, human society, or the human past in a temporal framework that takes into consideration change over time.

Anthropology relies on the concept of culture to explain the diversity of human ways of life. Culture Sets of learned behavior and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society. Human beings use culture to adapt and to transform the world in which they live.

In the United States today, anthropology is generally considered to have 5 major subfields: • • • biological anthropology cultural anthropology linguistics archaeology applied pnthropology

Biological anthropology The subfield of anthropology that looks at human beings as biological organisms and tries to discover: (1) what characteristics make them different from other organisms and (2) what characteristics they share.

Biological anthropology began as an attempt to classify all the world’s populations into races. • By the early 20 th century, some anthropologists and biologists were arguing that “race” was a cultural label invented by human beings to sort people into groups and that races with distinct and unique sets of biological attributes simply did not exist.

• After World War II, the “new” physical anthropology that Washburn developed at the University of California, Berkeley, repudiated racial classification and shifted attention to patterns of variation and adaptation within the human species as a whole.

Two specialties within biological anthropology: Primatology The study of nonhuman primates, the closest living relatives of human beings. Paleoanthropology The search for fossilized remains of humanity’s earliest ancestors.

Cultural anthropology The subfield of anthropology that shows how variation in the beliefs and behaviors of members of different human groups is shaped by sets of learned behaviors and ideas that human beings acquire as a member of society—that is, by culture. Cultural anthropologists study cultural diversity in all living human societies, including their own.

Cultural anthropologists gather information through fieldwork. Fieldworkers gain insight into another culture by participating with members in social activities and by observing those activities as outsiders. This research method, known as participant-observation, is central to cultural anthropology.

Linguistic anthropology Approaches cultural diversity by relating varied forms of language to their cultural contexts.

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used to encode one’s experience of the world and of others. Linguistic anthropologists study language, not only as a form of symbolic communication, but also as a major carrier of important cultural information.

Archaeology A cultural anthropology of the human past, with interests ranging from the earliest stone tools to twentieth-century garbage dumps.

Applied anthropology Uses information from other anthropological specialties to solve practical cross-cultural problems in areas such as health care and economic development. Some applied anthropologists have become management consultants; some carry out market research, and their findings may contribute to the design of new products; others have become involved in policy issues.

Medical anthropology A form of applied anthropology that concerns itself with human health, particularly the factors that contribute to disease or illness and the ways that human populations deal with disease or illness.

Critical medical anthropologists link questions of human health and illness in local settings to social, economic, and political processes operating on a national or global scale. They pay attention to the way social divisions based on class, “race, ” gender, and ethnicity can block access to medical attention or make people more vulnerable to disease and suffering.

Anthropology involves learning about the kinds of organisms we human beings are, the various ways we live our lives, and how we make sense of our experiences. Studying anthropology can equip you to deal with people from different cultural backgrounds in a less threatened, more tolerant manner.