Introduction to Anthropology

Concepts in Anthropology

• Etymology consists of two Greek words: "Anthropos" meaning human being/mankind, and "Logos" meaning reason/study/science
• It is the study or science of humankind or humanity
• It examines people's origins, development, and contemporary variations, wherever they are found
• Humans have biological and cultural characteristics
• It is dedicated to the comparative study of humans as a group
• Anthropology is a science which investigates strategies for living that are learned and shared by people as members of human social groups
• It examines the characteristics that human beings share as members of one species (homo sapiens) and the diverse ways that people live in different environments
• It analyzes the products of social groups, both material objects (material cultures) and non-material creations (religion/beliefs, social values, institutions, practices, etc.)
• It tries to achieve an understanding of culture, society, and humanity through detailed studies of community life, supplemented by comparison
• The ultimate goal is to develop an integrated picture of humankind
• Anthropology offers two kinds of insight: producing knowledge about the actual biological and cultural variations in the world, and offering methods and theoretical perspectives to explore, compare, understand and solve the varied expressions of the human condition

The Historical Development of Anthropology

• Anthropology is a fairly recent discipline
• Important forerunners include historiography, geography, travel writing, philosophy and jurisprudence
• It is considered the science of humanity
• Anthropology originated in three or four 'Western' countries: France, Great Britain, the USA and, until the Second World War, Germany
• It is considered a European discipline
• Roots can be traced to the works and ideas of the ancient and Medieval Greek, Roman, and Hebrew philosophers and social thinkers
• As an academic discipline, it was born during the 19th century, out of the intellectual atmosphere of Enlightenment, an eighteenth-century social philosophical movement
• By the late 1870s, anthropology began to emerge as a profession

Scope and Subject Matter of Anthropology

• Major impetus for growth was the expansion of western colonial powers and their desire to understand the peoples living under colonial domination
• Early anthropologists mainly studied small communities in technologically simple societies: traditional, non-industrialized
• In Ethiopia, professional anthropologists have studied culture and society on a more intensive level only since the late 1950s
• The breadth and depth covers across the past, present and future human ways of life, experiences, and existence
• Anthropology studies humanity with all aspects of existence, diversity and commonality
• A part consists in conceptualizing and understanding similarities between social systems and human relationships
• It involves understanding connections within and between societies
• Anthropologists strive for an understanding of the biological and cultural origins and evolutionary development of the species
• Anthropology is concerned with all humans, past and present, including their behavior patterns, thought systems, and material possessions
• In the broadest sense, anthropology aims to describe what it means to be human

Sub-fields of Anthropology

• Anthropology has four subfields

Physical/Biological Anthropology

• It studies how culture and environment have influenced biological evolution and contemporary variations, unlike comparative biologists
• Human biology affects/explains some aspects of behavior, society, and culture like marriage patterns, sexual division of labor, gender ideology etc
• Culture, in turn, has biological effects like standards of attractiveness, food preferences, and human sexuality, as well as biological variations such as morphology/structure, color, and size
• Major sources of biological variations are derived from the interrelated effects of natural selection, geographical isolation, and genetic mutations
• Physical anthropology is concerned with human evolution, including the study of the gradual processes of simple forms into more differentiated structures in hominid
• It is interested in reconstructing the evolutionary record of the human species using fossils/bones
• Physical anthropology is divided into specialties like Paleoanthropology and Primatology

Paleoanthropology

• Paleo means "old"
• Paleoanthropology involves the analysis of fossil remains from prehistoric times to determine the missing link that connects modern humans with their biological ancestors

Primatology

• Studies primates or recent human ancestors
• Studies the anatomy and social behavior of such non-human primate species as gorillas and chimpanzees
• It investigates how and why the physical traits of contemporary human populations vary throughout the world
• Examines genetic materials such as DNA and RNA
• Genetic studies are crucial in understanding how evolution works and identifying the genetic source of hereditary diseases like sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis

Archaeological Anthropology

• Studies the ways of life of past peoples by excavating and analyzing the material culture/physical remains they left behind

Artefacts

• Artefacts are material remains made and used by past peoples
• Artefacts can be removed from the site and taken to the laboratory for further analysis
• Examples of tools, ornaments, arrowheads, coins, and fragments of pottery

Features

• Like artefacts, are made or modified by past people, but cannot be readily carried away from the site
• Examples include house foundations, ancient buildings, fireplaces, steles, and postholes

Eco-facts

• Eco-facts are non-artificial, organic, and environmental remains
• Eco-facts were not made or altered by humans but were used by them
• Examples include soil, animal bones, and plant remains
• They provide archaeologists with important data concerning the environment and how people used natural resources in the past
• Archaeology has its subfields or areas of specialties

Prehistoric Archaeology

• Prehistoric archaeology investigates human prehistory and prehistoric cultures
• It focuses on entire period between 6,000 years ago and the time of the first stone tools around 2.5 million years ago

Historic Archaeologists

• Historic archaeologists reconstruct the cultures of people who used writing and about whom historical documents have been written
• Takes advantage of the fact that about 6,000 years ago

Linguistic Anthropology

• Studies human language as a cultural resource, focusing on the evolution of languages and variations in structures, units, and grammatical formations
• Linguistic anthropology gives special attention to the study of unwritten languages
• Language is a system of information transmission and reception and a key to explore culture
• Humans communicate messages by sound (speech), gesture (body language), and visual ways such as writing
• Languages pass down cultural traits from one generation to another, and is the most distinctive feature of being human
• Linguistic anthropology studies contemporary human languages as well as those of the past
• It is divided into four distinct branches or areas of research: Structural/Descriptive Linguistics, Ethno-linguistics (cultural linguistics), Historical linguistics, and Socio-linguistics

Structual/Descriptive Linguistics

• Structural/Descriptive Linguistics studies the structure of linguistic patterns, examines sound systems, grammatical systems, and the meanings attached to words in specific languages
• Aims to understand the structure and set of rules of given language, to compile dictionaries and grammar books for previously unwritten languages
• Thousands of human languages, at least structurally all of them are similar making it possible for everyone of us to grasp and learn languages

Ethno-linguistics (cultural linguistics)

• It examines the relationship between language and culture
• Explores how different linguistic categories can affect how people categorize their experiences, how they think, and how they perceive the world around them

Historical Linguistics

• Deals with the emergence of language in general and how specific languages have diverged over time
• Focuses on comparison and classifications of different languages to differentiate the historical links between them

Socio-linguistics

• Investigates linguistic variation within a given language
• No language is a homogeneous system
• The reason for variation is geography
• Linguistic variation also is expressed in the bilingualism of ethnic groups

Socio-Cultural Anthropology

• Largest sub-field of anthropology deals with human society and culture
• Describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social, cultural and material life of contemporary human societies
• Engage in two aspects of study: Ethnography and Ethnology

Ethnography

• Based on field work
• Provides a comprehensive account of a particular community, society, or culture
• Ethnographies are the result of extensive field studies which are usually a year or two in duration
• Anthropologist observes, talks to, and lives with the people

Ethnology

• Based on cross-cultural comparison, and uses data collected by a series of researchers
• Comparative study of contemporary cultures and societies
• Examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares the results of ethnography the data gathered in different societies
• Ethnologists attempt to identify and explain cultural differences and similarities, to test hypotheses, and to build theory to enhance our understanding of how social and cultural systems work
• The primary objective of ethnology is to uncover general cultural principles, the "rules" that govern human behavior, and is usually synthetic
• It is subdivided into many other specialized fields as: Anthropology of Art, Medical Anthropology, Urban Anthropology, Economic Anthropology etc

Basic Features of Anthropology

• Characteristics identify anthropology from other disciplines
• Anthropology has a broad scope, that it is the broad study of humankind, around the world and throughout time
• Anthropology's approach is holistic, relativistic, and focused
• Holistic: it looks any phenomena from different vantage points, considering culture, history, language and biology essential to a complete understanding of society
• Relativity is highly appreciated in anthological studies, studies and explains a certain belief, practice or institution of a group of people in its own context, and does not make value judgment
• Focusing more on the local than the big social processes has been another exclusive approach
• Pay great attention to local or micro-social processes certainly help us to better understand big changes in societies
• Anthropology helps to understand differences and similarities across time and place
• Anthropology perspective considers insiders' views, how people perceive themselves, called emic perspective, and understand their world
• Highly dependent on qualitative research to understand the meaning behind any human activity
• Extended fieldwork, participant observation, in-depth and key informant interviews and focus-group discussion are qualitative research instruments

Misconceptions About Anthropology

• A first misconception is that anthropology is limited to the study of "primitive" societies, whereas anthropologists nowadays study most advanced and complex societies as well
• A second misconception that anthropologists only study the rural people and rural areas, whereas anthropologists are also interested in the study of urban people and urban areas. There is a sub-discipline is devoted to the study of urban societies called Urban Anthropology
• A third misconception is that anthropology is the study/analysis of fossil evidences of the proto-humans, whereas doesn't mean that anthropology is all about the study of human evolution
• A fourth misconception the purpose of anthropology is to study communities to keep and preserve communities far from development and obsolete cultural practices in museums, whereas anthropologists duties are to support those communities' capacity to empower themselves in development processes and assist peoples' initiatives instead of imposed policies and ideas

The Relationship Between Anthropology And Other Disciplines

• Anthropology is similar with other social sciences such as sociology, psychology, political sciences, economics, history, etc which has overlaps with these disciplines that study human society
• It differs from other social sciences and the humanities by its broad scope, in which anthropology studies humankind in its entirety
• Anthropology has a unique approach, in that it studies and analyzes human ways of life holistically, comparatively and in a relativistic manner
• Its perspective is fundamentally empirical, naturalistic and ideographic [particularizing] than nomothetic [universalizing] one
• It is unique that it undertakes extended fieldwork that develops intimate knowledge of the life and social worlds of its study group/society

The Contributions of Anthropology

• Anthropology has established for itself the task of examining all aspects of humanity for all periods of time and for all parts of the globe
• One gets benefits from the anthropological perspective through it’s emphasis on comparative study of cultures, concludes that "our culture is just one way of life among found in the world" and “represents one way” (among many possible ways) to adapt to a particular of environmental condition
• Through the process of contrasting and comparing, one gains a fuller understanding of others and our own cultures
• Anthropology gives an insight into different ways and modes of life of human society (social and cultural diversity)
• It helps to understand the logic and justification behind group behavior and cultural practices, while also letting us know how our everyday decisions are influencing others in a multitude of ways and how others' decisions are also influencing ours
• Cultural anthropology offers a unique perspective on how local cultural groups are engaging with the process of Globalization
• Because of its relativistic approach, anthropology helps us to be more sensitive to and appreciative of cultural diversity and variability
• It fights against prejudice and discriminations and against ethnocentrism, the belief that one's own culture and one's own way of life is superior to others cultural, social and material life, arises from ignorance about other ethnic groups and their ways of lives
• Anthropology is used as a tool for development
• It is able to suggest sound solutions to all things human (e.g. areas of Environmental Change, Health and Nutrition, Globalization, Social Justice etc)