Social Anthropology Quiz

Social Anthropology: A Brief Overview

• Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behavior in human societies and cultures, and is distinguished from cultural anthropology in the UK and Europe.

• Topics of interest for social anthropologists include customs, economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, kinship and family structure, gender relations, and religion.

• Long-term qualitative research, including intensive field studies, is traditionally encouraged in social anthropology.

• Social anthropology is differentiated from sociology in its main methods, based on long-term participant observation and linguistic competence, and its commitment to the relevance and illumination provided by micro studies.

• Social anthropology is distinguished from subjects such as economics or political science by its holistic range and the attention it gives to the comparative diversity of societies and cultures across the world.

• Many social anthropologists use quantitative methods, particularly those whose research touches on topics such as local economies, demography, human ecology, cognition, or health and illness.

• Specializations within social anthropology shift as its objects of study are transformed and as new intellectual paradigms appear.

• The subject has both ethical and reflexive dimensions, with practitioners developing an awareness of the sense in which scholars create their objects of study and the ways in which anthropologists themselves may contribute to processes of change in the societies they study.

• Social anthropology has historical roots in a number of 19th-century disciplines, including the study of Classics, ethnography, ethnology, folklore, linguistics, and sociology.

• Modern social anthropology was founded in Britain at the London School of Economics and Political Science following World War I.

• Following World War II, sociocultural anthropology as comprised by the fields of ethnography and ethnology diverged into an American school of cultural anthropology while social anthropology diversified in Europe.

• Together with many of his colleagues at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and students at Manchester University, collectively known as the Manchester School, Max Gluckman embraced the study of conflict, change, urban anthropology, and networks.The History of Social Anthropology

• Manchester School introduced Marxist-informed theory and emphasized conflicts and conflict resolution.

• Gluckman disputed with Paul Bohannan on ethnographic methodology within the anthropological study of law.

• The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth was founded in 1946.

• British anthropology had a great intellectual impact, contributing to the erosion of Christianity, the growth of cultural relativism, and an awareness of the survival of the primitive in modern life.

• Edmund Leach and his students introduced French structuralism in the 1960s and 1970s.

• Social anthropology is often institutionally separate from physical anthropology and primatology and from archaeology.

• Anthropologists have found themselves institutionally linked with scholars of cultural studies, ethnic studies, folklore, human geography, museum studies, sociology, social relations, and social work.

• British anthropology has continued to emphasize social organization and economics over purely symbolic or literary topics.

• The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) was founded in 1989 to advance anthropology in Europe.

• Departments of Social Anthropology at different universities have tended to focus on disparate aspects of the field.

• The field of social anthropology has expanded in ways not anticipated by the founders of the field.

• Anthropologists associated with social anthropology include Franz Boas, Bronisław Malinowski, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Max Gluckman, Clifford Geertz, and Marshall Sahlins.