Anthropology Past Paper PDF

Unit One 1. Introducing Anthropology and its Subject Matter Study Hours: 4 face-to-face hours Dear Learners! Welcome to unit one. This unit deals with anthropology's essence. In this unit, you will be introduced to define concepts crucial for grasping the meaning of anthropology. It also explain...

Unit One 1. Introducing Anthropology and its Subject Matter Study Hours: 4 face-to-face hours Dear Learners! Welcome to unit one. This unit deals with anthropology's essence. In this unit, you will be introduced to define concepts crucial for grasping the meaning of anthropology. It also explains anthropology's historical development, scope, subject matter, subfields, unique features and contributions. In due course, students are required to assume active role in class activities and discussions; sharing of experiences, undertake different debates and arguments and take-home assignments. Contents of the Unit: The major topics to be treated in this unit include: Definitions, historical developments, scope, and sub-fields of anthropology. It also addresses topics such as misconceptions about anthropology and its relations with different disciplinary fields of study. Unit learning outcomes: Up on the successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:  Define the concepts in Anthropology  Understand the historical development of anthropology  Express the scope and subject matter of anthropology  Explain the sub-disciplines of anthropology  Internalize unique feature of anthropology  Convert misconception held about anthropology  Differentiate anthropology from other discipline  Appraise the relevance of anthropology in our life 1 1.1 Definition, Scope and Subject Matter of Anthropology Reflect your views on the following questions.  How do you define Anthropology?  How do you conceive the meaning of the term ‘human’? 1.1.1 Concepts in Anthropology To begin with the etymology of the term, the term anthropology is a compound of two Greek words, ‘anthropos’ and ‘logos’, which can be translated as ‘human being/mankind’ and ‘reason/study/science’, respectively. So, anthropology means ‘reason about humans’ or ‘the study or science of humankind or humanity’. Moreover, man has two important characteristics: biological and cultural: It is very important to understand that the biological and the cultural characteristics are inseparable elements. Culture influences human physical structures and the vise-versa. Hence, if we take it literally, it is the study of humans. In one sense, this is an accurate description to the extent that anthropology raises a wide variety of questions about the human condition. Yet this literal definition is not particularly illuminating; because a number of other academic disciplines—including sociology, biology, psychology, political science, economics, and history—also study human beings. What is it that distinguishes anthropology from all of these other disciplines? Anthropology is the study of people—their origins, their development, and contemporary variations, wherever and whenever they have been found. It is a broad scientific discipline dedicated to the comparative study of humans as a group, from its first appearance on earth to its present stage of development. Of all the disciplines that study humans, anthropology is by far the broadest in scope. In more specific terms, anthropology is a science which:  Investigates the strategies for living that are learned and shared by people as members of human social groups;  Examines the characteristics that human beings share as members of one species (homo sapiens) and the diverse ways that people live in different environments; 2   Analyses the products of social groups -material objects (material cultures) and non-material creations (religion/beliefs, social values, institutions, practices, etc). Anthropology is an intellectually challenging, theoretically ambitious subject, which tries to achieve an understanding of culture, society and humanity through detailed studies of community life, supplemented by comparison. At the deepest level, it raises philosophical questions, which it tries to respond to by exploring human lives under different conditions. It seeks to explain how and why people are both similar and different through examination of our biological and cultural past and comparative study of contemporary human societies. Its ultimate goal is to develop an integrated picture of humankind—a goal that encompasses an almost infinite number of questions about all aspects of our existence. We ask, for example, what makes us human? Why do some groups of people tend to be tall and lanky, while others tend to be short and stocky? Why do some groups of people practice agriculture, while others hunt for a living? As a matter of simplicity and brevity, anthropology primarily offers two kinds of insight. First, the discipline produces knowledge about the actual biological and cultural variations in the world; second, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives enabling the practitioner to explore, compare, understand and solve these varied expressions of the human condition. 1.1.2 The Historical Development of Anthropology Like the other social sciences, anthropology is a fairly recent discipline. It was given its present shape during the twentieth century, but it has important forerunners in the historiography, geography, travel writing, philosophy and jurisprudence of earlier times. There are, in any case, many ways of writing the history of anthropology, just as, in any given society, there may exist competing versions of national history or origin myths, promoted by groups or individuals with diverging interests. History is not primarily a product of the past itself, but is rather shaped by the concerns of the present. As these concerns change, past events and persons shift between foreground and background, and will be understood and evaluated in new ways. If we restrict ourselves to anthropology as a scientific discipline, some would trace its roots back to the European Enlightenment, during the eighteenth century; others would claim 3 that anthropology did not arise as a science until the 1850s, yet others would argue that anthropological research in its present-day sense only commenced after the First World War. Nor can we avoid such ambiguities. It is beyond doubt, however, that anthropology, considered as the science of humanity, originated in the region we commonly but inaccurately call ‘the West’, notably in three or four ‘Western’ countries: France, Great Britain, the USA and, until the Second World War, Germany(Erikson, 2001). Historically speaking, this is a European discipline, and its practitioners, like those of all European sciences, occasionally like to trace its roots back to the ancient Greeks. The present academic anthropology has its roots in the works and ideas of the great ancient and Medieval Greek, Roman, and Hebrew philosophers and social thinkers. These people were interested in the nature, origin and destiny of man, and the morality and ethics of human relationships. While the roots of anthropology can be generally traced through the history of western culture as far back as ancient Greek social philosophical thinking, the discipline did not emerge as distinct field of study until the mid-nineteenth century. Generally speaking, anthropology as an academic discipline was born during the 19 th century, out of the intellectual atmosphere of Enlightenment, which is the eighteenth century social philosophical movement that emphasized human progress and the poser of reason, and based on Darwinian Theory of Evolution. By the late 1870s, anthropology was beginning to emerge as a profession. A major impetus for its growth was the expansion of western colonial powers and their consequent desire to better understand the peoples living under colonial domination. During its formative years, anthropology became a profession primarily in museums. In this regard, in the 1870s and 1880s many museums devoted to the study of humankind were found in Europe, North America and South America. Early anthropologists mainly studied small communities in technologically simple societies. Such societies are often called by various names, such as, “traditional”, “non-industrialized and/or simple societies”. Anthropologists of the early 1900s emphasized the study of social and cultural differences among human groups. Here, many of the indigenous peoples of non-western world and their social and cultural features were studied in detail and 4 documented. This approach is called ethnography. By the mid-1900, however, anthropologists attempted to discover universal human patterns and the common bio- psychological traits that bind all human beings. This approach is called ethnology. Ethnology aims at the comparative understanding and analysis of different ethnic groups across time and space. In Ethiopia, professional anthropologists have been studying culture and society on a more intensive level only since the late 1950s. Almost inevitably, the initial emphasis was on ethnography, the description of specific customs, cultures and ways of life. 1.1.3 Scope and subject matter of anthropology Reflect your views on the following questions.  What would be the limit to study human beings?  What specific time period is the subject of its study?  Where would be the spatial boundary to study human beings?  Which human characteristic (biological or/and cultural) should be the subject of its inquiry? The breadth and depth of anthropology is immense. There no time and space left as far as man exists. In other words, the temporal dimension covers the past, the present and even the future. In terms of the spatial dimension, anthropology studies from Arctic to Desert, from Megapolis to hunting gathering areas. The discipline covers all aspects of human ways of life experiences and existence, as humans live in a social group. It touches all aspect of human conditions as far as there is a relation between human beings and natural environment and man and man. Anthropology not only tries to account for the social and cultural variation in the world, but a crucial part of the anthropological project also consists in conceptualizing and understanding similarities between social systems and human relationships. As one of the foremost anthropologists of the twentieth century, Claude Lévi-Strauss, has expressed it: ‘Anthropology has humanity as its object of research, but unlike the other human sciences, it tries to grasp its object through its most diverse manifestations’ (1983, p. 49). In other words, anthropology studies humanity with its all 5 aspects of existence, and in its all means of differences (diversity) and similarities (commonality). Where every human beinglives, there is always anthropology. The discipline is also accounting for the interrelationships between different aspects of human existence, and usually anthropologists investigate these interrelationships taking as their point of departure a detailed study of local life in a particular society or a delineated social environment. One may therefore say that anthropology asks large questions, while at the same time it draws its most important insights from small places. Although anthropologists have wide-ranging and frequently highly specialized interests, they all share a common concern in trying to understand both connections within societies and connections between societies. Such focus areas of investigation and the stated aims of the discipline convey that, the areas covered by anthropology is diverse and enormous. Anthropologists strive for an understanding of the biological and cultural origins and evolutionary development of the species. They are concerned with all humans, both past and present, as well as their behavior patterns, thought systems, and material possessions. In short, anthropology aims to describe, in the broadest sense, what it means to be human (Peacock, 1986). 1.2 Sub-fields of anthropology Reflect your views on the following questions.  Is it possible to study all aspects of human experiences?  If so, how could we study it? As discussed in the above headlining, there is no time, space and characteristics left to study human beings. It is so wide as an ocean. Accordingly, it is required to divide and understand in-depth. Accordingly, anthropology has often categorized into four majorsubfields: Physical/Biological Anthropology, Archeology, Linguistic Anthropology and Socio-Cultural Anthropology. Let us explain turn by turn. 6 1.2.1 Physical/Biological Anthropology Reflect your views on the following questions.  In what ways does man differ from other animal species?  What are the sources of biological variation?  What differentiate human body from other animals?  How humans have evolved up to the present time?  From where did we (human species) come from?  What is evolution? We hope you remember your high school science lessons on evolution. Physical anthropology is the branch of anthropology most closely related to the natural sciences, particularly biology; that is why it is often called biological anthropology. Unlike comparative biologists, physical anthropologists study how culture and environment have influenced these two areas of biological evolution and contemporary variations. Human biology affects or even explains some aspects of behavior, society, and culture like marriage patterns, sexual division of labor, gender ideology etc. The features of culture in turn have biological effects like the standards of attractiveness, food preferences, and human sexuality. Biological variations such as morphology/structure, color, and size are reflections of changes in living organism. Since change occurs in the universe, it also applies in human beings. Human biological variations are the result of the cumulative processes of invisible changes occurring in every fraction of second in human life. These changes have been accumulated and passed through genes. Genes are characteristics that carry biological traits of an organism, including human beings. The major sources of biological variations are derived from the interrelated effects of natural selection, geographical isolation, genetic mutations. Physical anthropology is essentially concerned with two broad areas of investigation: human evolution and genetics. Human evolution is the study of the gradual processes of simple 7 forms into more differentiated structures in hominid. It is interested in reconstructing the evolutionary record of the human species using fossils/bones. Human evolution is further divided into three specialties: Paleoanthropology and Primatology. Palaeoanthropology (paleo meaning “old”) is the study of human biological evolution through the analysis of fossil remains from prehistoric times to determine the missing link that connect modern human with its biological ancestors. Primatology studies about primates or recent human ancestors to explain human evolution. Primatologists study the anatomy and social behavior of such non-human primate species as gorillas and chimpanzees in an effort to gain clues about our own evolution as a species. Human genetics concerns to investigate how and why the physical traits of contemporary human populations vary throughout the world. It focuses to examine the genetic materials of an organism such as DNA and RNA. In addition, genetic studies are crucial in understanding –how evolution works and plays important role in identifying the genetic source of some hereditary disease like sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis. 1.2.1 Archaeological Anthropology Reflect your views on the following questions.  What do we mean by the human past?  Which discipline tells you about the human distance past?  What do we learn from our past? Archaeological anthropology or simply archaeology studies the ways of lives of past peoples by excavating and analysing the material culture/physical remains (artefacts, features and eco-facts) they left behind. Artefacts are material remains made and used by the past peoples and that can be removed from the site and taken to the laboratory for further analysis. Tools, ornaments, arrowheads, coins, and fragments of pottery are examples of artifacts. Features are like artifacts, are made or modified by past people, but they cannot be readily carried away from the site. Archaeological features include such things as house foundations, ancient buildings, fireplaces, steles, and postholes. Eco-facts are non- artefactual, organic and environmental remains such as soil, animal bones, and plant 8 remainsthat were not made or altered by humans; but were used by them. Eco-facts provide archaeologists with important data concerning the environment and how people used natural resources in the past. Archaeology has also its own subfields or areas of specialties. The most important ones are - Prehistoric Archaeology and Historical 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 (the first artifacts), around 2.5 million years ago, is called prehistory. Historic archaeologists help to reconstruct the cultures of people who used writing and about whom historical documents have been written. Historic archaeology takes advantage of the fact that about 6,000 years ago, some human groups invented language and began to write down things that can tell about the past. We Ethiopian have very glorious past. Area logical findings in North, south, east and western part of the country have shown our county belonged to those countries which have old civilization. Reflect your views on the following questions.  Discuss the lesson we get by studying our past?  Have you ever visited any museums in your area?  What kind of archaeological evidences are commonly found in your area?  From your observation, which evidences are similar and different to those of communities/ groups aroundyour nearby community?  Why do you think is such differences and similarities happening? 9 1.2.3 Linguistic Anthropology Reflect your views on the following questions.  Do you speak a language other than your mother tongue? If yes, what’s the similarity& difference between the languages?  What is the difference between human communication and any other animal communication?  What distinguishes human communication from any other animal communication?  What do languages functions? Indeed, linguistic anthropology or anthropological linguistics studies human language as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice in its social and cultural context, across space and time. Language is basically a system of information transmission and reception. Humans communicate messages by sound (speech), by gesture (body language), and in other visual ways such as writing. Analogous to genes that carry and transmit genetic materials to offspring, languages hand down cultural traits from one generation to another. In fact, some would argue that language is the most distinctive feature of being human. Although animals could develop certain behaviors through conditioning that mimic to humans, they do not have a capacity to pass on their own offspring. This is the boundary between human beings and other animals including higher primates. Linguistic anthropology, which studies contemporary human languages as well as those of the past, is divided into four distinct branches or areas of research: Structural or Descriptive Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Ethno-Linguistics, and Socio-linguistics. Structural /Descriptive Linguistics: -studies the structure of linguistic patterns. It examines sound systems, grammatical systems, and the meanings attached to words in specific languages to understand the structure and set of rules of given language. Every culture has a distinctive language with its own logical structure and set of rules for putting words and sounds together for the purpose of communicating. In its simplest form, the task of the 10 descriptive linguist is to compile dictionaries and grammar books for previously unwritten languages. For structuralist linguist or structural linguistic anthropologist, even if there are thousands of human languages, at least structurally all of them are similar making it possible for everyone of us to grasp and learn languages other than our so called ‘mother tongue’. Ethno-linguistics (cultural linguistics): examines the relationship between language and culture. In any language, certain cultural aspects that are emphasized (such as types of snow among the Inuit, cows among the pastoral Maasai, or automobiles in U.S. culture) are reflected in the vocabulary. Moreover, cultural linguists explore 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. It focuses on the 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 in which everyone speaks just like everyone else. One reason for variation is geography, as in regional dialects and accents. Linguistic variation also is expressed in the bilingualism of ethnic groups. Linguistic anthropology generally focuses on the evolution of languages. It tries to understand languages variation in their structures, units, and grammatical formations. It gives special attention to the study of unwritten languages. Language is a key to explore a culture. Reflect your views on the following questions.  What is relation between language and culture, and human thought patterns?  Do you think that your language changes? If so, what makes language change?  Would change in language brings any change on our identity? 11   Can we maintain our identity in state of global changes?  How can we keep our identity in state of global changes?  How does language construct identity, ideology, and narratives? 1.2.4 Socio-Cultural Anthropology Reflect your views on the following questions.  What is society and culture?  What differentiate human society from other animal society such as bees, ants, etc?  How can we study cultures? It is also often called social anthropology or cultural anthropology. Socio-cultural anthropology is the largest sub-fields of anthropology. It deals with human society and culture. Society is the group of people who have similar ways of life, but culture is a way of life of a group of people. Society and culture are two sides of the same coin. Socio-cultural anthropology describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social, cultural and material life of contemporary human societies. It studies the social (human relations), symbolic or nonmaterial (religious, language, and any other symbols) and material (all man-made objects) lives of living peoples. Socio-cultural anthropologists engage in two aspects of study: Ethnography (based on field work) and Ethnology (based on cross-cultural comparison). Ethnography provides a comprehensive account of a particular community, society, or culture. It describes the features of specific cultures in as much detail as possible including local behavior, beliefs, customs, social life, economic activities, politics, and religion. These detailed descriptions (ethnographies) are the result of extensive field studies (usually a year or two, in duration) in which the anthropologist observes, talks to, and lives with the people he or she is studying. During ethnographic fieldwork, the anthropologist (ethnographer) gathers data 12 that he or she organizes, describes, analyzes, and interprets to build and present that account, which may be in the form of a book, article, or film. Ethnology is the comparative study of contemporary cultures and societies, wherever they may be found. It examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares the results of ethnography the data gathered in different societies. It uses such data to compare and contrast and to make generalizations about society and culture. In other words, Ethnologists seek to understand both why people today and in the recent past differ in terms of ideas and behavior patterns and what all cultures in the world have in common with one another. Looking beyond the particular to the more general, 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. Indeed, the primary objective of ethnology is to uncover general cultural principles, the “rules” that govern human behavior. Ethnography Ethnology Requires field work to collect data Uses data collected by a series of researchers Often descriptive Usually synthetic Group/community specific Comparative/cross-cultural Socio-cultural anthropology uses ethnographical and ethnological approaches to answer all sort of questions related to culture and human societies. To properly address emerging questions related to culture and societies, it has been sub-divided into many other specialized fields as: Anthropology of Art, Medical Anthropology, Urban Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Political Anthropology, Development Anthropology, Anthropology of Religion, Demographic Anthropology, Ecological Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, etc. All of them are considered to be the applied areas of anthropology. 13  Reflect your views on the following questions  From your life experiences, which sub-specialization of social- cultural anthropology could solve your community problems?  How did humankind arrive at the present stage of biological, intellectual, and cultural development?  How are different people in different places similar and different, both biologically and culturally/behaviorally?  Is there a common human nature, and if so, what is it like?  How can we explain why cultures vary? 1.3 Unique (Basic) Features of Anthropology Reflect your views on the following question.  What makes anthropology unique? Several distinguishing characteristics that identify anthropology from other discipline. Anthropology is unique in its scope, approach, focus and method of study. Anthropology has a broad scope. It is interested in all human beings, whether contemporary or past, ''primitive'' or '' civilized'' and that they are interested in many different aspects of humans, including their phenotypic characteristics, family lives, marriages, political systems, economic lives, technology, belief, health care systems, personality types, and languages. No place or time is too remote to escape the anthropologist's notice. No dimension of human kind, from genes to art styles, is outside the anthropologist's attention. Indeed, Anthropology is the broad study of human kind, around the world and throughout time. The second important feature is its approach. In its approach anthropology is holistic, relativistic, and focused one. Holistic in a sense that it looks any phenomena from different 14 vantage points. Accordingly, anthropology considers culture, history, language and biology essential to a complete understanding of society. Anthropology seeks to understand human beings as whole organisms who adapt to their environments through a complex interaction of biology and culture. The concept of relativity is highly appreciated in anthological studies. Anthropology tries to study and explain a certain belief, practice or institution of a group of people in its own context. It does not make value judgment, i.e., declaring that this belief or practice is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Anthropology's comparative perspective helps to understand differences and similarities across time and place. Another important perspective is a way of looking at people's ideas. It considersinsiders' views as a primary focus of any anthropological inquiry. Anthropological studies give attention to how people perceive themselves and understand their world; how a particular group of people explain about their action, or give meaning to their behaviour or cultural practices. This is what anthropologists call emic perspective. It helps to understand the logic and justification behind group behavior and cultural practices. Another important unique feature is its research approach. Anthropology is 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 to explore information change and continuities in human societies. Ethnographic fieldwork is an important strategy is normally required to spend a year or more with research subjects and document realities occurring across time. For most anthropologists, fieldwork is a process requiring them to ‘tune-in; hangout; and hang-on’ to the societies and cultures whom they are interested to study. Focusing more on the local than the big social processes has been another exclusive approach in the discipline. Paying great attention to local or micro-social processes certainly help us to better understand big changes in societies. A detailed account of an event or phenomenon discovers multiple realities in a community. 15 1.4 Misconceptions about anthropology Reflect your views on the following question.  What did you hear/read about anthropology, anthropologists and the work they do? Due to lack of appropriate awareness about the nature, scope and subject matter of the discipline, different misconceptions are held about anthropology. One misconception about anthropology is related to the area of its study. It is said that anthropology is limited to the study of "primitive" societies. Indeed, most of the works done by anthropologists during early periods focused on isolated, so called "primitive", small scale societies. However, anthropologists nowadays study most advanced and most complex societies as well. Another misconception is that anthropologists only study the rural people and rural areas. As a matter of fact, most of the studies conducted during the formative years (when it undergone a process of development to be developed as a separate fields of study) of the discipline focused on rural areas. But now, anthropologists are also interested in the study of urban people and urban areas. There is a distinct sub-discipline devoted to the study of urban societies called -Urban Anthropology-which focuses on urban areas and in complex cities. It is also wrongly misconceived that anthropology is the study/analysis of fossil evidences of the proto-humans like that of Lucy/Dinkeneshe. It is true that anthropology is interested in the question of the origin of modern human beings. However, this doesn’t mean that anthropology is all about the study of human evolution. It studies both the biological and the cultural aspects of humans and examines the existing human physical and biological variations and cultural diversity. It is also misconceived that the purpose of anthropology is to study in order to keep and preserve communities far from development and obsolete cultural practices in museums. Rather, anthropologists’ duties are to support those communities' capacity to empower themselves in development processes. They assist peoples' initiatives instead of imposed 16 policies and ideas coming from outside and play active roles in bringing about positive change and development in their own lives. 1.5 The Relationship between Anthropology and Other Disciplines Reflect your views on the following question.  How do you think relations between and among different scientific disciplines be expressed?  What do you think is the relationship between anthropology and another social scientific discipline? Anthropology is similar with other social sciences such as sociology, psychology, political sciences, economics, history, etc. Anthropology greatly overlaps with these disciplines that study human society. However, anthropology differs from other social sciences and the humanities by its broad scope, unique approach, perspective, unit of analysis and methods used. In its scope, anthropology studies humankind in its entirety. In its approach, anthropology studies and analyzes human ways of life holistically, comparatively and in a relativistic manner. In its perspective, according to Richard Wilk, anthropology approaches and locates dimensions of people’s individual and communal lived experiences, their thoughts and their feelings in terms of how these dimensions are interconnected and interrelated to one another, yet not necessarily constrained or very orderly, whole. The perspective is also fundamentally empirical, naturalistic and ideographic [particularising] than nomothetic [universalising] one. In its method of research, it is unique in that it undertakes extended fieldwork among the studied community and develops intimate knowledge of the life and social worlds of its study group/society through employing those ethnographic data collection techniques such as participant observation, Key informant interview and focus group discussions. 1.6 The Contributions of anthropology 17  Reflect your views on the following question.  Being introduced to the general subject matter of anthropology and the approaches and perspectives it adheres, on what different ways could you be benefitted from learning anthropology as a common course? The philosophical underpinning is that since we are human beings, we have to know our civilization. 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. Because of the enormity of this task, anthropologists must draw on theories and data from a number of other disciplines in the humanities, the social sciences, and the physical sciences. Accordingly, its contributions are immense. By studying anthropology, we get the following benefits, among others. First, the anthropological perspective, with its emphasis on the comparative study of cultures, should lead us to the conclusion that our culture is just one way of life among many found in the world and that it represents one way (among many possible ways) to adapt to a particular set of environmental conditions. Through the process of contrasting and comparing, we gain a fuller understanding of other cultures and our own. Anthropology also helps us better understand ourselves or our own ways of life. As a mirror of human life, by studying others, we can better understand ourselves. Hence, it gives opportunity to understand and to be critical about the ways of lives of our own community. Second, anthropology gives us an insight into different ways and modes of life of human society (social and cultural diversity), which helps to understand the logic and justification behind group behavior and cultural practices. Knowledge about the rest of the world is particularly important today because the world has become increasingly interconnected. So, today it is important that we not only know something about other peoples of the world, but also grasp how our everyday decisions are influencing them in a multitude of ways and how others’ decisions are also influencing ours. Through its distinctive methodology of long-term, intensive, participant-observation research, cultural anthropology offers a unique perspective on how local cultural groups are 18 engaging with the process of globalization. Although many pundits discuss the consequences of globalization by talking to only government and business leaders, cultural anthropologists are more likely to see what is actually occurring on the ground and how the local people themselves talk about their life experiences in a time of rapid globalization. Because of its relativistic approach, anthropology helps us to be more sensitive to and appreciative of cultural diversity and variability. It helps us to avoid some of the misunderstandings that commonly arise when individuals of different cultural traditions come into contact. Anthropology helps us fight against prejudice and discriminations. It helps us fight 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. This arises from ignorance about other ethnic groups and their ways of lives. Anthropology is also used as a tool for development. Paying attention to local conditions, is crucial to solve community problems. The application of anthropological knowledge and research results have become important element to ensure people’s rights in development and able to sustain projects' life. Anthropologists are better equipped with the knowledge, skills and methods of identifying the needs and interests of local people for the betterment and change of their lived experiences. It recognizes the advantages of consulting local people to design a culturally appropriate and socially sensitive change, and protect local people from harmful policies and projects that threaten them. In general, anthropology is able to suggest sound solutions to all things human.For example, it is often applied in areas of Environmental Change, Health and Nutrition, Globalization, Social Justice and Human Rights, cultural resource management (CRM) and Cultural Dimensions of Civil and Religious Conflicts. 1.7. Unit Summary Dear Students! In this unit we have explored in a more general way the nature of anthropology as a field of inquiry. We have also seen the four common sub divisions of anthropology: physical/biological anthropology; archaeology; linguistic anthropology; and socio-cultural anthropology with their main essences and divisions. It’s also underscored that the 19 discipline, at least in its modern form, emerged in late 19th c. Europe as the science of human beings across broader spaces and times of existence. Ideally anthropologists want to know how all the aspects and elements of people’s lives are related and interconnected via carrying out extended fieldwork to collect empirical data from communities while they are in their natural setting and trying to understand the meanings people attached to events, phenomena and their ways of life. It is important to understand that there are few misconceptions about the nature, purpose and historical emergence of the discipline most ultimately based on ignorance and misundersding of historical facts. However, anthropology has successfully contributed the significance of local lives and local voices in an age of simmering waves of global forces. 1.8. Assessment Techniques The assessment methods to be used in this unit include; quiz, group assignment, individual assignments, administering different examinations and mandatory reading assignments. 1.9 Facilities required White/Blackboard, LCD/Power Point Presentations, Whiteboard Markers.… etc. 20 Suggested reading materials Eriksen, Thomas H. 2001. Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. 2th ed. London: Pluto Press. Kottak, Conrad P. 2007. Mirror for humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. 5th ed. New York: McGraw- Hill. Kottak, Conrad Phillip. 2010. Window on humanity: a concise introduction to anthropology. 4thEd. New York: McGraw-Hill. Smith, Cameron M. and Davies, Evan T. 2008. Anthropology for Dummies®. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing Inc. 21