Accessibility StatementFor more information contact us atinfo@libretexts.orgor check out our status page at https://status.libretexts.org. Anthropologists conduct their research in the field with the species, civilization, or groups of people they are studying. 1.2: Anthropological Perspectives is shared under a CC BY-NC license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts. One important component of the structural-functional approach is the idea of social structure. This encourages students to appreciate that anthropology happens all around them and isnt something that can only be studied in a faraway society. The Evolutionist Perspective. Ethnographic research can help us to understand the extent of a global problem such as gender violence, the everyday experiences of those facing abuse, and the struggles and accomplishments of people actively working to improve their societies. In Vietnam, I have had the opportunity to live with a family in a commune in Hanoi, and in nearby provinces. They study other societies to gain a clearer perspective on our own. Manners dont make the man; men and women invent the manners. degree at the Harvard School of Public Health before receiving a Fulbright Fellowship to go to Benin University in southern Nigeria. 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How is this connected to that? 1. How do seemingly random beliefs and convictions converge into this thing called culture, a term that he was the first to promote as an organizing principle, a useful point of intellectual departure. As recently as 1965, Carleton Coon completed a set of two books, The Origin of Races and The Living Races of Man, in which he advanced the theory that the political and technological dominance of Europeans was a natural consequence of their evolved genetic superiority. Anthropology is the antidote to nativism, the enemy of hate, a vaccine of understanding, tolerance and compassion that silences the rhetoric of demagogues, inoculating the world from the likes of the Proud Boys and Donald Trump. Anthropology is the systematic study of humanity, with the goal of understanding the origins and distinctiveness of our species and the great diversity in our forms of social existence through space and time. If you recognize that marriage need not exclusively imply a man and a woman, that single mothers can be good mothers, and that two men or two women can raise good families as long as there is love in the home, its because youve embraced values and intuitions inconceivable to your great-grandparents. The focus of Anthropology is on understanding both our shared humanity and diversity, and engaging with diverse . In the course of conducting fieldwork with human subjects, anthropologists invariably encounter ethical dilemmas: Who might be harmed by conducting or publishing this research? I also spent one year studying abroad at Philipps Universitt in Marburg, Germany, and saved some me time for hitchhiking and traveling around Europe. There is nothing useful or logical for doing that. I oftentimes use non-anthropologists work in my classes to anchor our discipline in liberal education. Hence, Anthropology and its study are indeed important from the perspective of knowing more about us. For instance, the study of language is the domain of linguistic anthropology. Investigating and revealing the nature of the past Assessing present genetic diversity through evolutionary history Expanding knowledge of primate behavior, biology and diversity Investigative Observing people/data/things Organizing ideas/materials/objects/people Analyzing relationships between factors Evaluating Sampling Cultural Lots of what we do in class stays with students beyond graduation. Explain it with clear descriptions in your notebook. Knowing who you are will always be more important than others knowing who you are. Cultural anthropology is hallmarked by the concept of culture itself. Where a fascination with the exotic initially brought me to anthropology, it is the disciplines ability to shed light on what many of us see as normal, common, and taken-for-granted that has kept me with it through three degrees (bachelors, masters, and Ph.D.) and a fifteen-year career as a college professor. As we hope you have learned thus far, anthropology is an exciting and multifaceted field of study. One of the most effective writing exercises I give students allows them to examine an essential part of their lives, their cell phones. A lot of issues we have today (racism, xenophobia, etc.) Thanks for reading Scientific American. What are the costs and benefits of identifying individuals involved in this study? The superiority of the white man was accepted with such assurance that the Oxford English Dictionary in 1911 had no entries for racism or colonialism. Anthropology is a comparative discipline: anthropologists compare and contrast data in order to understand what all humans have in common, how we differ, and how we have changed over time. The opposite of cultural relativism is ethnocentrism, the tendency to view ones own culture as the most important and correct and as a measuring stick by which to evaluate all other cultures that are largely seen as inferior and morally suspect. Concepts like oppression, inequality, and intersectionality are realities in society that . Participant observation research allows anthropologists to obtain a special kind of knowledge that is rarely acquired through other, more limited research methods. Through their research, anthropologists contribute unique and important forms of knowledge and information to diverse groups, including local communities, nations, and global social movements, such as feminist, racial, indigenous, environmental, LGBTQ, and other social movements. How does that work? To address these questions, anthropologists are obligated to follow a professional code of ethics that guides us through ethical considerations in our research.[6]. The comprehensiveness of anthropology stems from its emphasis on context, reflected in the perspectives offered by the discipline's four fields: sociocultural, biological, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology. Why do we behave the way we do? The comparative approach can be historical: How do humans today differ from ancient Homo sapiens? This type of research takes a great amount of time and effort but produces a uniquely deep and contextual type of knowledge. His latest book is Magdalena: River of Dreams (Knopf 2020). The Greek term ethno refers to people, and graphy refers to writing. But it must be spoken to be heard. We live today in the social landscape of their dreams. Through my research experiences, I have participated in the rich daily lives of farmers, woodcarvers, hospital personnel, government employees, shopkeepers, students, and other groups of people. As it turns out, many people are ethnocentric to some degree; ethnocentrism is a common human experience. Before any of these struggles could flourish, something fundamental, some flash of insight, had to challenge and, in time, shatter the intellectual foundations that supported archaic beliefs as irrelevant to our lives today as the notions of 19th-century clergymen, certain that the earth was but 6,000 years old. To those who suggest that indigenous cultures are destined to fade away, he would reply that change and technology pose no threat to culture, but power does. The reason why people do it is because it is parade as a sign of respect which is all sentimentality and emotion. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. An anthropological perspective also draws from many other disciplines to examine patterns, and, of course, requires one to engage with people by talking to them (something thats become harder than ever for many students). + Follow. His core idea, distilled in the notion of cultural relativism, was a radical departure, as unique in its way as was Einsteins theory of relativity in the discipline of physics. Cultural anthropologists research is unique because it often involves analysis of the intersection of global social, political and economic forces and the everyday experiences of members of a cultural group. Of course, learning to see the world through someone else's . Inspired by his time among the Inuit on Baffin Island, and later the Kwakwakawakw in the salmon forests of the Pacific Northwest, he informed all who would listen that the other peoples of the world were not failed attempts to be them, failed attempts to be modern. Using an anthropological perspective, theres no issue which cannot be better understood. With a million Uighurs in Chinese prison camps, the forests of the Penan in Sarawak laid waste, and the very homeland of the Inuit melting from beneath their lives, contemporary anthropologists must surely do better than indulging doctrinal grievance studies, seminars on intersectionality, the use of pronouns and other multiple expressions of woke orthodoxy if the discipline is to avoid the indictment of actually being the most worthless of undergraduate degrees. The purpose of social study is to understand all of that sentimentality. They attempt to achieve this by observing subjects in their local environment. What is the importance of knowing the perspective of anthropology sociology? There is no hierarchy of progress in the history of culture, no evolutionary ladder to success. Rather, a professional, or scientific, perspective represented in anthropology emphasises the need to understand what humans do and how they interpret their own actions and world-views. Anthropologists ask questions like: How do chimpanzees differ from humans? Most are surprised at the far-flung origins of what they wear. In all these efforts, my attention is primarily on understanding the complexities, nuances, and significance of race. Anthropologists do not judge other cultures based on their values nor do they view other ways of doing things as inferior. This article sets the context and defines the term as well as analyzing the scope and importance of political science. Those two things can go hand-in-hand. Each was a product of its own history. It is important to study the perspective of anthropology to be able to understand history of man and how past civilization existed compared to present ones. 2. Discover world-changing science. So when you are working with people and building relationships with them, it helps to have some perspective and understanding of their cultures. While anthropologists often specialize in one subfield, their specific research contributes to a broader understanding of the human condition, which is made up of culture, language, biological and social adaptations, as well as human origins and evolution. Thinking from a sociological perspective allows one to better understand other people's circumstances and the reasons why they are in the situations they are in. We are all cut from the same genetic cloth, all descendants of common ancestors, including those who walked out of Africa some 65,000 years ago, embarking on a journey that over 40,000 years, a mere 2500 generations, carried the human spirit to every corner of the habitable world. It is possible, wrote Thomas Gossett in his 1963 book. How do countries respond differently to immigration? In Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition, Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges, 2020, under CC BY-NC 4.0. Womens suffrage only came in 1919. This is important in helping to understand how one language relates to another and how humans have communicated with one another over time. But, 80 years on, studies of the human genome have indeed revealed the genetic endowment of humanity to be a single continuum. Because of its breadth, students who study anthropology go on to work in a wide variety of careers in medicine, museums, field archaeology, historical preservation, education, international business, documentary filmmaking, management, foreign service, law, and many more. Boas never called for the elimination of judgment, only its suspension so that the very judgments we are ethically and morally obliged to make as human beings may be informed ones. What is the importance of knowing the perspective of anthropology, sociology and political science. Anthropology is an academic field of study with several divisions. Charles King, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, begins his remarkable book The Reinvention of Humanity by asking us to envision the world as it existed in the minds of our grandparents, perhaps your great-grandparents. Anthropology has different branches and each of the branches provides for a certain aspect of the inquiry into our origins and evolution as a species. 4. We also acknowledge previous National Science Foundation support under grant numbers 1246120, 1525057, and 1413739. In 1871 Darwin published The Descent of Man, which argued that human beings shared a recent common ancestor with the great African apes. For example, a cultural anthropologist studying the meaning of marriage in a small village in India might consider local gender norms, existing family networks, laws regarding marriage, religious rules, and economic factors. This type of research takes a great amount of time and effort, but produces a uniquely deep and contextual type of knowledge. But here is the important idea. Studying anthropology fosters broad knowledge of other cultures, skills in observation and analysis, critical thinking, clear communication, and applied problem-solving. Anthropology encourages us to extend our perspectives beyond familiar social contexts to view things from the perspectives of others. As I flourished in these coursestwo introductory level classes on cultural anthropology and archeology, a class called Culture through Film, and another on Egalitarian SocietiesI envisioned a possible future as an anthropologist working in rural West Africa on topics like symbolic art and folklore. She was previously Lecturer in Race and Ethnicity in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey.
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