Chapter 1 - The Anthropological Perspective On The Human Condition

Cultural Relativism

A methodological concept. The perspective that all cultures are equally valid and can only be truly understood in their own terms. A holistic approach states: understanding another culture in its own terms sympathetically enough so that the culture appears to be a coherent and meaningful design for living. An argument against ethnocentrism. It makes moral reasoning more complex and less comfortable. It discourages the easy solution of refusing to consider alternatives from the outset.

To the five basic elements, what are the three elements that evolved later and made human culture possible?

According to Richard Potts they are: 6) Symbolic Coding/Symbolic Representation: the ability to use symbols to represent elements of reality. 7) Complex Symbolic Representation: the ability to communicate freely about the past, the future, and the invisible or imaginary. 8) Institutional Development: the ability to create complex and variable forms of social organizations unique to our species.

Ethnography

An anthropologist's recorded description of a particular culture. Cultural anthropologists who write ethnographies are called ethnographers.

How can cultural relativism make moral solutions difficult?

Because it requires us to take into account many things before we make any judgments about another culture.

Most anthropologists view human beings as what?

Biocultural organisms.

What are human beings?

Biocultural organisms.

How do anthropologists believe ethnocentrism can be countered?

By a commitment to cultural relativism, which is an attempt to understand the cultural underpinnings of behaviour within the context of the culture in which it is found. It does not require us to abandon every value our society has taught us; it discourages the easy solution of refusing to consider alternatives from the outset.

Which one is NOT one of Potts's three elements that made human culture possible? A) Complex symbolic representation B) Institutional Development C) Bipedalism D) Symbolic Coding

C) Bipedalism

What are learned behaviours and ideas acquired by humans as a member of society?

Culture

What is the biological reduction of complex events in single forces called?

Determinism

What do anthropologists want to learn?

Different ways of life.

What viewpoint sees reality as consisting of two different but equal parts?

Dualism

____________ is a recorded and/or written description of a particular group.

Ethnography

Cultural Evolution

Evolution of the beliefs and behaviours we incorporate into human development through the experiences of teaching and learning. Anthropologists trace how elements of culture have changed over time.

In extreme cases, cultural relativism can result in discrimination to the point of genocide. True or false?

False.

Paleoanthropology is a discipline of archeology. True or false?

False.

What gives primacy to the mind that produces ideas?

Idealism

An anthropologist who believes that human beings are born with no fixed essence would be classified as a(n) ________.

Idealist

Why is human history an important aspect of the human story?

It is a dialectic between biology and culture. Culture is dynamic and aspects of it are passed on from one generation to the next. The cultural beliefs and practices we learn from the past or borrow from other people in the present make some things easier for us, but can also make other things more difficult. As culture is adaptive, shared, learned, and symbolic, it can serve as a resource that human beings can use in the pursuit of their own goals. Thus, the anthropological understanding of human life recognizes the importance of human agency.

What do modern anthropologists reject?

Labels such as civilized, primitive and race.

What is the reductionistic viewpoint divided into?

Materialism and Idealism

Fieldwork

Ordinarily how cultural anthropologists collect their data during an extended period. A central feature, it's their involvement in the everyday routine of those among whom they life. They gain entry into the lives of others (a gift) and this gift is an act of reciprocity. Requires the anthropologist engage in reflexivity - thinking about how and why one thinks about specific things.

Humans often make sense of their world through the use of _____________.

Symbols.

In anthropology, holism considers what about human nature?

That it is the result of co-evolution.

What do idealists claim about human nature?

That it's determined by the causal force of mind or spirit.

What do materialists claim about human nature?

That it's determined by the causal force of physical matter.

In the culture/cultures debate, what do some anthropologists believe?

That we should eliminate the use of both terms.

Anthropological fieldwork is what?

The main data-collection method of cultural anthropologists, typically results in an ethnography, and involves elements of reciprocity and reflexivity.

Primatology

The study of non-human primates, the closest living relatives of human beings.

Paleoanthropology

The study of the fossilized remains of human beings' earliest ancestors.

What did Plato believe about human existence?

The understanding that each person is made up of a material (physical) body inhabited by an ethereal mind or spirit. According to him, the drama of human existence consists of the internal struggle between the body (drawn naturally to base, corruptible matter) and the mind or soul (drawn naturally to pure, unchanging forms).

Cultural anthropology is also known as social anthropology. True or false?

True.

Transmission and reiteration are ________.

Two of Potts's five foundations of culture.

Applied Anthropologists

Use information from the other four anthropological specialties to solve practical cross-cultural problems.

Conflict Dualism

Each human being consists of a soul that seeks God and a physical body that is tempted by the material world. A struggle between spirit (good) and flesh (evil).

Biological Anthropology

Has a focus on human beings as living organisms. Includes paleoanthropology, human biology and variation, and primatology. Began as an attempt to classify all the world's populations into different races. By the early twentieth century, however, most anthropologists had rejected racial classifications as scientifically unjustifiable and objected to the ways in which racial classifications were used to justify the social practice of racism. Contemporary anthropologists who are interested in human biology include biological anthropologists, primatologists, and paleoanthropologists.

What assumes that the mind and body, person and society, humans and their environment interpenetrate and define one another?

Holism

Human Agency

Human beings' ability to exercise at least some control over their lives. Humans have agency and can choose to act in certain ways, to keep or reject traditions or reconfigure traditions to fit into new realities. Karl Marx noted that human agency is also limited by history, culture, and the material conditions of existence.

The concept of co-evolution belongs to the holistic perspective on human nature. True or false?

True.

The elements that make up "traditional culture" are adaptable and constantly changing. True or false?

True.

What is the promise of the anthropological perspective?

-It forces us to question common sense assumptions. -Makes moral and political decisions more difficult. -Decreases ethnocentric thinking. -Provides a holistic, comparative, and cross-cultural understanding of the human condition(s). -Exposes us to the diversity of other life ways.

What are Sherry Ortner's three imperatives regarding the use of "cultures"?

1) Eroticize and objectify the culture of the ethnographer, placing it in the same analytic framework. This allows anthropologists to highlight the differences between cultures without implying that their own culture is better or more "normal" than others. 2) Emphasize the issue of meaning-making and active process. This ensures anthropologists represent cultures as dynamic rather than static, and that they recognize individuals as active participants in making sense of their own lives. 3) Situate cultural analysis within larger analyses of social and political events and processes. This would force anthropologists to work toward a greater purpose, rather than simply engaging in cultural analysis as an "end in itself." It would also force them to recognize the reality that no community exists in isolation.

What does anthropological study involve?

1) Gathering data from many cultures, both past and present. 2) Comparing those data to derive informed and testable hypotheses about what it means to be human. 3) Investigating what, if anything, can be said about the human condition that might be valid across space and over time.

How is the argument that "my culture made me do it" flawed?

1) Humans don't passively follow the dictates of their culture. 2) There is dissent and resistance to some cultural norms and beliefs. 3) Cultures aren't uniform from within. 4) Alternative prospectives may exist within cultures based on experience and choice. 5) Cultural relativism doesn't endorse practices that are harmful merely because they are cultural.

What are the three major faulty assumptions about human nature and human society from a deterministic approach and why?

1. Cultues have near boundaries between them and are sealed off from one another. 2. Every culture offers people only one way to interpret experience (cultures are uniform and permit no variety, harbor no contradictions, and allow no dissent). 3. People living in these closed cultural worlds are passively shaped by culture, helpless to resist indoctrination into a single world view, and incapable of inventing alternatives to that view. Lived human experience undermines all these assumptions. -Cultures aren't sealed off, their boundaries are fuzzy, porous, and people with different cultural backgrounds regularly exchange ideas and practices. -Every culture offers a variety of ways to interpret experience, even while all might not be officially sanctioned. -Cultures are constantly being redefined by their members. -Humans aren't passive lumps shaped unresistingly to fit a single cultural mould.

Culture

A central marker of what it means to be human. E.B. Taylor defined it as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired....as a member of society." Culture as learned, symbolic, and adaptive: -Habitus -Cultures are not neatly bounded or closed off from other cultures, nor are they uniform within. -There is debate around the use of culture as patterned, symbolically mediated ideas versus cultures as learned ways of life of a specific group. Textbook: Sets of learned behaviors and ideas that humans acquire as members of a society.

What are the three more elements Richard Potts argued that evolved later and made human culture possible?

1. Symbolic Coding 2. Complex symbolic representation 3. Institutional development

What are the five basic foundational elements of culture as identified by Richard Potts?

1. Transmission 2. Memory 3. Reiteration 4. Innovation 5. Selection

Cultural Pattern

A behaviour or idea that members of a specific society repeatedly pass on to one another, across generations, and that is thus recognizable to all members of that society. An example is a group's language.

Comparative

A characteristic of the anthropological perspective that requires anthropologists to consider similarities and differences in a wide range of human societies before generalizing about human nature, human society, or human history. Anthropologists understand that it isn't enough to observe one social group, monitor them and then conclude that all humans do the same. They recognize that all social groups deserve equal treatment and respect, and reject such terms as exotic, primitive, and savage to describe practices that differ from those of their own group.

Evolutionary

A characteristic of the anthropological perspective that requires anthropologists to place their observations about human nature, human society, or human history in a flexible framework that takes into consideration change over time.

What is the North American viewpoint on human nature?

A dualistic viewpoint such as mind/matter, soul/body, or spirit/flesh. The pair of forces is often referred to a binary opposition.

Metanarratives

A grand-scale theory or theme that members of a given culture recognize and that often drives ideas and actions within that culture.

How can we avoid an ethnocentric bias?

A holistic approach to relationships between groups, both across and within cultural traditions holds promise. Become aware of the possibilities that are different from your own. Clarity, discovery; when you share elements of your own culture with people from another background, those individuals can be affected in a similar way as you - with an "Aha!" moment. Learning about other cultures opens up new possibilities. When learning occurs, we can no longer claim that any single culture has a monopoly on truth. We need to recognize the truth embodied in any cultural tradition - be partial, approximate, and open to further insight and growth.

Binary Opposition

A pair of opposites used as an organizing principle (e.g., body-soul; yin-yang; male-female).

Holism

A perspective on the human condition that assumes that mind and body, individual and society, and individual and environment interpenetrate and even define one another. It assumes that no sharp boundaries separate mind from body, body from environment individual from society, my ideas from your ideas, or our traditions fro the traditions of others. It proposes they interpenetrate and define one another. Argues that objects and environments interpenetrate and even define each other. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Human beings and human societies are open systems that cannot be reduced to the parts that make them up. The parts and the whole mutually define, or co-determine, each other and co-evolve.

What are modern cultural anthropologists concerned with studying?

All human societies, including their own, and they do research in urban and rural settings around the world.

Anthropological Perspective

An approach to the human condition that is holistic, comparative, and evolutionary. Unique in the social sciences, draws on the findings of other disciplines (human biology, literature, art, history, linguistics, sociology, political science, economics, etc) and attempts to fit them together with its own findings in order to understand how different forces collectively shape human life. Anthropologists are convinced that explanations of human activities will inevitably be superficial unless they are holistic - unless they acknowledge that human life is greater than the sum of its parts. Recognizes that so long as they are alive, individuals and societies always remain open to influences and opportunities that may take them beyond what they are at the present moment or what they have been in the past.

Essence

An unchanging core of features that is unique to things of the same kind and makes them what they are. To strip away our seemingly minor or unnecessary attributes in order to reveal an understanding core.

Linguistic Anthropologists

Approach cultural diversity by relating varied forms of language to their cultural contexts. Like cultural anthropologists, they gather information through fieldwork, by participating with their informants in social activities, and by observing those activities as outsiders. They publish accounts of their research in ethnographies.

What are the five foundations of culture?

As proposed by Richard Potts they are: 1) Transmission: the ability to copy behaviour by observation and/or instruction. 2) Memory: the ability to remember new behaviours (which allowed transitions to develop) 3) Reiteration: the ability to reproduce or imitate behaviour or information that has been learned. 4) Innovation: the ability to invent and modify behaviours. 5) Selection: the ability to select which innovations to keep and which to discard.

Biological Evolution

Change (through mutation) in genetic makeup (the DNA/RNA) of a population that is passed on through the generations. Of the human species, paying attention not only to human origins but also to the patterns of biological variation involving human populations.

Within a holistic viewpoint on human nature orientation, what is it causal relationship and specific theory?

Co-Determinism; Co-evolution

What emphasizes the mutual evolution of biology, culture and environment?

Co-Evolution

What sets anthropology as a discipline apart from sociology?

Comparative research.

________ are attributes that make human beings distinct in the way they learn and interact with the world.

Complex brains capable of symbolic thought and prehensile hands.

Even within a single cultural tradition, the meaning of an object may differ depending on _____________.

Context.

Why have anthropologists criticized the term culture or cultures?

Culture - which refers to the distinguishing human characteristic of being able to create and imitate patterned, symbolically mediated ideas to promote the survival of the species, and cultures (plural) indicate a particular learned way of life belonging to a specific group of human beings. Critics argue that this way of talking about culture seems to endorse a kind of oppressive cultural determinism and that it is important that anthropologists be attentive to this by remaining vigilant that oppression.

What is the critique regarding the terms culture and cultures?

Culture means different things to different people. The critique centers on the specific definitions of both the singular and plural. Culture refers to distinguishing human characteristic of being able to create and imitate patterned, symbolically mediated ideas and activities that promote the survival of the species. Cultures indicate a particular, learned way of life belonging to a specific group of human beings. Cultures have elected the most objections. It is objected to because it highlights differences, rather than shared humanness between groups of people. The difference aspect is what suggests a lingering racism. It was suggested that any anthropologists who use culture or cultures as part of their professional analytical vocabulary risk lending credibility to the way the concepts have been used to oppress rather than liberate.

Primates have not shown any signs of possessing culture. True or false?

False.

Thinking about why and how one thinks about specific things is known as reciprocity. True or false?

False.

Linguistic Anthropology

Focuses on language and the relationship between language and identity, and language within sub-cultures. The specialty of anthropology concerned with the study of human languages. Linguistic anthropologists study the way language differences frequently correlate with differences in gender, race, class, or ethnic identity. A highly trained area, modern linguistic anthropologists are deeply trained in both linguistics and cultural anthropology. They work to maintain endangered languages, attempting to help understand the nature of language and its links to our cultural identity.

Archaeology

Focuses on past ways of life. The specialty of anthropology interested in what we can learn from material remains left behind by earlier human societies. It is a cultural anthropology of the human past and present that places emphasis on the analysis of material remains, with interests ranging from the earliest stone tools to twenty-first-century garbage dumps. Study of the human past through the analysis of material remains. Archaeologists must be knowledgeable about the history of a site they are investigating and familiar with past technologies and environmental/economic indicators (ex: plant and animal remains), so they can recognize valuable details and situate their findings within the greater scientific landscape.

Cultural Anthropology

Focuses on present-day societies/ethnography and ethnology. Examines topics like globalization, gender, and sexuality, transnational labor migration, urbanization, communication, technology, cyberculture, etc. Uses the extended fieldwork method. Researchers gather information from people they encounter in the field who are variously called informants, consultants, teachers, participants, etc. The speciality of anthropology that studies how variation in beliefs and behaviours is shaped by culture and learned by different members of human groups. Sometimes called sociocultural anthropology, social anthropology, or ethnology, it focuses on sets of learned behaviours and ideas that human beings acquire as members of a society. One of the social sciences.

Applied Anthropology

Focuses on the application of anthropological theories and methods to the solution of everyday problems: health policies, refugee supports, forensic investigations, etc. Examples are found in all four fields. Some argue that it should be considered a sub-discipline or 5th field. The use of information gathered from the other anthropological specialties to solve practical problems within and between cultures. They put logical information to practical use to propose solutions to important social and cultural problems. Because of the power of applied anthropology to solve problems and help those in need, many anthropologists have become advocates or activists for a cause. They use their professional skills to draw public attention to a plight of the people they study, seek social justice, fight discrimination, or to support human and cultural rights.

In what way is a human being's interactions with the wider world distinct over other living species?

For two reasons: 1) Our large, complex brains are capable of extremely intricate open symbolic thought. 2) Our hands are capable of manipulating matter in both powerful and delicate ways.

Where does the concept of culture have its roots?

In Philosophy.

Where does mind-matter dualism date back to?

Is rooted in Wester thought and dates back to Plato.

The co-evolutionary approach to human nature, society and past proposes what?

It is believed that culture and the human brain co-evolved—each helped shape the other. Human beings depend on symbolic cultural understandings to help them resolve the ambiguities inherent in everyday human experience.

Why is ethnocentrism problematic?

It reduces other ways of life to distorted versions of one's own life. It arises when the members of one society go beyond merely interpreting another way of life in ethnocentric terms and decides to do something about the differences they observe. Concluding the other's way of life is wrong, then trying to convert the other group member's to the new (right) way of doing things. If others are unwilling, the failed conversion attempt can transform into an active dualism: they vs us, good vs. evil, etc. The ultimate result can be war and/or genocide. It's also been an excuse for economic/political gains by one group over another.

The anthropological perspective is considered "evolutionary" because?

It requires that anthropologists place their observations in a framework that considers change over time.

What is the holistic view on society?

Not simply the sum of the behaviors of its individual members but a unique entity and human beings living in groups are so deeply affected by shared cultural experiences that they become different from what they would have been had they matured in isolation.

What emphasizes the actions of the physical body in the material world?

Materialism

Biocultural Organisms

Organisms whose defining features or co-determined by biological and cultural factors. Our biological makeup, genes, and cellular chemistry contribute to our capacity to create and use culture. Our survival as biological organisms depends on learned ways of thinking and acting that help us find food, shelter, and mates; rearing offspring.

Informants

People in a particular culture who work with anthropologists and provide them with insights about local ways of life. Some anthropologists reject this term because it suggests a role that is limited to supplying information for the benefit of the researcher. They sometimes choose to describe the people they encounter in the field as partners, participants, consultants (the people I work with), or teachers because it emphasizes a relationship of equity and mutual respect. A student/teacher relationship.

Anthropologists reject the use of what terms?

Race, civilized, and primitive.

Within a dualistic viewpoint on human nature orientation, what are its causal relationship and specific theories?

Reductionistic; Materialism and Idealism

Habitus

Routine activities rooted in habitual behaviours that are learned. Everyday, routine social activity rooted in habitual behaviour. Many of the practical survival skills we learn, such as what is good to eat, where its safe to sleep, are never explicitly taught; nonetheless, they are dependent on contact with other members of a social group. Cultural traditions encompass the varied situational knowledge and skills of many different individuals; they allow the group to adapt and accomplish beyond any individual's limitations.

Symbol

Something that stands for something else.

Symbolic Coding/Complex Symbolic Representation

Something we share with other species; the great apes. Symbolic Coding: It is the ability to use symbols to represent elements of reality. Complex Symbolic Representation: distinguishes human language from the simpler vocal communication systems of apes.

Cultural Anthropologists

Study cultural diversity in human societies, including their own. In this discipline, there is an emphasis on exploring the set of learned behaviours and ideas that humans acquire as members of a society.

Frans Boas is known for what?

Studying the indigenous peoples of the Canadian West Coast and his commitment to the perspective of cultural relativism.

What did Karl Marx argue about the forces' shaping human beings' self-understanding?

That they were rooted in social relations shaped by the mode of economic production that sustained a society. Different groups (classes) played different roles in the production process, members of each group would develop a different sense of what life is all about.

Ethnology

The comparative study of two or more cultures. Cultural anthropologists who compare ethnographic information on many different cultural practices are sometimes called ethnologists.

How is anthropology different from sociology?

The comparison of different forms of human social life sets anthropology apart from sociology.

Genocide

The deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire group based on race, religion, natural origin, or other central features.

Anthropology

The integrated study of human nature, human society, and human history. As a scholarly discipline that aims to describe, in the broadest sense, what it means to be human. Is comparative in that it views humans across time and space. Is evolutionary in that includes the view of co-evolution, the relationship between biological and symbolic processes. Aims to describe what it means to be human, anywhere, and anytime. The perspective is holistic, comparative, evolutionary, and has relied on the concept of culture, even though it is a contested term, to explain the diversity of human ways of living and the meaning they give to their lives. Human beings depend on cultural learning for successful biological survival and reproduction and to help make sense of their world, which is why anthropologists consider human beings to be biocultural organisms. Today, it is considered to have four major subfields: biological anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. Some anthropologists argue that there is a fifth subfield, that of applied anthropology.

Ethnocentrism

The opinion that one's own way of life is the most natural, correct, or fully human way of life. A term that anthropologists use to describe the opinion that one's own way of life is natural or correct, indeed the only way of being fully human. It is a form of reductionism. Anthropologists believe it can be countered by a commitment to cultural relativism, which is an attempt to understand the cultural underpinnings of behaviour within the context of the culture in which it is found.

Determinism

The philosophical view that one simple force (or a few simple forces) causes (or determines) complex events. Idealists claim that human nature is determined by the causal force of mind or spirit; materialists argue that human nature is determined by the causal force of physical matter.

Idealism

The philosophical view that pure, incorruptible ideas - or the mind that produces such ideas - constitute the essence of human nature. Although human beings are equipped with physical bodies, their true nature is spiritual, not material; the body is a material obstacle that prevents the full development of the mind or spirit.

Dualism

The philosophical view that reality consists of two equal and irreducible forces. The pair of forces is often referred to a binary opposition.

Materialism

The philosophical view that the activities of our physical bodies in the material world constitute the essence of human nature (makes us who we are). Human existence becomes the struggle to exercise our physicality as fully as we can; to put spiritual values above bodily needs would "go against human nature."

Co-Evolution

The relationship between biological processes and symbolic cultural processes in which each makes up an important part of the environment to which the other must adapt. Human beings are creatures whose bodies, brains, actions, and thoughts are equally involved in learning, co-determining, and co-evolving.

What are some challenges of cultural differences?

The same objects, actions, or events frequently mean different things to people within different cultures. What counts as an object or event in one culture may not be recognized as such in another. Even a single tradition, the meaning of an object, or action, may differ depending on the context. The human experience is extremely ambiguous.

Informants, those who provide anthropologists with insights into their way of life, can also be known as teachers, consultants, and friends. True or false?

True.

Biological (Physical) Anthropology

The specialty of anthropology that looks at humans as biological organisms and tries to discover what characteristics make us different from and/or similar to other living things. They focus on patterns of variation within the human species as a whole. Includes paleoanthropology, human biology (molecular and forensic) and variation, and primatology.

What was an extreme idealist reaction against materialist thinking which is influential in cultural anthropology?

They argue that human beings have no fixed essence when they come into the world, but they become different kinds of human beings as a result of the particular ideas, meanings, beliefs, and values that they absorb as members of particular societies.

What are contemporary cultural anthropologists interested in?

They study the sort of influences brought about from a post-colonial perspective (technology, firearms, mechanics, railroads, etc.) Social media and online communication tools.

What did some 19th-century thinkers argue what the most powerful material forces that shape human nature were?

They were found in the natural environment. Rich soil, a temperate climate, droughts, and the absence of animals that can be domesticated are examples of the environmental factors understood to shape past and present societies, and ultimately their inhabitants' sense of self and society.

How do anthropologists resolve the ambiguity of human experiences?

Through experience which must be interpreted. To prevent any misunderstandings, anthropologists must be careful to distinguish between two approaches: ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.

How would you develop definitions of what it means to be human?

Through the advancement of knowledge, biological changes, habit formation or other criteria that display changes over time. Human culture is learned, shared, patterned, adaptive, and symbolic. Human beings do not begin as slates. We are not made. We grow. We begin as eggs, already bathed and partaking of an environment. Whatever our nature is, does not exist before our growth within a specific environment, beginning with a maternal environment. Eggs grow and transform in the context of a womb. There is no nature apart from our growth, in constant process, in a particular place. All of it is dynamic interaction-change one part and everything else changes. We develop social groups, and those groups may manifest physical differences. But biology is and always will be dynamic interaction and process, not hard-wiring.

What is one of anthropology's most important contributions to the study of human evolution?

To demonstrate the critical differences that separate biological evolution, which is situated in environmental circumstances, from cultural evolution. It is a way of demonstrating the inadequacy of arguments that assert that everything people do or think can be explained biologically.

Molecular Anthropology

Trace chemical similarities and differences in cells, tissues, and organs; what they have learned about the immune system.

What is the debate surrounding the continued use of the culture concept in anthropology?

Trouillot and Kuper emphasize the ways that the concept has been used to oppress people considered "other". Sherry Ortner agrees for a reconfiguration of the concept of culture that reduces differences, emphasizes the issue of meaning-making, and is situated beneath larger analyses of social and political events and processes.

Humans and apes share the ability to use symbolic coding; using symbols to represent elements of reality. True or false?

True.

Forensic Anthropology

Uses the knowledge of human skeletal anatomy to aid law enforcement and human rights investigators.

What do have philosophers and various thinkers proposed about human essence?

Various philosophers have assumed that the human species has an essence but disagreed about what exactly the essence is. Others have argued that humans come into the world with no fixed essence; believing we are shaped by various forces we encounter throughout our lives. What those forces are, how many, and which is most powerful is debatable.

Traditional Culture

What aspects of the past do specific peoples want to protect, maintain or retrieve. Tradition doesn't imply returning to some idealized pure culture that existed before. It refers to that which is continuous with the past, in line with practices and values of a moral community. Groups defining what is traditional within their own communities. Doing so in terms of innovations that serve to maintain an identity of the community and its members in relation to their collective histories and personal agencies.