chapter 1 anthropology

what are the four distinctive approaches anthropologist take to the study of human life?

Holistic, comparative, field based, and evolutionary.

What makes anthropology unique from other disciplines that study humans?

They cover natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. They focus on humans as a whole.

holism

a characteristic of the anthropological perspective that describes, at the highest and most inclusive level, how anthropology tries to interrogate all that is known about human beings and their activities.

evolution

a characteristic of the anthropological perspective that requires anthropologist to place their observation about human nature, human society, or the human past in a temporal framework that takes into consideration change over time.

comparison

a characteristic of the anthropological perspective that requires anthropologists to consider similarities and differences in as wide a range of human societies as possible before generalizing about human nature, human society or the human past

archaeology

a cultural anthropology of the human past involving the analysis of material remains left behind by earlier societies.

cyborg anthropology

a form of anthropolgical analysis based on the notion of animal-machine hybrids, or cyborgs, that offers a new model for challenging rigid social, political, or economic, boundaries that have been used to separate people by gender, sexuality, class, and race, boundaries proclaimed by their defenders of natural

fieldwork

an extended period of close involvement with the people in whose language or way of life anthropologists are interested, during which anthropologists ordinarily collect most of there data.

What are the four subfields of anthropology?

biological, cultural, linguistic, and archaeology

Who is Franz Boas?

founded the first department of anthropology in 1900 in the US at Columbia university.

What is anthropology?

is the n nature human society and human past. It is scholarly discipline that aims to describe in the broadest possible sense what it is to be human. human lives are always entangled in complex patterns of work family power and meaning.

material culture

objects created or shaped by human beings and given meaning by cultural practices.

sex

observable physical characteristics that distinguish two kinds of humans, females and males, needed for biological reproduction.

bio-cultural organisms

organisms (in this case, human beings) whose defining features are co determined by biological and cultural factors

informants

people in a particular culture who work with anthropologists and provide them with insights about their way of life, also called respondents, teachers, or friends.

science studies

research that explores the interconnections among sociocultural, political, economic, and historic conditions that make scientific research both possible and successful.

What is culture?

sets of learned behavior and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society together with the material artifacts and structures that human beings create and use. human beings use culture to adapt to and transform the world in which they live.

culture

sets of learned behavior and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society together with the material artifacts and structures that human beings create and use. human beings use culture to adapt to and transform the world in which they live.

race

social groupings that allegedly reflect biological differences

applied anthropology

subfield of anthropology in which anthropologist use information gathered from the other anthropological specialties to solve practical cross-cultural problems.

ethnology

the comparative study of two or more cultures

gender

the cultural construction of beliefs and behaviors considered appropriate for each sex.

globalization

the reshaping of local conditions by powerful global forces on an ever intensifying scale

paleoanthropology

the search for fossilized remains of humanity's earliest ancestors

linguistic anthropology

the specialty of anthropology concerned with the study of human languages.

medical anthropology

the specialty of anthropology that concerns itself with human health-the factors that contribute to disease or illness and the ways that human populations deal with disease or illness.

biological anthropology (or physical anthropology)

the specialty of anthropology that looks at human being as biological organisms and tries to discover what characteristics make them different from other organism ad what characteristics they share.

cultural anthropology

the specialty of anthropology that shows how variation in the beliefs and behaviors of members of different human beings acquire as members of society that is, by culture

anthropology

the study of human nature, human society, and the human past.

primatology

the study of nonhuman primates, the closest living relatives of human beings

language

the system of arbitrary symbols used to encode ones experience of the world and of others

racism

the systematic oppression of one or more socially defined "races" by another socially defined "race" that is justified in terms of the supposed inherent biological superiority of the rulers and the supposed inherent biological inferiority of those they rule.

what are the goals of anthropological research?

to determine how we originate, how we change and if we still are. They look at things from a holistic comparative field based and evolutionary way.

Archaeology

• Archaeologists study cultures through their material remains. • Material remains allow past cultural activities to be described, reconstructed, and interpreted. • Material remains include • Portable objects made or modified by people known as artifacts • Plant and animal remains • Buildings, pits, or other non-portable elements of the cultural landscape • Archaeology provides a tremendous time depth unavailable to ethnographers. • Prehistoric archaeologists examine remains from people without writing, including artifacts millions of years old. • Archaeologists also study people objects from societies who have a written record, such as items from ancient Egypt or 21st-century garbage dumps.

Biological Anthropology

• Began as an attempt to define distinct human "races." • Views the "race" concept as invalid today. • Examines human biological variation across time and space. • Considers how the interplay between culture and human biology has changed as we evolved to become modern humans. • Focuses on biological variation and diversity among modern humans and non-human primates, and their extinct ancestors • Biological anthropology includes • Biological anthropologists • Primatologists • Paleoanthropologists • Primatologists • Study the biology, behavior, and social life of non-human primates, our closest living relatives • Paleoanthropologists • Examine human and non-human primate evolution, particularly as revealed by fossilized remains

Cultural Anthropology

• Cultural anthropologists explore cultural diversity among all living societies, including our own. • Cultural anthropologists study how humans organize themselves to carry out collective tasks. • Cultural anthropologists examine how material life—clothing, housing, tools—varies across human societies. • Shows how variation between human societies arises out of learned customs and behaviors humans acquire as a member of a society. • Uses ethnography and ethnology to study human societies to explain cultural similarities and differences. • Ethnography • An account of a specific local society's customs, practices, and beliefs • Fieldwork typically involves an extended stay with a local community • Anthropologists participate in and observe social activities • Involves knowledgeable members of a local society, or informants • Ethnology • Comparative and often cross-cultural study of two or more local societies • Draws on ethnographic data to make generalizations about society and culture • Creates theories designed to increase our understanding of how cultures and societies work

What is applied anthropology?

• Represents the intersection of the four traditional subfields of North American anthropology. • Uses information from these traditional subfields to identify and solve contemporary issues. • Creates practical cross-cultural solutions to contemporary problems such as • Public health • Health care • Economic development • Refugees

Linguistic Anthropology

• Studies language in its cultural contexts to examine diversity among societies • Language is a system of arbitrary symbols that enable communication and the transmission of cultural knowledge. • Linguistic anthropologists may study language by examining the structure of the human brain. • Linguistic anthropology includes sociolinguists and historical linguists. • Sociolinguists • Study how variation in language use relates to differences in gender, race, class, or ethnicity • Historical linguists • Reconstruct the historical development of languages and study language variation through time