Linguistic[edit]
Main article: Linguistic anthropology
Linguistic anthropology (not to be confused with anthropological linguistics) seeks to understand the processes of
human communications, verbal and non-verbal, variation in language across time and space, the social uses of
language, and the relationship between language and culture.[37] It is the branch of anthropology that brings linguistic
methods to bear on anthropological problems, linking the analysis of linguistic forms and processes to the
interpretation of sociocultural processes. Linguistic anthropologists often draw on related fields
including sociolinguistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, semiotics, discourse analysis, and narrative analysis.[38]
Key topics by field: sociocultural[edit]
Art, media, music, dance and film[edit]
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Anthropology of art,
media, music, dance
and film
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Art[edit]
Main article: Anthropology of art
One of the central problems in the anthropology of art concerns the universality of 'art' as a cultural phenomenon.
Several anthropologists have noted that the Western categories of 'painting', 'sculpture', or 'literature', conceived as
independent artistic activities, do not exist, or exist in a significantly different form, in most non-Western contexts.
[39]
To surmount this difficulty, anthropologists of art have focused on formal features in objects which, without
exclusively being 'artistic', have certain evident 'aesthetic' qualities. Boas' Primitive Art, Claude Lévi-Strauss' The
Way of the Masks (1982) or Geertz's 'Art as Cultural System' (1983) are some examples in this trend to transform the
anthropology of 'art' into an anthropology of culturally specific 'aesthetics'.
Media[edit]
Main article: Media anthropology
A Punu tribe mask, Gabon, Central Africa
Media anthropology (also known as the anthropology of media or mass media) emphasizes ethnographic studies as
a means of understanding producers, audiences, and other cultural and social aspects of mass media. The types of
ethnographic contexts explored range from contexts of media production (e.g., ethnographies of newsrooms in
newspapers, journalists in the field, film production) to contexts of media reception, following audiences in their
everyday responses to media. Other types include cyber anthropology, a relatively new area of internet research, as
well as ethnographies of other areas of research which happen to involve media, such as development work, social
movements, or health education. This is in addition to many classic ethnographic contexts, where media such as
radio, the press, new media, and television have started to make their presences felt since the early 1990s.[40][41]
Music[edit]
Main article: Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is an academic field encompassing various approaches to the study of music (broadly defined), that
emphasize its cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dimensions or contexts instead of or in addition
to its isolated sound component or any particular repertoire.
Ethnomusicology can be used in a wide variety of fields, such as teaching, politics, cultural anthropology etc. While
the origins of ethnomusicology date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, it was formally introduced as
“ethnomusicology” by Dutch scholar Jaap Kunst around 1950. Later, the influence of study in this area spawned the
creation of the periodical Ethnomusicology and the Society of Ethnomusicology.[42]
Visual[edit]
Main article: Visual anthropology
Visual anthropology is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since
the mid-1990s, new media. While the term is sometimes used interchangeably with ethnographic film, visual
anthropology also encompasses the anthropological study of visual representation, including areas such as
performance, museums, art, and the production and reception of mass media. Visual representations from all
cultures, such as sandpaintings, tattoos, sculptures and reliefs, cave paintings, scrimshaw, jewelry, hieroglyphics,
paintings, and photographs are included in the focus of visual anthropology.
Economic, political economic, applied and development[edit]
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Economic, applied, and development
anthropology
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Economic[edit]
Main article: Economic anthropology
Economic anthropology attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural
scope. It has a complex relationship with the discipline of economics, of which it is highly critical. Its origins as a sub-
field of anthropology begin with the Polish-British founder of anthropology, Bronisław Malinowski, and his French
compatriot, Marcel Mauss, on the nature of gift-giving exchange (or reciprocity) as an alternative to market exchange.
Economic Anthropology remains, for the most part, focused upon exchange. The school of thought derived from Marx
and known as Political Economy focuses on production, in contrast.[43] Economic anthropologists have abandoned the
primitivist niche they were relegated to by economists, and have now turned to examine corporations, banks, and
the global financial system from an anthropological perspective.
