ANTHROPOLOGY

Chapter 1st
Anthropology
 Definition of anthropology, its historical development and recent trends

Introduction:
Anthropology is a discipline of infinite curiosity about human beings. Anthropology is the study of all people, in all
places and at all times. As long as human beings have existed they have faced fundamental problems. Among these
are how to feed, clothe, and house themselves, how to determine rights and responsibilities, how to lend meaning to
their lives, how to live with each other and how to live with those who live differently. Anthropology attempts to
comprehend the entire human experience.
Derivation:
The term Anthropology comes from the Greek anthropos for “man, human” and logos for “study”
Definitions:
1. Anthropology is the study of people throughout the world, their evolutionary history, how they behave, adapt
to different environments, communicate and socialise with one another.
2. Anthropology is the systematic study of humanity, with the goal of understanding our evolutionary origins, our
distinctiveness as a species, and the great diversity in our forms of social existence across the world and
through time. The focus of Anthropology is on understanding both our shared humanity and diversity, and
engaging with diverse ways of being in the world.
3. The science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social
customs and beliefs of humankind.

What do Anthropologists do?

Anthropologists seek answers to an enormous variety of questions about humans. They are interested in both
universal and difference in human populations. They want to discover when, where and why humans appeared on the
earth, how and why they have changed, and how and why the biological and cultural features of modern human
populations vary. Anthropology has a practical side too. Applied and practicing Anthropologists put anthropological
methods, information, and results to use in efforts to solve practical problems.

The Development of Anthropology:

Although works of anthropological significance have a considerable antiquity—about 2,500 years ago the
Greek historian Herodotus chronicled the many different cultures he encountered during extensive journeys through
territories surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and beyond, and nearly 700 years ago far-roving North African
Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun wrote a “universal history”— anthropology as a distinct field of inquiry is a relatively recent
product of Western civilization. The first anthropology program in the United States, for example, was established at
the University of Pennsylvania in 1886, and the first doctorate in anthropology was granted by Clark University in
1892. If people have always been concerned about their origins and those of others, then why did it take such a long
time for a systematic discipline of anthropology to appear?
The answer to this is as complex as human history. In part, it relates to the limits of human technology.
Throughout most of history, the geographic horizons of people have been restricted. Without ways to travel to distant
parts of the world, observation of cultures and peoples far from one’s own was a difficult — if not impossible —
undertaking. Extensive travel was usually the privilege of an exclusive few; the study of foreign peoples and cultures
could not flourish until improved modes of transportation and communication developed.
This is not to say that people have been unaware of the existence of others in the world who look and act
differently from themselves. The Old and New Testaments of the Bible, for example, are full of references to diverse
ancient peoples, among them Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, and Syrians. However, the differences among
these people are slight in comparison to those among peoples of arctic Siberia, the Amazon rainforest, and the
Kalahari Desert of southern Africa.
The invention of the magnetic compass allowed seafarers on better-equipped sailing ships to travel to truly
far-away places and to meet people who differed radically from themselves. The massive encounter with previously
unknown peoples—which began 500 years ago as Europeans sought to extend their trade and political domination to
all parts of the world—focused attention on human differences in all their amazing variety. With this attention,
Europeans gradually came to recognize that despite all the differences, they might share a basic humanity with people
everywhere. Initially, Europeans labeled these societies “savage” or “barbarian” because they did not share the same
cultural values. Over time, however, Europeans acknowledged such highly diverse groups as fellow members of one
species and therefore as relevant to an understanding of what it is to be human. This growing interest in human
diversity coincided with increasing efforts to explain findings in scientific terms. It cast doubts on the traditional
explanations based on religious texts such as the Torah, Bible, or Koran and helped set the stage for the birth of
anthropology.
Although anthropology originated within the historical context of European cultures, it has long since gone
global. Today, it is an exciting, transnational discipline whose practitioners come from diverse societies all around the
world. Many professional anthropologists born and raised in Asian, African, Latin American, or American Indian
cultures traditionally studied by European and North American anthropologists contribute substantially to the
discipline. Their distinct non-Western perspectives shed new light not only on their own cultures but on those of
others. It is noteworthy that in one regard diversity has long been a hallmark of the discipline: From its earliest days,
women as well as men have entered the field.
Throughout this text, we will be spotlighting individual anthropologists, illustrating the diversity of these practitioners
and their work. (Anthropology, The Human Challenge by Haviland, Prins, Walrath, McBride, Recommended by FPSC)

Subject Matter and Scope of Anthropology:

The subject matter of anthropology is very vast. The subject covers all aspects of human ways of life and culture, as
humans live in a social group relationship. Discovering the meaning, nature, origin, and destiny of humanity is one of
the key concerns of anthropology. According to the present stage of scientific knowledge attained in anthropology, the
term humanity or mankind is a very difficult term to define. Anthropologists seem to be unsure whether humanity is
absolutely dichotomous with other lower forms of animals. Some may even tend to regard humanity and non-
humanity as something that is best understood in the form of continuum. This sense of continuum may be particularly
in terms of time scale. Thus, the farther we go in time backwards, the narrower becomes the difference between
humanity and non-humanity.
It has now become a generally accepted fact in anthropology, although no full evidences are forthcoming, that
humanity is a product of the evolutionary processes, and that humans have evolved from their closest living primates
(Bryan, 1997; Behe, 1996).
Anthropology is interested in some of the following questions and issues about humans:
 Where did human species come from (i.e. what are the origins of mankind)?
 Were human beings created in the image and likeness of God, or were they just the products of millions of
years of the natural, evolutionary process?
 In what ways does man differ from other animal species?
 How did mankind arrive at the present stage of biological, intellectual, and cultural development?
 Is there a common human nature, and if so, what is it like?
 In what ways do humans who live in various times and places differ?
 How can we explain why cultures vary?
Such and many other related questions are the concerns of anthropology.
Anthropologists try to know and explain about the technological, economic, political and intellectual development of
humanity. They attempt to discover the extent to which different human populations vary in their biological and social
characteristics and to understand why these differences exist.
Anthropologists are, for example, interested to know and explain why a pregnant woman in Gumuz goes to a
bush to give birth during labor, how the Nuer practice birth control methods and why they put horizontal line marks
on their forehead, or why the Wolayta put a circular body mark on their cheek while the Tigreans put a cross mark on
their foreheads, etc.
Although anthropologists investigate the distinctive features of different cultures, they also study the
fundamental similarities among people throughout the world (Scupin and De Corse, 1995). They try to find out what
factors account for the similarities in certain beliefs, practices and institutions that are found across cultures. They
grapple with explaining why cultural universals exist. Are these cultural similarities results of diffusion (i.e., a certain
material culture or non-material culture created in a certain society diffuses to other societies through contact, war,
trade, etc)? Or are they due to independent creation (i.e., certain cultural items created by two or more societies
without one copying from the other)? Anthropologists have debated taking different sides while attempting to answer
these questions.

Distinguishing Features of Anthropology:

We may identify five distinguishing marks of anthropology:
 Its Broad Scope:
The main distinguishing characteristic of anthropology, the thing that makes it different from the many other fields
that also include people as their subject matter is its broad scope. A good way to emphasize this broad scope is to say
that anthropologists are interested in all human beings, whether living or dead, ''primitive'' or '' civilized'' and that
they are interested in many different aspects of humans, including their skin color, family lives, marriages, political
systems, tools, 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 (Kottak, 1994, 2002;
Howard and Dunaif-Hattis, 1992)
 Its Unique Approaches:
 Anthropology is Holistic: Studying one aspect of the ways of life of a group of people by relating it to other
complex related aspects of life.
 Anthropology is Relativistic: 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 ‘that is bad.’
 Anthropology is Comparative: Anthropology studies certain aspects of the culture of a group of people by
comparing it across societies and different times; i.e., the present with the past, the modern with the
traditional, etc.
 Emphasis on Insiders' View:
Anthropologists focus on how the people themselves understand about their world, how a particular group of people
explains about the world, etc. This is what anthropologists call emic perspective.
 The Micro-focus:
This is another distinguishing mark of anthropology. Anthropology focuses on small-scale society or community. The
kinds of social groups or communities anthropologists study, whether they are in traditional or modern world, are
usually small scaled in their social organization, economic and political structure, and tend to be homogenous in their
overall character.
 Its Method of Research:
The hallmarks of anthropology are qualitative research methods such as extended fieldwork, focus- group discussion,
participant observation, in-depth and key informant interviews. Although these methods are now practiced in other
behavioral sciences as well, no other discipline seems to be so associated with and employs such methods as
anthropologists.

Recent trends in Anthropology:

Many academic disciplines are concerned in one way or another with our species. For example, biology focuses on the
genetic, anatomical, and physiological aspects of organisms. Psychology is concerned primarily with cognitive, mental,
and emotional issues, while economics examines the production, distribution, and management of material resources.
And various disciplines in the humanities look into the historic, artistic, and philosophic achievements of human
cultures. But anthropology is distinct because of its focus on the interconnections and interdependence of all aspects
of the human experience in all places and times—both biological and cultural, past and present. It is this holistic
perspective that best equips anthropologists to broadly address that elusive phenomenon we call human nature.
Anthropologists welcome the contributions of researchers from other disciplines and in return offer the
benefit of their own findings. Anthropologists do not expect, for example, to know as much about the structure of the
human eye as anatomists or as much about the perception of color as psychologists. As synthesizers, however,
anthropologists are prepared to understand how these bodies of knowledge relate to color-naming practices in
different human societies. Because they look for the broad basis of human ideas and practices without limiting
themselves to any single social or biological aspect, anthropologists can acquire an especially expansive and inclusive
overview of the complex biological and cultural organism that is the human being. The holistic perspective also helps
anthropologists stay keenly aware of ways that their own cultural ideas and values may impact their research. As the
old saying goes, people often see what they believe, rather than what appears before their eyes. By maintaining a
critical awareness of their own assumptions about human nature—checking and rechecking the ways their beliefs and
actions might be shaping their research anthropologists strive to gain objective knowledge about people. With this in
mind, anthropologists aim to avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism, a belief that the ways of one’s own culture are the
only proper ones. Thus anthropologists have contributed uniquely to our understanding of diversity in human thought,
biology, and behavior, as well as to our understanding of the many shared characteristics of humans.
To some, an inclusive, holistic perspective that emphasizes the inherent diversity within and among human
cultures can be mistaken as shorthand for uniform liberal politics among anthropologists. This is not the case.
Individual anthropologists are quite varied in their personal, political, and religious beliefs. At the same time, they
apply a rigorous methodology for researching cultural practices from the perspective of the culture being studied—a
methodology that requires them to check for the influences of their own biases. This is as true for an anthropologist
analyzing the culture of the global banking industry as it is for one investigating trance dancing among contemporary
hunter-gatherers. We might say that anthropology is a discipline concerned with unbiased evaluation of diverse
human systems, including one’s own. At times this requires challenging the status quo that is maintained and
defended by the power elites of the system under study. This is true regardless of whether anthropologists focus on
aspects of their own culture or on distant and different cultures.
While other social sciences have concentrated predominantly on contemporary peoples living in North
American and European (Western) societies, historically anthropologists have focused primarily on non- Western
peoples and cultures. Anthropologists work with the understanding that to fully access the complexities of human
ideas, behavior, and biology, all humans, wherever and whenever, must be studied. Anthropologists work with a time
depth that extends back millions of years to our pre-human ancestors. A cross-cultural, comparative, and long-term
evolutionary perspective distinguishes anthropology from other social sciences. This all-encompassing approach also
guards against culture-bound theories of human behavior: that is, theories based on assumptions about the world and
reality that come from the researcher’s own particular culture.
As a case in point, consider the fact that infants in the United States typically sleep apart from their parents.
To people accustomed to multi-bedroom houses, cribs, and car seats, this may seem normal, but cross-cultural
research shows that co-sleeping, of mother and baby in particular, is the norm. Further, the practice of sleeping apart
favored in the United States dates back only about 200 years.
Recent studies have shown that separation of mother and infant has important biological and cultural
consequences. For one thing, it increases the length of the infant’s crying bouts. Some mothers incorrectly interpret
the crying as indicating that the babies are receiving insufficient breast milk and consequently switch to feeding them
bottled formula, proven to be less healthy. In extreme cases, a baby’s cries may provoke physical abuse. But the
benefits of co-sleeping go beyond significant reductions in crying: Infants who are breastfed receive more stimulation
important for brain development, and they are apparently less susceptible to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS or
“crib death”). There are benefits to the mother as well: Frequent nursing prevents early ovulation after childbirth, it
promotes loss of weight gained during pregnancy, and nursing mothers get at least as much sleep as mothers who
sleep apart from their infants.
Why do so many mothers continue to sleep separately from their infants? In the United States the cultural
values of independence and consumerism come into play. To begin building individual identities, babies are provided
with rooms (or at least space) of their own. This room also provides parents with a place for the toys, furniture, and
other paraphernalia associated with “good” and “caring” childrearing in the United States.
Anthropology’s historical emphasis on studying traditional, non-Western peoples has often led to findings that
run counter to generally accepted opinions derived from Western studies. Thus anthropologists were the first to
demonstrate that the
world does not divide into the pious and the superstitious; that there are sculptures in jungles and paintings in
deserts; that political order is possible without centralized power and principled justice without codified rules; that the
norms of reason were not fixed in Greece, the evolution of morality not consummated in England. . . .We have, with
no little success, sought to keep the world off balance; pulling out rugs, upsetting tea tables, setting off firecrackers. It
has been the office of others to reassure; ours to unsettle.
 Although the findings of anthropologists have often challenged the conclusions of sociologists, psychologists,
and economists, anthropology is absolutely indispensable to them, as it is the only consistent check against culture
bound assertions. In a sense, anthropology is to these disciplines what the laboratory is to physics and chemistry: an
essential testing ground for their theories. (Anthropology, The Human Challenge by Haviland, Prins, Walrath,
McBride, Recommended by FPSC)

Anthropology in a Changing World:

From the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, when anthropology was developing as a field of study,
much of the world was colonised by powerful nations. These nations often held ethnic minorities and traditional
societies as subjugated populations within their own borders. It was frequently among these colonised and oppressed
peoples that anthropologists worked. For example, British and French anthropologists worked among colonised
people in Africa. American anthropologists often worked with Native American populations or Pacific Islanders in areas
under U.S. control.

Doing anthropological research under such conditions had several implications. First, communities had little control
over whether or not to accept an anthropologist. If the government assigned anthropologists to a village, the residents
had to accept them. Second, anthropologists did not have to be responsive to the political or economic needs of the
people among whom they worked. Finally, very few of the people among whom anthropologists worked either knew
how to read European languages or had access to the libraries and bookstores where anthropological works were
available. This meant that anthropologists had little fear their work could be contradicted by those about whom they
wrote. Al-though anthropologists during these times frequently did outstanding research, the conditions under which
they worked inevitably affected their descriptions of society.

After World War II international conditions began to change. Most colonies held by Western powers gained their
independence in the 1960s. Political liberties were longer incoming in areas held by the Soviet Union, but by the close
of the twentieth century the vast Majority of people lived in independent nations. Furthermore, education in Western
languages has become increasingly available, and communication by radio, television, telephone, and the Internet has
become ubiquitous.

The effects on anthropology have been profound. In order to work, anthropologists must now negotiate with
independent governments. Community members have much more say in deciding whether to accept anthropologists.
Anthropologists can often be certain that at least some of the people they work with will hear about or read about the
re- sulu of their research. Additionally, anthropologists now come from many of the communities that anthropologists
have traditionally studied. These individuals, as well as many others, raise hand questions about the nature of the
discipline (Yanagisako and Delaney 1994; Rotaldo 1995: Said 1993; Mar- cus 1992; di Leonardo 1991; Hooks 1989,
Clifford and Marens 1986). Thes challenge the accuracy of past anthropological reporting and raise doubts about the
ability of anthropologists to accurately describe cultures. They urge us to consider exactly whose story gets told and
why.

Issues such as these present interesting theoretical challenges to anthropology. But they are also very important
because anthropological research often has political implications. As contemporary social groups, whether nations or
smaller units within nations, search for identity and autonomy, cultural representations become important resources,
and traditions once taken for granted become the subject of heightened political consciousness. People want their
cultures to be represented to the outside world in ways to them and are holding anthropologists responsible for the
political impact of their work.

Anthropologists have responded to these challenges in a variety of ways. For example, anthropologists have exact
conditions under which their data were collected. They increasingly present their work using multiple viewpoints,
trying to tell the story of culture from the perspective not only of the detached social scientist, but also of men,
women and children of the society under study. Additionally, many have become politically active. fighting rights of
oppressed minorities and traditional peoples throughout the world.
The challenges to anthropology and the discipline's response to them have caused enormous controversy: Some
theorists insist that anthropology must be committed and engaged. They are that it is the duty of anthropologists to
defend rights of the oppressed and present the view of those who have not previously been heard then shove that
such political engagement distorts anthropological research and that anthropologist should be concerned with
gathering data as objectively as possible and using it to increase our theoretical knowledge of the underlying dynamics
human society (see D'Andrade, Scheper Hughes et al. 1995 for a good example of this debate).

We firmly believe that anthropology benefits from lively discussion of its role and meaning. The participation of
anthropologists from many backgrounds, as well as members of the communities anthropologists study, makes the
discipline richer and the debate more useful. As Chapter 4 show no single understanding of culture commands the
devotion of all anthropologists or ever has. Many anthropologists believe that our studies should become more
reflective on issues of politics, history and context (R. Lee 1992). Others insist on a commitment to generating theories
that transcend these same factors. Regardless of these differences, anthropologists are dedicated to understanding
the nature of human diversity and similarity, and exploring the context, depth, origins, and, occasionally, the poetry of
human experience. Most anthropologists hope that, with the help of sad understanding, we will leave the world a
better place than we found it.