Chapter One

1. Introducing Anthropology and its Subject Matter

1.1 Definition, Scope and Subject Matter anthropology

1.1.1 Concepts in Anthropology

To begin with the etymology of the term, the term anthropology is a compound of two Greek
words, ‘anthropos’ and ‘logos’, which can be translated as ‘human being/mankind’ and
‘reason/study/science’, respectively. So, anthropology means ‘reason about humans’ or ‘the
study or science of humankind or humanity’. Moreover, man has two important characteristics:
biological and cultural: It is very important to understand that the biological and the cultural
characteristics are inseparable elements. Culture influences human physical structures and the
vise-versa.
Hence, if we take it literally, it is the study of humans. In one sense, this is an accurate
description to the extent that anthropology raises a wide variety of questions about the human
condition. Yet this literal definition is not particularly illuminating; because a number of other
academic disciplines—including sociology, biology, psychology, political science, economics,
and history—also study human beings. What is it that distinguishes anthropology from all of
these other disciplines? Anthropology is the study of people—their origins, their development,
and contemporary variations, wherever and whenever they have been found. It is a broad
scientific discipline dedicated to the comparative study of humans as a group, from its first
appearance on earth to its present stage of development. Of all the disciplines that study humans,
anthropology is by far the broadest in scope.

In more specific terms, anthropology is a science which:

 Investigates the strategies for living that are learned and shared by people as members of
human social groups;

 Examines the characteristics that human beings share as members of one species (Homo
sapiens) and the diverse ways that people live in different environments;

 Analyses the products of social groups -material objects (material cultures) and non-
material creations (religion/beliefs, social values, institutions, practices, etc).
Its ultimate goal is to develop an integrated picture of humankind—a goal that encompasses an
almost infinite number of questions about all aspects of our existence. We ask, for example, what
makes us human? Why do some groups of people tend to be tall and lanky, while others tend to
be short and stocky? Why do some groups of people practice agriculture, while others hunt for a
living?

As a matter of simplicity and brevity, anthropology primarily offers two kinds of insight. First,
the discipline produces knowledge about the actual biological and cultural variations in the
world; second, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives enabling the
practitioner to explore, compare, understand and solve these varied expressions of the human
condition.

1.1.2 The Historical Development of Anthropology

Like the other social sciences, anthropology is a fairly recent discipline. It was given its present
shape during the twentieth century, but it has important forerunners in the historiography,
geography, travel writing, philosophy and jurisprudence of earlier times.
If we restrict ourselves to anthropology as a scientific discipline, some would trace its roots back
to the European Enlightenment, during the eighteenth century; others would claim that
anthropology did not arise as a science until the 1850s, yet others would argue that
anthropological research in its present-day sense only commenced after the First World War. Nor
can we avoid such ambiguities.

It is beyond doubt, however, that anthropology, considered as the science of humanity,

originated in the region we commonly but inaccurately call ‘the West’, notably in three or four
‘Western’ countries: France, Great Britain, the USA and, until the Second World War, Germany
(Erikson, 2001). Historically speaking, this is a European discipline, and its practitioners, like
those of all European sciences, occasionally like to trace its roots back to the ancient Greeks.

Generally speaking, anthropology as an academic discipline was born during the 19th century,
out of the intellectual atmosphere of Enlightenment, which is the eighteenth century social
philosophical movement that emphasized human progress and the poser of reason, and based on
Darwinian Theory of evolution. By the late 1870s, anthropology was beginning to emerge as a
profession. A major impetus for its growth was the expansion of western colonial powers and
their consequent desire to better understand the peoples living under colonial domination.

Early anthropologists mainly studied small communities in technologically simple societies.

Such societies are often called by various names, such as, “traditional”, “non-industrialized
and/or simple societies”. Anthropologists of the early 1900s emphasized the study of social and
cultural differences among human groups. Here, many of the indigenous peoples of non-western
world and their social and cultural features were studied in detail and documented. This approach
is called ethnography. By the mid-1900, however, anthropologists attempted to discover
universal human patterns and the common bio-psychological traits that bind all human beings.
This approach is called ethnology. Ethnology aims at the comparative understanding and
analysis of different ethnic groups across time and space. Besides, the initial emphasis was on
ethnography, the description of specific customs, cultures and ways of life.

1.1.3 Scope and subject matter of anthropology

The breadth and depth of anthropology is immense. There no time and space left as far as man
exists. In other words, the temporal dimension covers the past, the present and even the future. In
terms of the spatial dimension, anthropology studies from Arctic to Desert, from Mega polis to
hunting gathering areas.
It touches all aspect of human conditions as far as there is a relation between human beings and
natural environment and man and man. Besides, anthropology studies humanity with its all
aspects of existence, and in its all means of differences (diversity) and similarities
(commonality). Anthropologists strive for an understanding of the biological and cultural origins
and evolutionary development of the species (Peacock, 1986).

1.2 Sub-fields of anthropology

As discussed in the above headlining, there is no time, space and characteristics left to study
human beings. It is as wide as an ocean. Accordingly, it is required to divide and understand in-
depth. Accordingly, anthropology has often categorized into four major subfields: Physical or
Biological Anthropology, Archeology, Linguistic Anthropology and Socio-Cultural
Anthropology. Let us explain turn by turn.
1.2.1 Physical or Biological Anthropology

Physical anthropology is the branch of anthropology most closely related to the natural sciences,
particularly biology; that is why it is often called biological anthropology. Unlike comparative
biologists, physical anthropologists study how culture and environment have influenced these
two areas of biological evolution and contemporary variations. Human biology affects or even
explains some aspects of behavior, society, and culture like marriage patterns, sexual division of
labor, gender ideology etc. The features of culture in turn have biological effects like the
standards of attractiveness, food preferences, and human sexuality. Biological variations such as
morphology or structure, color, and size are reflections of changes in living organism. Since
change occurs in the universe, it also applies in human beings.

The major sources of biological variations are derived from the interrelated effects of natural
selection, geographical isolation, and genetic mutations.
Physical anthropology is essentially concerned with two broad areas of investigation: human
evolution and genetics. Human evolution is the study of the gradual processes of simple forms
into more differentiated structures in hominid. It is interested in reconstructing the evolutionary
record of the human species using fossils/bones. Human evolution is further divided into two?
Specialties: Paleoanthropologiy and Primatology. Palaeoanthropology (paleo meaning “old”) is
the study of human biological evolution through the analysis of fossil remains from prehistoric
times to determine the missing link that connect modern human with its biological ancestors.
Primatology studies about primates or recent human ancestors to explain human evolution.
Primatologists study the anatomy and social behavior of such non-human primate species as
gorillas and chimpanzees in an effort to gain clues about our own evolution as a species.

Human genetics concerns to investigate how and why the physical traits of contemporary
human populations vary throughout the world. It focuses to examine the genetic materials of an
organism such as DNA and RNA.

1.2.1 Archaeological Anthropology

Archaeological anthropology or simply archaeology studies the ways of lives of past peoples by
excavating and analyzing the material culture or physical remains (artifacts, features and eco-
facts) they left behind. Artifacts are material remains made and used by the past peoples and
that can be removed from the site and taken to the laboratory for further analysis. Tools,
ornaments, arrowheads, coins, and fragments of pottery are examples of artifacts. Features are
like artifacts, are made or modified by past people, but they cannot be readily carried away from
the site. Archaeological features include such things as house foundations, ancient buildings,
fireplaces, steles, and postholes. Eco-facts are non-art factual, organic and environmental
remains such as soil, animal bones, and plant remains that were not made or altered by humans;
but were used by them. Eco-facts provide archaeologists with important data concerning the
environment and how people used natural resources in the past.

Archaeology has also its own subfields or areas of specialties. The most important ones are -
Prehistoric Archaeology and Historical Archaeology. Prehistoric archaeology investigates
human prehistory and prehistoric cultures. It focuses on entire period between 6,000 years ago
and the time of the first stone tools (the first artifacts), around 2.5 million years ago, is called
prehistory. Historic archaeologists help to reconstruct the cultures of people who used writing
and about whom historical documents have been written. Historic archaeology takes advantage
of the fact that about 6,000 years ago, some human groups invented language and began to write
down things that can tell about the past. We Ethiopian have very glorious past. Area logical
findings in North, south, east and western part of the country have shown our county belonged to
those countries which have old civilization.

1.2.3 Linguistic Anthropology

Indeed, linguistic anthropology or anthropological linguistics studies human language as a

cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice in its social and cultural context, across
space and time. Language is basically a system of information transmission and reception.
Humans communicate messages by sound (speech), by gesture (body language), and in other
visual ways such as writing. Analogous to genes that carry and transmit genetic materials to
offspring, languages hand down cultural traits from one generation to another. In fact, some
would argue that language is the most distinctive feature of being human. Although animals
could develop certain behaviors through conditioning that mimic or imitate to humans, they do
not have a capacity to pass on their own offspring. This is the boundary between human beings
and other animals including higher primates.
Linguistic anthropology is divided into four distinct branches or areas of research: Structural or
Descriptive Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Ethno-Linguistics, and Socio-linguistics.

I. Structural /Descriptive Linguistics: -studies the structure of linguistic patterns. It

examines sound systems, grammatical systems, and the meanings attached to words
in specific languages to understand the structure and set of rules of given language.
Every culture has a distinctive language with its own logical structure and set of rules
for putting words and sounds together for the purpose of communicating.

II. Ethno-linguistics (cultural linguistics): examines the relationship between language

and culture. In any language, certain cultural aspects that are emphasized (such as
types of snow among the Inuit, cows among the pastoral Maasai, or automobiles in
U.S. culture) are reflected in the vocabulary. Moreover, cultural linguists explore how
different linguistic categories can affect how people categorize their experiences, how
they think, and how they perceive the world around them.
III. Historical linguistics: - deals with the emergence of language in general and how
specific languages have diverged over time. It focuses on the comparison and
classifications of different languages to differentiate the historical links between
them.
IV. Socio-linguistics: -investigates linguistic variation within a given language. No
language is a homogeneous system in which everyone speaks just like everyone else.
One reason for variation is geography, as in regional dialects and accents. Linguistic
variation also is expressed in the bilingualism of ethnic groups.

Linguistic anthropology generally focuses on the evolution of languages. It tries to understand

languages variation in their structures, units, and grammatical formations. It gives special
attention to the study of unwritten languages. Language is a key to explore a culture.

1.2.4 Socio-Cultural Anthropology

It is also often called social anthropology or cultural anthropology. Socio-cultural anthropology

is the largest sub-fields of anthropology. It deals with human society and culture. Society is the
group of people who have similar ways of life, but culture is a way of life of a group of
people. Society and culture are two sides of the same coin. Socio-cultural anthropology
describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social, cultural and material life of contemporary
human societies. It studies the social (human relations), symbolic or nonmaterial (religious,
language, and any other symbols) and material (all man-made objects) lives of living peoples.

Socio-cultural anthropologists engage in two aspects of study: Ethnography (based on field

work) and Ethnology (based on cross-cultural comparison). Ethnography provides a
comprehensive account of a particular community, society, or culture. It describes the features of
specific cultures in as much detail as possible including local behavior, beliefs, customs, social
life, economic activities, politics, and religion. These detailed descriptions (ethnographies) are
the result of extensive field studies (usually a year or two, in duration) in which the
anthropologist observes, talks to, and lives with the people he or she is studying. During
ethnographic fieldwork, the anthropologist (ethnographer) gathers data that he or she organizes,
describes, analyzes, and interprets to build and present that account, which may be in the form of
a book, article, or film.

Ethnology is the comparative study of contemporary cultures and societies, wherever they may
be found. It examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares the results of ethnography the data
gathered in different societies. It uses such data to compare and contrast and to make
generalizations about society and culture. In other words, Ethnologists seek to understand both
why people today and in the recent past differ in terms of ideas and behavior patterns and what
all cultures in the world have in common with one another. Looking beyond the particular to the
more general, ethnologists attempt to identify and explain cultural differences and similarities,
to test hypotheses, and to build theory to enhance our understanding of how social and cultural
systems work.
Ethnography Ethnology
Requires field work to collect data Uses data collected by a series of researchers
Often descriptive Usually synthetic

Group/community specific Comparative/cross-cultural

1.3 Unique (Basic) Features of Anthropology

Anthropology is unique in its scope, approach, focus and method of study.

Anthropology has a broad scope. It is interested in all human beings, whether

contemporary or past, ''primitive'' or '' civilized'' and that they are interested in many
different aspects of humans, including their phenotypic characteristics, family lives,
marriages, political systems, economic lives, technology, belief, health care systems,
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.

The second important feature is its approach. In its approach anthropology is holistic,
relativistic, and focused one. Holistic in a sense that it looks any phenomena from
different vantage points or viewpoints. Accordingly, anthropology considers culture,
history, language and biology essential to a complete understanding of society.
Anthropology seeks to understand human beings as whole organisms who adapt to their
environments through a complex interaction of biology and culture. The concept of
relativity is highly appreciated in anthological studies. 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
‘bad’. Anthropology's comparative perspective helps to understand differences and
similarities across time and place. Another important perspective is a way of looking at
people's ideas. It considers insiders' views as a primary focus of any anthropological
inquiry. Anthropological studies give attention to how people perceive themselves and
understand their world; how a particular group of people explain about their action, or
give meaning to their behavior or cultural practices. This is what anthropologists call
emic perspective. It helps to understand the logic and justification behind group behavior
and cultural practices.
Another important unique feature is its research approach. Anthropology is highly
dependent on qualitative research to understand the meaning behind any human activity.
Extended fieldwork, participant observation, in-depth and key informant interviews and
focus-group discussion are qualitative research instruments to explore information
 change and continuities in human societies. Ethnographic fieldwork is an important
strategy is normally required to spend a year or more with research subjects and
document realities occurring across time. For most anthropologists, fieldwork is a process
requiring them to ‘tune-in/aware of others feeling; hangout; and hang-on/hold on or
grasp’ to the societies and cultures whom they are interested to study.

Focusing more on the local than the big social processes has been another exclusive
approach in the discipline. Paying great attention to local or micro-social processes
certainly helps us to better understand big changes in societies. A detailed account of an
event or phenomenon discovers multiple realities in a community.

1.4 Misconceptions about anthropology

One misconception about anthropology is related to the area of its study.
 It is said that anthropology is limited to the study of "primitive" societies. Indeed, most of
the works done by anthropologists during early periods focused on isolated, so called
"primitive", small scale societies. However, anthropologists nowadays study most
advanced and most complex societies as well.
 Another misconception is that anthropologists only study the rural people and rural
areas. As a matter of fact, most of the studies conducted during the formative years (when
it undergone a process of development to be developed as a separate fields of study) of
the discipline focused on rural areas. But now, anthropologists are also interested in the
study of urban people and urban areas.
 It is also wrongly misconceived that anthropology is the study/analysis of fossil
evidences of the proto-humans like that of Lucy/Dinkeneshe. It is true that anthropology
is interested in the question of the origin of modern human beings. However, this doesn’t
mean that anthropology is all about the study of human evolution. It studies both the
biological and the cultural aspects of humans and examines the existing human physical
and biological variations and cultural diversity.
 It is also misconceived that the purpose of anthropology is to study in order to keep and
preserve communities far from development and obsolete cultural practices in museums.
Rather, anthropologists’ duties are to support those communities' capacity to empower
 themselves in development processes. They assist peoples' initiatives instead of imposed
policies and ideas coming from outside and play active roles in bringing about positive
change and development in their own lives.

1.5 The Relationship between Anthropology and Other Disciplines

In its perspective, according to Richard Wilk, anthropology approaches and locates dimensions
of people’s individual and communal lived experiences, their thoughts and their feelings in terms
of how these dimensions are interconnected and interrelated to one another, yet not necessarily
constrained or very orderly, whole. The perspective is also fundamentally empirical, naturalistic
and ideographic [particularizing] than nomothetic [universalizing] one. In its method of
research, it is unique in that it undertakes extended fieldwork. among the studied community and
develops intimate knowledge of the life and social worlds of its study group/society through
employing those ethnographic data collection techniques such as participant observation, Key
informant interview and focus group discussions.

1.5 The Contributions of anthropology

By studying anthropology, we get the following benefits, among others.
 First, the anthropological perspective, with its emphasis on the comparative study of
cultures, should lead us to the conclusion that our culture is just one way of life among
many found in the world and that it represents one way (among many possible ways) to
adapt to a particular set of environmental conditions. Through the process of contrasting
and comparing, we gain a fuller understanding of other cultures and our own.
Anthropology also helps us better understand ourselves or our own ways of life. As a mirror of
human life, by studying others, we can better understand ourselves. Hence, it gives opportunity
to understand and to be critical about the ways of lives of our own community.

 Second, anthropology gives us an insight into different ways and modes of life of human
society (social and cultural diversity), which helps to understand the logic and
justification behind group behavior and cultural practices. Knowledge about the rest of
the world is particularly important today because the world has become increasingly
interconnected.
Because of its relativistic approach, anthropology helps us to be more sensitive to and
appreciative of cultural diversity and variability. It helps us to avoid some of the
misunderstandings that commonly arise when individuals of different cultural traditions come
into contact. Anthropology helps us fight against prejudice and discriminations. It helps us fight
against ethnocentrism; the belief that one's own culture and one's own way of life is superior to
others cultural, social and material life. This arises from ignorance about other ethnic groups and
their ways of lives.
Anthropology is also used as a tool for development. Paying attention to local conditions is
crucial to solve community problems. Anthropologists are better equipped with the knowledge,
skills and methods of identifying the needs and interests of local people for the betterment and
change of their lived experiences. It recognizes the advantages of consulting local people to
design a culturally appropriate and socially sensitive change, and protect local people from
harmful policies and projects that threaten them.