Anthropology, Cultural Studies, And Physical Anthropology

1. Based on reading this selection, how is ethnographic research different from other social science approaches to research?

What is anthropology? This is a question that can be answered in numerous ways, but we are going to define it as simple as possible. If we break the word down into its two components it means the study of human beings. “Anthropo” means human beings or human kind and “logy” or “logia” is Greek for the study or knowledge of something. When we put it all together, it is the study of human beings which can be very broad. Anthropology can be broken down into four subfields: physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology.

In society today, the discipline of anthropology has made a tremendous shift from the practices it employed years ago. Anthropologists of today have a very different focus from their predecessors, who would focus on relating problems of distant peoples to the Western world. In more modern times, their goal has become much more local, in focusing on human problems and issues within the societies they live.

James P. Spradley (1979) described the insider approach to understanding culture as "a quiet revolution" among the social sciences (p. iii). Cultural anthropologists, however, have long emphasized the importance of the ethnographic method, an approach to understanding a different culture through participation, observation, the use of key informants, and interviews. Cultural anthropologists have employed the ethnographic method in an attempt to surmount several formidable cultural questions: How can one understand another's culture? How can culture be qualitatively and quantitatively assessed? What aspects of a culture make it unique and which connect it to other cultures? If

Gender has been traditionally defined as male or female with the allocation of stereotypes and set gender roles assigned to men and women. However, in contemporary society the definition of gender has been altered, forming a societal divide between the concepts of gender and sex with the removal of gender roles. Gender is currently defined by a person’s form of self-identification and sex is based scientifically on biological factors. Culture is an intangible collection of a wide variety of societal customs including language and traditions. An assemblage of both concepts develop an individual’s personal expression of identity.

Evolution is not about orthogenesis, the belief that evolution is moving in a straight direction due to a driving force.

a. Herbicide: a substance that is toxic to plants and is used to destroy unwanted vegetation.

When I and two other people left class and walked to the Anthropology open house, we were stopped outside of the door to receive the paper. We were told we needed 6 other stamps in total to get the extra credit for the assignment. One stamp was given to use at the door.

Archaeologists destroy the sites they excavate. This has been one of the major criticisms that has been lobbed at archaeologists for years. When archaeologists excavate a site, the common practice of digging and removing artifacts is sometimes frowned upon by the communities in the surrounding area. In the 1800’s people’s views of indigenous communities where reprehensible to say the lest “American Indians were held to be inferior to civilized men in order to rationalize the seizure of Indian lands, and that eventually, racial myths grew to supplant any other myths about Indians as a justification for waging war on Indians and violating their treaties.” (Watkins 2000: 6) This trend continued into the 1900’s, but the degradation that indigenous and to some extant non-indigenous communities have experienced is still present to this day, but it is not as prevalent as it was in the past. The things that were decimated where Indigenous graves, sacred places, and cultural materials. The practice of looting grave goods has been a problem since Europeans first came to the Americas “The looting of the Native American past began with the very earliest European presence in North America, starting earlier than many would think.”

Today, MSC visited Jeffrey at his Dau Habilitation program located on 1221 E14th street, Brooklyn, NY. MSC greeted the receptionist and she called his Day Hab. Supervisor Yocheved Mordkontech. She guided MSC to his classroom and Jeffrey was happy to see his MSC. Jeffrey asked MSC how she was doing and MSC stated good. Jeffrey was dressed appropriatelt in a green shirt, jeans and sneakers. Jeffrey had a clean hair cut. He told MSC that she spoke to his sister and is a little worried about here. He also worries about missing medical appointments. MSC informed him not to worry, Marie Rose will make sure he attends each medical appointments in a timely manner. Yocheved stated that Jeffrey has been doing good. He has been cooperative and he has improved in being courteous of others.

1. In which region and in what country is San Basilio located? What is the language of the linguistic minority in this region? What are the cultural advantages of being in this linguistic minority?

An individual becomes a victim following an event resulting in an injury, a loss in some manner, as well as incidents creating a hardship (Karmen, 2016). A victimologist studies the impacts of various factors following an incident where an individual has been victimized. There are several perspectives a victimologist may study an incident, this week the question asked for a reference to the anthropological, historical, and economic perspectives as they would relate to a stabbing. An anthropological perspective examines situations through comparison to other regions of the world as well as in events that occurred in the deep past. The historical perspective examines past events in an effort to understand current events. Finally, the economic

The history of the world is a complex arrangement of happenings and occurrences that have shaped the current state of civilization. At a fundamental level, history is the driving force behind every element of society that exists today. Within history, there are several factors that have and continue to determine the way in which our society functions. One of the most significant of these factors is gender. Today, conceptions, viewpoints and ideas surrounding gender are always changing. It is this fluidity of thought that ultimately allows society to progress forward and create change. However, gender has not always been as openly discussed. Tracing back through history, gender has consistently been a point of identity among humans.

This method is used to determine the exact age of fossils, artifacts and the earth. This involves, examining several strata of the crust of the earth to show the time intervals of one layer of rock to another layer as well as use the layering principle to confirm the series of cultures.

Anthropology is the social sciences discipline that looks to understand humanity. In this discipline there are subdivisions such as cultural anthropology and primatology, and the beauty of anthropology is that you can more than you think, link some of your life event to some anthropological context.