Importance Of Ethics In Anthropology

The findings of E.E. Evans-Pritchard serve as an example of the importance of ethnographic fieldwork and cultural relativism. People have an inherent tendency to drift towards ethnocentrism if they do not keep an open mind about the legitimacy of foreign cultural ideas. Enculturalization occurs from the very beginning of one’s life. When one grows up in a culture that praises traits that are deemed as beneficial and discourages behaviors that are seen as harmful, one tends to develop similar beliefs on these traits and behaviors. Different cultures encourage different outlooks on society. This is the result of the environment a culture exists in. In many tribal societies, one of the primary influences on culture is the physical environment. However, in technologically-advanced societies that worry less about satisfying needs and more about fulfilling desires, social aspects are perhaps more significant. For example, note the difference between American and Japanese culture. American culture promotes individualism and free speech. Many Americans tote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights

Answer: Ethnical issues faced by anthropologists when they conducting an ethnographic research is dealing with situations that conflict with their own morals. For example, Sterk was faced by a lot of drugs in which you can gather she did not encounter on a regular basis in her life. She had knowledge that few women who knew they were HIV positive still continued to have unprotected sex. Not only did her bond allow her to care for these women and become concerned with their well being but she had no choice but to keep her opinions to herself. She was sitting on information that would stir up the pot in the society knowing that HIV was easily being spread through prostitution. Anthropologists will be faced with many things that may go against what they firmly believe in.

Anthropology is something we should value because it allows us as human beings to learn about our origins and also to understand the cultures in the world outside of our own. Anthropology uses many techniques to learn and study such cultures that we do not understand. Ethnography is the gathering and interpretation of information based on intensive firsthand study of a participation culture -or- the written report of this study.

Anthropology is holistic. Humans are social beings more than anything, but with underlying psychological, biological and cultural connotations. The field of anthropology encompasses everything and anything having to do with humankind throughout history. Anthropology attempts to answer the tough questions about the human condition. What influences our actions? How has our species changed? Why do we look down on other cultures or societies? The questions are endless. It is the anthropologists’ job to try and answer them with unbiased subjectivity in order to come analytical conclusions about us as humans. (Kottak 14). To understand humans and the complexity of our cultures anthropology uses knowledge not only from the social and biological sciences, but also the physical sciences and humanities. In order to cover such a wide base of human history and interaction, anthropology itself has been split up into four different subsets that allow us to delve deeper into the understanding of the human condition. What is common throughout all the subsets is the application of knowledge in an effort to solve human problems. Throughout history though, the problems we have faced as humans have not always been the same. In fact they often change from generation to generation. For anthropology to keep up with these changes it’s had to

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.

For example, people from the Middle East or Latin America are white, but have a different ethnicity. Ethics – Involves some written guidelines, but also some unanswerable ethical questions for anthropologists doing fieldwork and writing ethnographies. There are various ethical groups and guidelines, such as the AAA Code of Ethics and Institutional Review Boards. Unethical procedures harm people and withhold information, such as seen in the Tuskegee experiments. Ethnic Strife – A problem that results because of differences between ethnic groups.

• Anthropologists study the origin, development, and customs of human beings • They may research many questions related to what it means to be human:

Anthropology is a word derived from the Greek words anthropos and logia. The word anthropos means human, and the word logia, in basic terms, means the study of. Therefore an anthropologist is a person who studies humans. Anthropologists study humans to gain and spread knowledge for the greater good of humanity, so we as a people can understand one another. To study anthropology as an anthropologist involves extensive research. Furthermore, to gather any credible research a person must follow a set guideline, especially when using and gathering research from another person. This guideline is in place to protect one's personal freedom because many cases involving human research have been unethical, unmoral, and unjust.

Exploring different cultures as well as your own in order to understand the various ways they do things compared to our own can be enlightening as well as challenging. The main challenge comes from being used to your own culture that it is difficult to view a different culture without any personal bias. Being born and raised in a culture and getting used to those norms of everyday life contributes to the bias that one may show, believing that their own culture is superior to another. This type of thought process is called ethnocentrism. But with the use of an etic and emic approach to analyze your own culture and different cultures will help eliminate ethnocentrism. Using an outsider’s

Anthropology is defined, in the most basic terms, as the study of other cultures. This field can subsequently be divided into more specific sects, and contain more precise defining characteristics, but this definition is essentially all that is needed. Anthropology is a science that attempts to look at other cultures and draw conclusions to questions that are raised while studying. An anthropologist is someone who accepts what is presented before them and is driven by an urge to understand each presentation as thoroughly as possible. Once the concept of anthropology is accepted, one must identify the means of reaching the goal of this field. In the sect of social anthropology, this vehicle is known as

Anthropologists then, write ethnographies which are first hand detailed description of a living culture. Often anthropologists will find individuals within the society who are willing to become informants. Even though informants can be very helpfully, they often hold bias views about their culture. Some anthropologist must learn new and sometimes unwritten languages and this may require extra training. An anthropologist's class, race, gender, language, dress, religion, and age, all effect how he/she will be interpreted by the local people.(Cultural Anthropology pg31). Each step in anthropological research brings about dilemmas common to any human interaction, engagement versus detachment, subjectivity versus objectivity, particularization versus generalization, induction versus deduction(Fieldwork, Ethnography and Ethics in Anthropology). On many occasion's, the anthropologist will leave their projects, with a new found respect and begin to question their own cultures.

Anthropology, as a discipline in the field of human sciences, is based on certain ethical principles to guide its practitioners through their research. This creates a stable framework on which to start any research project. Avoiding deviation, however, can be complicated. Anthropologists have a responsibility to their field,

Humans are an interesting species because of the strong need humans have to fully understand what it truly means to be human. Many fields such as history, psychology, and sociology all offer a perspective in the study of humanity, but there are distinguishable from anthropology. Anthropology differs from other humanities fields due to its holistic nature, comparative research methods, and the strong emphasis on fieldwork and participant interaction. Anthropology is the study of people throughout the world, their evolutionary history, how they behave, adapt to different environments, communicate and socialize with one another. In order for anthropologists to examine the full scope of human life, they employ the four field approach that embodies the holistic nature of the field.

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.

Politically we are confronted with a host of issues ranging from matters pertaining to local taxation, planning, and zoning to regional (if not global) terrorism and other manifestations of conflict. The study of geography allows us to participate and enjoy our planet. Geography gives us a sense of reference to where we live and where we may be going in relationship to where we have been. Its appreciation of the world we live in. Anthropology is the study of human kind and culture, everybody wants to know where and how humans came to be. Some examples we can apply anthropology in our daily lives would be in relating to our families, friends, co-workers, in understanding work dynamics, in understanding and communicating with teens,, and in proposing new ideas, and plans. Its unique contribution to studying the bonds of human social relations been the distinctive concept of culture.