Review of Conrad Kottak's 'Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity'

In order to understand any culture, it is essential to acknowledge the importance of taking a holistic view. This approach, which gained recognition and validation in the twentieth century, stresses the importance of accounting for all of the components of a culture. The concept requires an understanding of each subsystem, which dictates certain aspects of the culture being studied. With this theory as basis for her approach, Myerhoff is faced with the difficult task of piecing together the many parts contributing to the formation of the culture at the Center, while simultaneously recognizing the distinctions between the acting subsystems. Sometimes it seems that realizing what leads to specific cultural constructs would be extremely difficult; this is especially the case with traits that have become so naturalized that only an outsider would recognize them as distinct and significant. That said, it is obvious that there are advantages to studying a completely exotic culture, as the majority of anthropologists do; however, Myerhoff chose to do her fieldwork in a culture that is centered

In 1956 a professor from the University of Michigan, Horace Miner, wrote an article in The American Anthropologist that has become a mainstay of learning for anthropology students. Miner published the article to show a fictional exotic society called “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” as an example of how one’s own limited perspective might affect the perception of a foreign culture (Miner, 1956, p. 503). The article uses subtle humor to make the reader more comfortable in examining cultural behaviors, physical appearance, and health as the reader soon discovers that the actual society being examined is the American society. To the reader, the article begins to sound very familiar after each paragraph is

Caleb L. Fry and Lauren T. Rios Department of Anthropology Lake Tahoe Community College One College Drive South Lake Tahoe, California 96150 USA Faculty Advisor: Daryl G. Frazetti Abstract

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

The perception of foreign cultures can at times be quite peculiar. The article “Eating Christmas in Kalahari” by Richard Borshay Lee, foretells a classic example of cross culture misunderstanding when people from different cultures operate in a culturally unfamiliar environment. Richard Lee, a social anthropologist, explains what he learned living with the !Kung Bushmen, a South African tribe, for three years. This Gemeinschaft community of hunters-gatherers worked together to teach the anthropologist something important to their people, even though he was unaware of their intentions in the beginning.

Use the three articles that were assigned to you in the Article Selector Quiz. Review the tutorials on Finding an article in the AU Library and Finding thesis statements.

143). She illustrates how essential culture is to anthropology and how anthropology helps to balance culture, as well as its ties with race. She considers culture and race as opposites. “Culture is learned and can change,” (Abu-Lughod, p. 144), and race is something inborn. Although she can only depict and explain the concept of culture, and how it has become necessary and not the reasons behind it.

In Patrick Tierney’s article “The Fierce Anthropologist,” he discussed the faults that are, or may be, present in Napoleon Chagnon’s anthropological research of the Yanamamo, or “The Fierce People,” as Chagnon has referred to them in his best-selling book on the people.

Different societies exist throughout the world and within these societies each society develops culture that works best for them. Within these cultures they pass all their acquired knowledge and traditions down from generation to generation. Nevertheless, each culture has their own way of life, own marriage beliefs, their own values and feelings on life and religious beliefs. Cultures tend to have their own way to run their government, and ways to keep their economy up to their standards. Most importantly in cultural anthropology it is imperative to value culture relativism. This is the view in which no culture is superior to other

The author begins the article by preparing the audience what is about to come. Telling the audience that cultures around the world have unusual customs and an anthropologist would even seek out a culture that has one when everyone seems to agree. He then talks about the Nacirema tribe and the extremities of their practices.

In this essay, I will be creating a discourse on anthropological activism and how it relates to the basic principles of anthropology, whilst referring to the case study Activist Anthropologists by Victoria Sanford. I will provide my anthropological views on this subject based on my research.

Examining the ideas and beliefs within ones own cultural context is central to the study of Anthropology. Issues of Race and Ethnicity dominate the academic discourses of various disciplines including the field of Anthropology. Race and Ethnicity are controversial terms that are defined and used by people in many different ways. This essay shall explore the ways in which Anthropologists make a distinction between race and ethnicity and how these distinctions serve as frames for cross-cultural comparison and analysis. It is important to accurately define these coined terms before one is able to make accurate comparisons and distinctions between them, and their relation to the concept of

Bronislaw Malinowski is arguably the most influential anthropologist of the 20th century, certainly for British social anthropology. Malinowski saw himself as effecting a revolution in anthropology by rejecting the evolutionary paradigm of his predecessors and introducing functionalism, whereby institutions satisfied human biological need, as the way to understand other cultures. I argue that his lasting legacy, however, is methodological rather than theoretical. Although not the first to conduct fieldwork, his lengthy stay among the Trobriand islanders during World War 1 enabled him to study their culture and cover a wide range of topics, from economics to sexuality. He contributed to ethnography and fieldwork by living with the people he studied, getting to know them personally, participating in their activities, and conducting his research in the field has since become known as ‘participant observation’.

Boas’ reliance on empirical data to formulate theories underscores Kuhn’s central idea that paradigms are only changed through examination of new data. As data on cultures preceding Boas was slim at best, it is not hard to see how Boas could acquire data contrary to the existing viewpoint. This data collection itself was a new theory, the new invention required. Kuhnian thought states that preparadigmatic schools emphasize the collection of the facts, as Boas was emphasizing. Crisis within the paradigm is witnessed by the competition between the schools of thought. Emerging from this crisis is Boasian anthropology, with its reliance on empirical data as the basis for study. This data collection is subdivided into the four subfields Boas saw as a requirement for this new field. The four-field approach emerges as the dominant force in anthropology. With this approach the community changes its view of the field, and produces new methods and goals. These methods and goals have been used as a professional consensus in anthropology since the Boasian transformation.

Since the emergence of anthropology in the late 1800’s, the customs and methods of this academic discipline have been altered in many ways. It is assumed that in the early years of anthropology, theorists relied on travelers in order to articulate their theories (Dahl 2017). This practice is known as armchair anthropology and involves creating theories without any fieldwork. Some examples of famous armchair anthropologists include Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer. The work of both theorists involved no travelling or conducting of fieldwork. Early anthropology focused on primitive cultures and how societies transformed from being barbaric to civilized. In modern days, anthropology is discovering new topics to study every day and the information relies a great amount on fieldwork and lab work conducted by anthropologists to support their findings. As some of the early methods of anthropology continue to be used by anthropology, more are being developed in order to produce more efficient research and theories.