The Role Of Anthropologists On The Development Of Modern Society

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.

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.

Through Biological Anthropology has shown how this process is done and the research from different geographical changes helps in the developmental change. By studying human beings within their living habit shows how the all of the different elements comes into account in the development of humans. By breaking down the different environmental differences along with the personal’s economic background with the combination with their genetic profile determines the development of the individuals. Biology Anthropology shows what all forces both internally and externally have a part in each and everyone’s development.

Anthropologists have always had their discrepancies with the word culture and its background significance. There have been numerous definitions that have filtered through the field, yet not one that everyone can accept or agree with. Franz Boas, an anthropologist in the early 20th Century, and his students, had a difficult time figuring out the objective of what culture is. Culture is about learning and shared ideas about behaviour. Although Boas and his students had a slightly different idea in mind. They ultimately reached a conclusion, a definition of culture in their view that is a contradiction in terms. Boas sates that, “ culture was expressed through the medium of language but was not reducible to it;

The study of cultural variation among humans and collecting data regarding the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities is the cultural anthropology branch of anthropology. (Wikipedia, 2013).

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

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

During this cultural observation, the anthropological concepts that will be examined will be: culture, society, language and communication and finally kinship. For the purpose of the observation, the concepts are defined as: culture is ideas and behaviors that are learned and transmitted and are not a genetic means of adaptation. Along with the understanding that society is the learned behavior patterns and thought that help a group adapt to its surroundings (Park 2015, p.G2). Language and communication being defined as the human communication by means of shared symbols in the form of sounds or representations of sounds (Park 2015, p.271). Last of the

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.

Cultural anthropology is one of the four fields of anthropology. It looks for patterns of beliefs or behaviours in a group and how they are connected. Anthropologist looks at differences and similarities between different groups and different cultures. They obtain their data through field work. There is actually two method of for anthropologist to study a culture of a group; ethnography and ethnology. Ethnography is a detailed description of a particular group based on the information you get with field work. Most anthropologist actually go live with this particular group for a certain amount of time to get the more information possible and write the most detailed and accurate description of this group. The other method, ethnology, is a study of different cultures from cross cultural comparison. In this method, they generalized a lot and they using the information of some ethnographic studies already done.

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.

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.

In the past few decades, people are starting to shift towards learning cultural anthropology to explore human variations. In fact, it has come to be a bit of a fascination. “There is cultural intermingling and each country is learning more about other cultures.” For example, studying abroad for college students has greatly increased in recent years. Students realize that living and learning in another country will give them a broader knowledge of the culture and gain a deeper understanding of their own identity.