What Is Anthropology? Essay

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

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.

“The Tall and the Short of It” by Barry Bogin in 1998 show the prime example for applying anthropological theories in order to understand the evolution of the human process. This article show how anthropology is used to reaffirm and or disapproves the scientific theories about human development. Bogin shows through Biology Anthropology by explaining the characteristics of genetic of the mother along with the environment can change over time. In “The Tall and the short of It” Bogin show how the different concepts of anthropology (Biological anthropology) is used to show how the external environment along with the internal environment process help shapes human development.

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.

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

Cold Water, directed by Noriko Ogami is a documentary from 1986 about cross-cultural adaptation and culture shock. It is about diving into a new culture and having it feel, as one foreign student puts it, like a “plunge into cold water.” Twelve Boston University foreign students express their perceptions of their experiences in the U.S. as each of them (plus one American student and three specialists) is interviewed about living and studying in a new culture. Initial focus is on the arrival and immediate post-arrival period and the culture shock which, for most of the interviewees, follows on its heels. It becomes clear that central to the problems encountered

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

The earliest fossil of the primate can go back before the extinction of the dinosaur over 65 million years ago. Bones and teeth were discovered in Montana and Wyoming (Park, 2008). Even though there was primate like evidence before the dinosaur extinction, (Shipman, 2012).

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.

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.