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Chapter Summary
This chapter introduces students to the discipline of anthropology and its four main subfields (archaeology, cultural anthropology, biological anthropology and linguistic anthropology). While anthropology is a diverse social science that incorporates the study of all human societies across time and space, one of the central unifying tenets of anthropology is its focus on culture—a shared, universal, and learned set of behaviours and ideas. We use culture to understand and negotiate our place in the world. We learn culture through interactions with parents, peers, family members, teachers, the mass media, and others in society. At the same time, however, the role of biology is not ignored in terms of its role in shaping humanity, and anthropologists thus adopt a biocultural approach to the study of humanity.
When anthropologists study various societies, they incorporate a holistic, comparative, and evolutionary perspective. Holism refers to a characteristic of the anthropological perspective that describes, at the highest and most inclusive level, how anthropology tries to integrate all that is known about human beings and their activities. Therefore, for example, if you want to study witchcraft in Papua New Guinea, then you would seek to understand how witchcraft intersects with local politics, spirituality, economics, and other cultural processes. In addition, anthropologists and other specialists may work together collaboratively to understand different aspects of society. As a discipline that stresses comparison, anthropologists attempt to avoid generalizing about different societies without exploring similarities and differences across many human societies. Anthropology is evolutionary in the sense that anthropologists look at humanity from a fluid perspective. In other words, human societies are not treated as if they are static or frozen in time, and anthropologists are interested in how humans—both biologically and culturally—change over time.
These principles of holism, comparison, and evolution are explored through fieldwork. Fieldwork refers to an extended period of close involvement with the people in whose way of life anthropologists are interested, during which anthropologists ordinarily collect most of their data. While this method of data collection is most closely associated with cultural anthropology, biological anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists also conduct long-term fieldwork.
Finally, this chapter emphasizes the importance of anthropology outside of academia. Due to their expertise in human culture, cultural diversity, and cultural change (among other things), anthropologists often work in the field of applied anthropology. Some anthropologists, for example, work as policy analysts for various governments, others might work with First Nations communities to assist with land or treaty negotiations, and others find employment in the field of medical anthropology.
Learning Objectives
In this chapter, the student should learn to do the following:
- identify the major characteristics and defining principles of anthropology as a discipline;
- identify the four main subfields of anthropology, their main topics of interest, and how they are distinct from each other;
- understand what a biocultural approach to the study of humanity implies;
- understand how applied anthropology is used outside of academic contexts; and
- outline some of the main features of medical anthropology.