Chapter 1 Summary

Introduction

Human beings, the subject of anthropology, are one of the world’s most adaptable animals.
All humans share basic biological and behavioral characteristics that make such extraordinary adaptability possible.
Yet, as a species, we exhibit tremendous variation in environmental adaptations, physical appearance, language, beliefs, and social organization.
Earlier generations of people had myriad explanations for this variation. They often imposed value judgments on human differences, usually with their own ways of living deemed best.
Sometimes the resulting cultural misunderstandings created hostility or conflict. Most of the time, however, people have found ways to get along. Trade and alliances, for example, made cooperation more desirable. In the latter case, a practical understanding of human variation became essential.
Some of history’s great explorers, philosophers, and historians took the first steps toward this understanding—for example, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo (1254–1324), the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 bce), and the Greek historian Herodotus (484–425 bce).
These historical figures were pioneers in the study of human variation. But they were not anthropologists, and the discipline of anthropology did not emerge until the nineteenth century.
This chapter focuses on the question, What is anthropology, and how is it relevant in today’s world? To address this focal question, the chapter is organized around the following problems:

How did anthropology begin?
What do the four subfield of anthropology have in common?
How do anthropologists know what they know?
How do anthropologists put their knowledge to work in the world?
What ethical obligations do anthropologists have?

Anthropology offers a powerful framework for posing questions about humanity and grasping the complexity of the human experience. It also provides important knowledge to help address many social problems.

How Did Anthropology Begin?

During the nineteenth century, anthropology emerged as an academic discipline devoted to the observation and analysis of human variation.
Three key concerns shaped the foundation of professional anthropology in the 1850s:

Disruptions caused by industrialization in Europe and America
The rise of theories of evolution
The spread of European colonialism

Industrialization disrupted American and European societies by bringing large numbers of rural people into towns and cities to work in factories.

Asking about how European villages and cities were structured and how they perpetuated their cultures ultimately led to questions about how all sorts of non-Western societies worked as well.

A second key influence on the development of anthropology was the rise of evolutionary theory to explain biological variation among and within species.

Evolution refers to the adaptive changes organisms make across generations.
Charles Darwin developed a theory of evolution known as natural selection.
Natural selection is a process through which certain inheritable traits are passed along to offspring because they are better suited to the environment.
Darwin believed that the question of the origin of species was not a religious one but an empirical one, which could be answered by observing whether species had changed and whether new species had emerged over time.
Though Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was controversial when it was first published in 1859, evolution by natural selection is no longer scientifically controversial, and nearly all anthropologists and biologists accept evolution as a factual explanation of the diversification of plant and animal life and the origin of modern humans.

A third driving force behind anthropology was colonialism, the historical practice of more powerful countries claiming possession of less powerful ones. To understand how to govern the poorly understood indigenous peoples of their colonies, Europeans and Americans began developing methods for studying those societies.

Colonists justified their actions through the process of othering, defining colonized peoples as different from, and subordinate to, Europeans in terms of their social, moral, and physical norms.
Well into the 1920s, anthropologists pursued an approach known as the salvage paradigm, which held that it was important to observe indigenous ways of life before knowledge of traditional languages and customs disappeared.

By the end of the nineteenth century, anthropology was already an international discipline, whose practitioners were mainly based in western Europe and the United States. Today, anthropology is a truly global discipline, with practitioners in countries around the world.

What Do the Four Subfields of Anthropology Have in Common?

Anthropology has traditionally been divided into four subfields: cultural anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistic anthropology.
Cultural anthropology focuses on the social lives of living communities. Prior to the 1970s, most cultural anthropologists conducted anthropological fieldwork in non-Western communities. In the twenty-first century, anthropologists still study non-Western societies but are apt to study the ethnic groups, occupations, institutions, advertising, or technology of their own cultures as well.
Archaeology studies past cultures, by excavating sites where people lived. Some archaeologists study prehistory (the time period before written records). Two themes have been traditional concerns of prehistoric archaeology:

The transition from foraging to farming.
The rise of complex cities and states.
Another branch of archaeology is historical archaeology, in which archaeologists excavate sites occupied during historical times. Such excavations explore perspectives not recorded in historical documents.

Biological anthropology focuses on the physical aspects of the human species. Biological anthropologists explore human evolution, health and disease, and the behavior of nonhuman primates. They also work in the relevant areas of human genetics, diet and nutrition, and the impact of social stress on the body.
Linguistic anthropology studies one of the most fundamental human traits: language. It traditionally seeks to understand the linguistic categories used by study populations and how they order their natural and cultural environments.
Anthropology is by nature an interdisciplinary field. Its subfields are intertwined with many other social and natural sciences. One reason that anthropology remains a broad, four-field discipline, rather than splitting up, is that all anthropologists recognize the importance of the following concepts: culture, cultural relativism, diversity, change, and holism.
In anthropology, culture refers to these taken-for-granted notions, rules, moralities, and behaviors within a social group that feel natural and the way things should be.
Like all people, anthropologists are subject to ethnocentrism: assuming our way of doing things is correct, while simply dismissing other people’s worldviews as inferior or misguided. But anthropologists must be especially mindful of these assumptions because they can provoke intolerance and make cross-cultural understanding impossible.

To avoid such misunderstandings, anthropologists emphasize cultural relativism, the moral and intellectual principle that one should withhold judgment about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs and practices.

Another of anthropology’s major contributions to knowledge has been to describe and explain human diversity, the sheer variety of ways of being human around the world.

The anthropological meaning of diversity is somewhat different from its popular usage. In anthropology it refers to multiplicity and variety, which is not the same as difference. Within multiplicity and variety, there is both difference and similarity.

Anthropologists in each of the four subfields are specialists in studying human change. Anthropology also reflects our changing world. As new topics, issues, and problems emerge, anthropologists shift toward studying these new concerns.

As with many academic disciplines, the face of anthropology has changed in recent decades. European and American men dominated the field since its inception. Now anthropology is increasingly practiced by members of many minority groups, women, and indigenous groups.

By uniting the study of human prehistory, social life, language, and biology in one broad discipline, anthropology provides powerful tools for understanding the whole human experience in context. Holism is the effort to synthesize these approaches into a single comprehensive explanation.

How Do Anthropologists Know What They Know?

Anthropology employs a wide variety of methodologies, or systematic strategies for collecting and analyzing data, including the scientific method. The goal of this established method is to develop, test, and disprove hypotheses.

Answering big questions—like “What is the meaning of life?” or “Why do bad things happen to good people?”—is not the purpose of science.

In science, theories are tested and repeatedly supported hypotheses, not “guesses” as the word is popularly used. Theories are key elements of the scientific method. They not only explain things but also help guide research by focusing the researchers’ questions and creating a constructive framework for their results.
Anthropologists use a range of techniques for gathering and processing data. Some of these techniques use quantitative methods, which classify features of a phenomenon, count or measure them, and construct mathematical and statistical models to explain what is observed.
Anthropologists also employ qualitative methods, in which the aim is to produce an in-depth and detailed description of social behaviors and beliefs.

The ethnographic method, which involves prolonged and intensive observation of and participation in the life of a community, is a qualitative methodology and a hallmark of cultural anthropology.

The comparative method allows anthropologists to derive insights from careful comparisons of two or more cultures or societies. It is a general approach, which holds that any particular detail of human behavior or particular social condition should not be seen in isolation but should be considered against the backdrop of the full range of behaviors and conditions in their individual social settings.
Not all anthropologists consider their work to be science. Describing people and their actions requires an understanding of their lives and beliefs that cannot be accounted for in the scientific method.
Anthropologists aim to see things from multiple perspectives, but they are, ultimately, humans themselves. Thus, their interpretations of cultural practices remain partial and situated in important respects.

How Do Anthropologists Put Their Knowledge to Work in the World?

Anthropological research suggests practical solutions to many real-world social problems.

Applied anthropology is anthropological research commissioned to serve an organization’s needs, and practicing anthropology is the broadest category of anthropological work, in which the anthropologist not only performs research but also gets involved in the design, implementation, and management of some organization, process, or product.
Anthropologists in all subfields have effectively put their discipline to work addressing difficult social, health, and educational problems.

What Ethical Obligations Do Anthropologists Have?

Ethics in anthropology—the moral principles that guide anthropological conduct— are organically connected to what it means to be a good anthropologist.

As in medicine, “Do no harm” is a foundational principle of the American Anthropological Association’s Code of Ethics. Anthropologists must explain to the people involved in their research the potential risks of participation, and obtain “informed consent.” Anthropological publications avoid sharing confidential information and often disguise informants’ identities, in case those individuals could be targeted for harm because of what they say.
The primary ethical responsibility of anthropologists is to the people, species, or artifacts they study. Anthropologists are expected to side with their subjects and should take whatever reasonable action is possible when their subjects are threatened.

See “Thinking Like an Anthropologist: Should Anthropologists Take Responsibility for the Influences They Have on the Societies They Study?”

An important ethical question in anthropology is who should control anthropological data and knowledge. Traditionally, anthropologists have controlled those things, but communities have challenged anthropologists to provide them research skills and information from the research so they can use them for their benefit after the anthropologist leaves.

Conclusion

Anthropologists have been asking questions about human societies and how they have changed and developed since the mid-nineteenth century. Their expertise is on culture, diversity, how and why social change happens, the dynamics of human biology, and the ways people communicate with one another.
The four subfields of anthropology include cultural anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. These four subfields have developed specialized methodological tools for understanding the different aspects of humanity and how it has changed and developed.
Because anthropology deals with people, there are ethical considerations with nearly everything that anthropologists study.