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Anthropology can be defined as the comparative study of humans, their societies and their cultural worlds. We asked three cultural anthropologists Anthony Kwame Harrison, Bob Myers, and Lynn Kwiatkowski to describe what drew them to the discipline and to explain how they use anthropological perspectives in their varied research projects. Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification. In all these efforts, my attention is primarily on understanding the complexities, nuances, and significance of race. Why do we believe what we believe? Through their research, anthropologists contribute unique and important forms of knowledge and information to diverse groups, including local communities, nations, and global social movements, such as feminist, racial, indigenous, environmental, LGBTQ, and other social movements. His core idea, distilled in the notion of cultural relativism, was a radical departure, as unique in its way as was Einsteins theory of relativity in the discipline of physics. Widely acknowledged as the father of American cultural anthropology, Franz Boas was the first scholar to explore in a truly open and neutral manner how human social perceptions are formed, and how members of distinct societies become conditioned to see and interpret the world. Cultural anthropologists do not write novels, rather they write ethnographies, descriptive accounts of culture that weave detailed observations with theory. Why is culture important? Far ahead of his time, Boas recognized that every distinct social community, every cluster of people distinguished by language or adaptive inclination, was a unique facet of the human legacy and its promise. I tell students during the first week of classes that one of my goals is to convince them that much of what theyve learned about many familiar topics (race, sex and gender, kinship, marriage, languages, religion, evolution, social media, and globalization) is biased, or incomplete. Anthropology is the broadest, most fundamental of academic subjects and should be at the core of a modern undergraduate education. Why Anthropology Is Important SHARE BACK TO TOP Why Anthropology Is Important Recently retired Professor Gordon McEwan, an expert on the Incas and their predecessors, has helped students thrive in our multicultural world What's Inside: The Nursing Resource Center A Taste of Home Social anthropology plays a central role in an era when global understanding and recognition of diverse ways of seeing the world are of critical social, political and economic importance. What is anthropology and why is it important? Global cultural crises: Global Cultural Crises needs an anthropological perspective because if there is a natural disaster there maybe a social reason behind it. It was a shattering of the European mind, the sociological equivalent of the splitting of the atom. It was a shattering of the European mind, the sociological equivalent of the splitting of the atom. We also acknowledge previous National Science Foundation support under grant numbers 1246120, 1525057, and 1413739. ANTHROPOLOGY It includes topics such as human origin, globalization, social change, and world history. I also explore the ways in which abused women, and other Vietnamese professionals and government workers, contest this gender violence in Vietnamese communities. What are the costs and benefits of identifying individuals involved in this study? b. This article sets the context and defines the term as well as analyzing the scope and importance of political science. I resided in a wooden hut with a thatched roof in a small village for much of my stay there, as well as another more modern home, made of galvanized iron. Race and gender are cultural constructs, derived not from biology but born in the realm of ideas. Differences in customs and beliefs reflected differences in intelligence and destiny, with every culture finding its rung on an evolutionary ladder rising from the savage to the barbarian to the civilized of the Strand in London, with technological wizardry, the great achievement of the West, being the sole measure of progress and success. Cultural anthropology is also known as the study of human cultures, their beliefs, practices, values, ideas, technologies, economies and other domains of social and cognitive organization. Influenced by my study of gender power relations surrounding hunger and malnutrition in the Philippines, and also by the political violence I witnessed by the Philippine government and the Communist New Peoples Army, I took up a new research project that focuses on gender violence. Kottak, Conrad P. Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. 1. So cooking becomes A prime example of using ethnography for success is in US foreign relations, particularly where the work of anthropologist Ruth Benedict was . Acknowledging the validity of different cultural backgrounds and expressions. What, he asked, was the nature of knowing? In Vietnam, I have had the opportunity to live with a family in a commune in Hanoi, and in nearby provinces. Everything! Im convinced that an anthropology major is not necessary for our discipline to play a significant role in students understanding of the messy, amazingly diverse, interconnected world after graduation. Instead, anthropologists seek to understand peoples beliefs within the system they have for explaining things. Cultural anthropologists research is unique because it often involves analysis of the intersection of global social, political and economic forces and the everyday experiences of members of a cultural group. Ruth Benedict, acolyte of the great Franz Boas and in 1947 president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), reputedly said that the very purpose of anthropology was to make the world safe for human differences. I stress themes of storytelling and interpretation throughout the semester. Ill admit that the razor-blade example is somewhat crude. But, 80 years on, studies of the human genome have indeed revealed the genetic endowment of humanity to be a single continuum. Knowing who we were and who we will be are as important to self-knowledge as knowing who we are in the present. All of this is to say that anthropology offers one of the most biting critiques of modernity, which challenges us to slow down and think about whether the new technologies we are constantly being presented with make sense. Augustus Comte, Emile Durkheim, and Herbert Spencer were all sociologists who used the structural-functional approach. 877 Words They attempt to achieve this by observing subjects in their local environment. Following my Peace Corps experience, I entered graduate school in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley and became a cultural anthropologist in the mid-1990s, specializing in medical anthropology. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Ethnography is the description of cultures and the groups of people who live within them. In 2012, bothKiplinger andForbes ranked anthropology as the least valuable undergraduate major, unleashing a small wave of indignation as many outside the field rushed to defend the study of culture as ideal preparation for any life or career in an interconnected and globalized world. Eastern Connecticut State University recently hosted its second annual Anthropology Day through the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Criminology and Social Work. Were Boas to be with us today, his voice would surely resound in the public square, the media, in all the halls of power. About fifteen years ago, there was a study of sociology instructors asking them to identify the most important concepts, topics, and skills for the introduction to sociology class and the sociology curriculum. If we are all cut from the same fabric of life, then by definition we all share the same mental acuity, the same raw genius. Whether this intellectual potential is exercised through technological innovation, as has been the great achievement of the West, or through the untangling of complex threads of memory inherent in a myth, a priority of many other peoples in the world, is simply a matter of choice and orientation, adaptive insights and cultural emphasis. Ethnocentrism is not a useful perspective in contexts in which people from different cultural backgrounds come into close contact with one another, as is the case in many cities and communities throughout the world. We must set aside our innate ethnocentric views in order to allow cultural relativism to guide our inquiries and interactions such that we can learn from others. As a scholar, Boas ranks with Einstein, Darwin and Freud as one of the four intellectual pillars of modernity. Sociology is of great importance in the solution of social problems Where a fascination with the exotic initially brought me to anthropology, it is the disciplines ability to shed light on what many of us see as normal, common, and taken-for-granted that has kept me with it through three degrees (bachelors, masters, and Ph.D.) and a fifteen-year career as a college professor. In 1871 Darwin published The Descent of Man, which argued that human beings shared a recent common ancestor with the great African apes. Like. Sociologists1 believe that multiculturalism is defined by the following actions: Recognizing that there are tons of different cultures and they're all individually diverse. Yes, anthropology helps to see the familiar in a new light. While anthropologists often specialize in one subfield, their specific research contributes to a broader understanding of the human condition, which is made up of culture, language, biological and social adaptations, as well as human origins and evolution. This video lesson is intended as a supplement to LUSDO AIR's-LM Understanding Culture, Society and Politics Module 1. helps us to lead an effective social life. Beauty really does lie in the eye of the beholder. The word ethnography also refers to the end result of our fieldwork. It is important because it gives you exposure to other humanities subjects, relating them to draw conclusions and critical evaluation of different . With the rise of environmental movements and ecological paradigms during the 20th century, anthropologists, too, adopted new perspectives. The poor were responsible for their own miseries, even as the British army reported that the height of officers recruited in 1914 was on average six inches taller than that of enlisted men, simply because of nutrition. It allows us to connect on a deeper level and build stronger, more meaningful relationships. Concepts in one discipline are used in the other. I cannot say for sure, but as Ive witnessed the move from twin-blade razors, to Mach 3s, to today (there is even a company offering the worlds first and only razor with seven precision aligned blades) there appears to be a presumption that more, in this case, razor-blades is better. Living in societies throughout the world, and conducting research with people in diverse cultures, were dreams that began to emerge for me when I was an undergraduate student studying anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the early 1980s. After finishing my PhD, I had a one-year post-doc in biostatistics in Chapel Hill before I took my first job at Davidson College where I taught for several years.[9]. To address these issues, I am researching the abuse of women by their husbands, and in some cases their in-laws as well, in northern Vietnam. Accessibility StatementFor more information contact us atinfo@libretexts.orgor check out our status page at https://status.libretexts.org. ; Sociology has as its nature the study of . Race truly is a fiction. How do different languages adapt to new technologies? Anthropology Perspective emphasises the need to understand what humans do and how they interpret their own actions and world-views. Katharine Tyler is Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter. Anthropology is the systematic study of humanity, with the goal of understanding the origins and distinctiveness of our species and the great diversity in our forms of social existence through space and time. This led me to pursue graduate work in anthropology despite the fact that I had taken only one anthropology course in college. I was born in Ghana, West Africa, where my American father had spent several years working with local artisans at the National Cultural Centre in Kumasi. Students examples range from describing conversations with international students, exploring the cultural and economic history of tea and coffee, to seeing an evangelical church service in a new light. Using an anthropological perspective, theres no issue which cannot be better understood. Anthropology encourages us to extend our perspectives beyond familiar social contexts to view things from the perspectives of others. What was it that allowed our culture to go from zero to 60 in a generation, as women moved from the kitchen to the boardroom, people of color from the woodshed to the White House, gay men and women from the closet to the altar? to answer questions about human origins and evolution. The significance of the study of Political Science is discussed below: (1) Imparting Knowledge of the State: However, the primary aim of the study of Political Science is to inculcate knowledge of the State, its origin, nature, structure and functions. How do seemingly random beliefs and convictions converge into this thing called culture, a term that he was the first to promote as an organizing principle, a useful point of intellectual departure. Rather, a professional, or scientific, perspective represented in anthropology emphasises the need to understand what humans do and how they interpret their own actions and world-views. While in graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I became fascinated with Caribbean history and migration and spent almost two years doing doctoral fieldwork and research on the island of Dominica.