In all four fields of anthropology (Cultural, Archaeology, Linguistics, and Physical Anthropology) women have made significant contributions to establishment and growth of the field. In addition to providing role models for future generations, the earliest women in the field pioneered pivotal studies, generating new questions and venues for research. The discussion of women in anthropology
War is armed combat (fighting with weapons) between warriors or soldiers from two different political communities. This definition puts emphasis on learning to use weapons because learning to use weapons is socialization for armed combat. Warfare by definition is differentiated from other forms of killing—those that occur within political communities; these are, namely, homicide, political
Anthropology has the highest regard for rigorous and honest research. Most anthropologists respect the internal, culturally defined explanations of truth of the people they study (emic) while doing scientific research (edic). Both types of research are part of cultural anthropology. In both cases, social facts are determined by observation; this requires actual field research. Both
The nature of time is a topic of commanding interest to scholars in many different academic disciplines. Anthropology has been concerned with time in two major ways. The first is how human beings create and express time, including the generic, universal, homogenous time of science that many people take for granted. The second concern is
Late Stone Age North and West Africa have been stereotyped as a monolithic culture in two hypotheses: the African Aqualithic and the Neolithique de Tradition Soudanis. Lithic diversity was ignored in favor of a broad-based cultural tradition defined by remains from aquatic activities and by the supposed observance of wavy-line and dotted wavy-line pottery. However
In the late 19th century, anthropology emerged as an academic discipline against a background of intellectual foment and rapid advances in the sciences. During this formative time, religion was the subject of many travelogues, popular books, and scholarly studies. Nineteenth-century European colonial expansion, and the scholarship it engendered, exposed the Western world to a large
The major thesis of political anthropology is that politics cannot be isolated from other subsystems of a society. Political anthropology has defined its interest in how power is put to use in a social and cultural environment. Power is defined as political influence to accomplish certain aims. Through cultural interpretation, the political culture defines certain
To anyone with a rudimentary understanding of paleontology and anthropology, it may not be readily apparent that these disciplines can be in any way related to one another or useful in informing the other’s primary interests. Anthropology, broadly speaking, is concerned with the study of human culture and behavior, with data provided directly by investigations
Orality, a term used in anthropology to interpret the performances of “verbal art,” was not a term created or defined by anthropologists for their particular use. It is a very old concept, formulated as the opposite of “literacy,” and has a long history in the humanities. It is encrusted with many beliefs and ideas that
Law and anthropology (or legal anthropology) examines the relationship among society, culture, and law in societies at various levels of political, economic, and social complexity. Legal anthropology is a sub-field of the discipline of anthropology; however, its subject matter is also a focus of interdisciplinary analysis in fields such as criminal justice, law, philosophy, and
Justice refers to the constant and perpetual disposition of legal matters or disputes to render every person his or her due. The concept of justice traces its origin to the Greek language. The Greek work “dike” corresponds to the idea of staying in one’s assigned place or role. The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle developed
Virtually all fields of science are afflicted to some extent by hoaxes. Anthropology is no different, with each of its subfields having been subjected to at least a measure of intellectual dishonesty and fakery. Though the motives behind anthropological hoaxes have varied, the element underlying their success has always been the same: an audience predisposed
In a famous manifesto, the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) claimed in 1973 that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” One could also wonder if anything in anthropology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Indeed, there is a part of anthropology that does not deal with evolutionary issues. This
Concepts The term ethics was first coined by the philosopher and physician Aristotle (384-322 BC), in his book Ethika Nikomacheia (ethics for his son Nikomachos). Ethics has its roots in the noun ethos, which means “custom.” Aristotle understood it as the rational study of custom which, methodically, as a practical science has not the exactness
The study of ecology and anthropology, here termed ecological anthropology, is at its most basic level the examination of the relationship between humans and the natural environments in which they live. Although the nature of how anthropologists approach this relationship has changed and varied considerably over the past century, ecological anthropology is best characterized as
From the inception of the discipline of anthropology, ethnographic monographs have dealt with the economies of the people under discussion as a matter of course. The evolutionists were fundamentally interested in levels of technology and environmental “adaptations,” and functionalists interpreted all social systems in terms of the satisfaction of basic human needs. Subsequently, anthropologists influenced
Human beings are curious by nature. In that way, we are all anthropologists in the sense that we possess the universal trait of “curiosity.” From the time that a child asks his mother, “Where did I come from?” human beings question why we were made, why we were born, and where we will go. We
Biological Anthropology Definition Biological anthropology is concerned with the origin, evolution and diversity of humankind. The field was called physical anthropology until the late twentieth century, reflecting the field’s primary concern with cataloging anatomical differences among human and primate groups. Biological anthropology is one of the four subfields of anthropology, together with archaeology, linguistic anthropology
Biological anthropology is the study of human biological variation and its genetic and environmental causes within the framework of evolution. The roots of physical anthropology, the name usually given to this subfield of anthropology until recently, lie in the 19th century. However, there was no university-based training in the subfield until well into the 20th
Concepts The term bioethics was first coined by the biologist Van Rensselaer Potter in his book Bioethics, Science of Survival (1970). The term is taken from two Greek words: bios, the Greek word for “life,” and ethics, which has its roots in the noun ethos, meaning “custom. “Van Rensselaer used it for ethical questions concerning
The built environment in which we live as humans is an important matter. The architectural landscape deeply structures our lives. On the other hand, architecture, as it is produced today in our urbanized environments, is based on too restricted knowledge. Postmodern “theory of architecture” is determined by the conventional history of art. Its narrow concept
While anthropologists in the United States developed cultural anthropology, the British developed social anthropology. In the present, despite the fact that social anthropology departments still exist in Great Britain and in other parts of the world, social anthropology existed as a distinct discipline only from the early 1920s to the early 1970s. Historically, social anthropologists
The Need for Visual Anthropology Since the advent of modern photographic technology (still and moving), the use of visual methods for anthropological documentation and inquiry has been an integral part of the discipline, although it was not formally known as visual anthropology until after World War II. Visual anthropology has been used to document, preserve
Anthropology may be best viewed as the comparative scientific study of human societies and cultures throughout the world and throughout time. This seems to appropriately summarize the nature of anthropology and the depth of the ability of this discipline to provide a holistic approach to the study of humankind. Anthropology is comparative in that it
As the science of humankind, anthropology strives to give a comprehensive and coherent view of our own species within material nature, organic evolution, and sociocultural development. Facts, concepts, and perspectives converge into a sweeping and detailed picture of human beings within earth history in general and the primate world in particular. To give meaning and
In all their professional endeavors, anthropologists study human experience and behavior within a cultural context, which means that they can be employed in a wide array of settings. While the market for academic anthropologists has remained relatively limited, opportunities for nonacademic employment of anthropologists have expanded. The demand for those able to analyze and interpret
Anthropology is the study of people, society, and culture through all time and everywhere around the world. Three of its main characteristics are an ongoing debate between evolutionism and cultural relativism, the use of cross-culture comparison, and ethnographic research based on “participant observation.” Anthropology shares certain basic characteristics with her sister disciplines of biology, history
The defining characteristic of clinically applied anthropology is that it is anthropology practiced in health care settings: hospitals, clinics, health professional schools, and health care delivery systems of all kinds. The health care arena is so wide ranging and complex that it almost requires the kind of complete immersion that comes from working within the
Cultural Anthropology Definition Cultural anthropology is the study of human patterns of thought and behavior, and how and why these patterns differ, in contemporary societies. Cultural anthropology is sometimes called social anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, or ethnology. Cultural anthropology also includes pursuits such as ethnography, ethnohistory, and cross-cultural research. Cultural anthropology is one of the four
Economic anthropology includes the examination of the economic relationships found among precapitalist societies (nonmarket economies); this includes band, village, and peasant societies. Economic anthropologists study the historical incorporation into the world market economy (capitalism) or state socialist economies of tribal peoples and peasant societies. Formal Economics Cross-disciplinary studies are both an admirable and a desired
Anthropology, the study of humanity seen from the perspective of social and cultural diversity, was established as an academic discipline in the mid-nineteenth century. At the time, broad, evolutionist perspectives were predominant, but would be eclipsed in the early twentieth century by the cultural relativism introduced by Franz Boas and the fieldwork revolution championed by
As Eric Wolf notes in “Anthropology,” his 1964 essay, anthropology is “the most scientific of the humanities, the most humanist of the sciences.” Anthropologists have commonly taken into consideration the human condition—that which makes us distinctly human. However, maintaining balance between anthropology as a science that is concerned with causation, structure, function, and the predictability
Modern philosophical anthropology originated in the 1920s. During the 1940s it became the representative branch of German philosophy. It arose with, and has absorbed, Lebensphilosophie, existentialism, and phenomenology, although it is not identical with them. It has affinities with pragmatism and the sociology of knowledge. Although it is historically based on certain German traditions, it
Practicing anthropology primarily refers to anthropological work performed outside academia to address issues in areas such as community development, agriculture, health care, environment, resource management, housing, criminal justice, marketing, and technology. Although a majority of practicing anthropologists work in urban or other local settings, some work on international projects, especially in development and health. Practicing
Business and industry are fundamental ways of organizing economic activity to meet basic human needs in modern market societies. Business means the buying and selling of goods and services in the marketplace (also known as commerce or trade), while industry refers to the organized production of goods and services on a large scale. When we
Epistemology is that discipline of philosophy devoted to the nature of knowledge and how we acquire it. It is further divided into prescriptive and descriptive epistemology. Rules of how to proceed to acquire knowledge are called “methods,” and hence a prescriptive epistemology is a “methodism.” Descriptive epistemologies are sometimes referred to as “sociology of knowledge,”
Origins and Evolution of the Concept “Third World” The term Third World ( tiers etat) was coined in 1952 by Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer, to describe the poor, marginalized, and powerless class of prerevolutionary France. Its meaning expanded rapidly to denote areas of the world that were distinct from the industrialized capitalist countries, the
Prior to the advent of the women’s movement, anthropological research tended to focus on men’s lives, rituals, and interactions, but without articulated awareness or remark. The majority of early anthropologists were men; they had more access to men’s than to women’s lives, and gender had not yet emerged as a salient problem within anthropology. Early
This article traces the history of the anthropology of religion from the nineteenth century to the present. It argues that a focus on such questions as rationality and ritual was central to the emergence of the discipline. These themes, along with topics such as witchcraft, belief, language, and the body, have remained of perennial interest.
There are two ways to interpret “the anthropology of women:” One is as the work of women anthropologists, and the other is as anthropology that focuses on women as its subject. This entry deals with the latter, although for many reasons, the two often go hand in hand. Feminist anthropology, the ethnography of women, and
Anthropology engages history not as one but instead as many things: (1) sociocultural change or diachrony; (2) a domain of events and objects that make manifest systems of signification, purpose, and value; (3) a domain of variable modalities of the experience and consciousness of being in time; and (4) a domain of practices, methods, and
As soon as fundamental principles of genetic inheritance were clearly established in the early twentieth century, anthropologists began using these principles and new empirical data to illuminate long-standing problems of human variation and primate phylogeny. Initially focusing on human blood characteristics, geneticists quantified regional differences in ABO genotype, and tried to correlate these differences with
Action anthropology is a scholarly enterprise based in field research, data collection, and theory building, during which the anthropologist is also committed to assisting local communities in achieving their goals and meeting specific felt needs. Rather than pursuing pure science or perusing their own agendas, action anthropologists see themselves more as tentative coexplorers who help