What is Anthropology?

This Chapter Included definition of Anthropology,

Scope of Anthropology, its Holistic Approach toward
human culture, its curiosity to explore human culture on
the basis of Physical/ biological features, behaviors, and
language.
This Part also included the details of the Fields/
Branches of Anthropology.
These are four fields. Cultural Anthropology, Physical
Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology and
Anthropological Linguistics.
Anthropology:
By definition it is the study of human beings in all aspects of their past, present and future.
The term comes from Greek. Anthropos means “man, human” and Logos means “study.”
Anthropologists want to discover when, where, and why humans appeared on earth. How and
why they changed in time and space? How and why the biological and cultural features of the
modern human populations vary.
By Melvin Ember and Carol Ember,
“A discipline that studies humans, focusing on the study of differences and similarities, both
biological and cultural, in human populations. Anthropology is concerned with typical biological
and cultural characteristics of human populations in all periods and in all parts of the world.”
By Serena Nanda and Richard L. Warms,
“The scientific and humanistic study of human being.”
According to Conrad Phillip Kottak,
“It is the study of Human species and its immediate ancestors. It is uniquely comparative and
holistic science.”
Scope of Anthropology:
Anthropologists are generally thought of as individuals who travel to little-known corners of the world to study
exotic peoples or dig deep into the earth to uncover the fossil remains, tools, and pots of people who lived long
ago. Though stereotypical, this view does suggest how anthropology differs from other disciplines concerned with
humans. Anthropology is broader in scope, both geographically and historically. Anthropology is concerned
explicitly and directly with all varieties of people throughout the world, not just those close at hand or within a
limited area. Anthropologists are also interested in people of all periods. Beginning with the immediate ancestors
of humans, who lived a few million years ago, anthropology traces the development of humans until the present.
Every part of the world that has ever contained a human population is of interest to anthropologists.
Traditionally, they concentrated on non-Western cultures and left the study of Western civilization and similarly
complex societies, with their recorded histories, to other disciplines. In recent years, however, this division of
labor among the disciplines has begun to disappear. Now anthropologists work in their own and other complex
societies.
What induces anthropologists to choose so broad a subject for study?
In part, they are motivated by the belief that any suggested generalization about human beings, any possible
explanation of some characteristic of human culture or biology, should be shown to apply to many times and
places of human existence. If a generalization or explanation does not prove to apply widely, anthropologists are
entitled or even obliged to be skeptical about it. The skeptical attitude, in the absence of persuasive evidence, is
our best protection against accepting invalid ideas about humans.
Conti…
Because anthropologists are acquainted with human life in an enormous variety of geographic and
historical settings, they are also often able to correct mistaken beliefs about different groups of
people.
Example:
when American educators discovered in the 1960s that African American schoolchildren rarely
drank milk, they assumed that lack of money or education was the cause. But evidence from
anthropology suggested a different explanation. Anthropologists had known for years that people do
not drink fresh milk in many parts of the world where milking animals are kept; rather, they sour it
before they drink it, or they make it into cheese. Why they do so is now clear. Many people lack the
enzyme lactase that is necessary for breaking down lactose, the sugar in milk. When such people
drink regular milk, it actually interferes with digestion. Not only is the lactose in milk not digested,
but other nutrients are less likely to be digested as well. In many cases, drinking milk will cause
cramps, stomach gas, diarrhea, and nausea. Studies indicate that milk intolerance is found in many
parts of the world. The condition is common in adulthood among Asians, southern Europeans, Arabs
and Jews, West Africans, Inuit (Eskimos), and North and South American native peoples, as well as
African Americans.
The Holistic Approach:
Anthropology has a distinguishing feature of having a HOLISTIC approach to study the human
beings.
Anthropologists study the many aspects of human experience as an integrated whole. For example,
an anthropologist’s description of a group of people is likely to encompass their physical
environment, a history of the area, how their family life is organized, general features of their
language, their settlement patterns, their political and economic systems, their religion, and their
styles of art and dress. The goal is not only to understand these aspects of physical and social life
separately but to glean connections among them. Holism separates anthropology from other
academic disciplines, which generally focus on one factor—biology, psychology, physiology, or
society—as the explanation for human behavior. In anthropology, Holism is an
approach that considers culture, history, language, and biology essential to a complete
understanding of human society. Anthropologists maintain that culture, social organization, history,
and human biology are tightly interrelated.
Definition:
Holistic
“Refers to an approach that studies many aspects of a multifaceted system.”
According to Conard Kottak,
“Holistic is an approach which Encompassing past, present, and future; biology, society, language,
and culture.”
Anthropology’s Distinctive Curiosity:

Earlier we had described the scope of Anthropology, both historically and geographically. It is more
holistic in approach than other disciplines concerned with human beings.
Anthropology is all-inclusive Human science.
This subjects distinctiveness lies principally in the kind of curiosity it arouse.
Anthropologists tend to focus on the typical characteristics of the human populations they study rather
than on individual variation or variation in small groups. Why do some populations have lighter skin
than others? Why do some societies practice polygamy whereas others prohibit it? Where and when
did people first start to farm rather than collecting and hunting wild resources? Anthropologists want to
know why the characteristics that others might take for granted exist. Whereas economists take a
monetary system for granted and study how it operates, anthropologists ask how frequently monetary
systems occur, why they vary, and why only some societies have had them during the last few thousand
years. It is not that anthropologists do not concern themselves with individuals. For instance, in studying
political systems, anthropologists might want to know why certain people tend to be leaders. But when
they study individual traits of leaders in order to answer the question, it may be because they want to
better understand the political process in a larger social group, such as a society. Or, anthropologists might
ask an even broader question, such as whether certain qualities of leaders are universally preferred
Because anthropologists view human groups holistically, their curiosity may lead
them to find patterns of relationships between seemingly unrelated characteristics. So,
for example, the presence of the ability to digest lactose (a physical trait) in a
population seems to be found in societies that depend heavily on dairying. In recent
times, as more anthropologists work in larger and more complex societies, the focus
of inquiry has shifted from looking at a whole society to smaller entities such as
neighborhoods, communities, organizations, or social networks. But the focus on the
whole entity is still strong.
Fields of Anthropology:
There are four subfields of Anthropology. It is included Biological or Physical Anthropology, Cultural
Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, Archaeological Anthropology.
Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember has divided the Anthropology in Two major Fields of Biological
(Physical) Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology. Further they divided Cultural Anthropology into
three subfields, Archaeology, Linguistic and Ethnology. They also said that beside these four fields
Anthropology also has a fifth field and which is Applied or Practicing Anthropology.

According to Conrad Kottak, academic discipline of Anthropology is known as General Anthropology

or “four field” Anthropology. Which includes Sociocultural, Biological, Archaeological, and Linguistic
Anthropology.
In this section we will briefly discuss the above mentioned four subfields/ branches of Anthropology.
Conrad Kottak clearly mentioned the historical reasons of inclusion of four subfields in single
discipline. The origin of Anthropology and American Anthropology in Particular can be traced back to
the 19th century. Early American Anthropologists were concerned especially with the history and culture
of the native peoples of North America. Interest in the origins and diversity of native Americans brought
together studies of Customs, social life, language, and physical traits. Another reason for anthropology’s
inclusion of four subfields was an interest in the relation between biology (e.g., “race”) and culture.

General anthropology explores the basics of human biology, society, and culture and considers their
interrelations. Anthropologists share certain key assumptions. Perhaps the most fundamental is the idea
that sound conclusions about “human nature” cannot be derived from
studying a single nation, society, or cultural tradition. A comparative, cross-cultural approach
is essential.
Cultural Anthropology:
Conrad Kottak in his book “Anthropology: Appreciating Human Diversity” clearly write, Cultural Anthropology is
the comparative, cross-cultural, study of human society and culture. It is a subfield that describes, analyzes, interprets,
and explains social and cultural similarities and differences.
Serena Nanda and Richard L. Warms define the cultural anthropology is the study of human thought, behavior, and
lifeways that are learned rather than genetically transmitted and that are typical of groups of people.
Cultural Anthropology is the study of human society and culture. a society is a group of people who depend upon one
another for survival or well-being. Anthropologists also understand society as a set
of social relationships among people—their statuses and roles. Societies are often thought of as occupying specific
geographic locations.
Culture is the way members of a society adapt to their environment and give meaning to their lives. It includes behavior
and ideas that are learned rather than genetically transmitted as well as the material objects a group of people produces.
Cultural anthropologists attempt to understand culture through the study of its origins, development, and diversity. Just
as societies have become global, cultures too are increasingly globalized. Cultures have always borrowed traits and
practices from one another. However, today, travel and electronic communication mean that styles, customs, and
practices of one part of the world can rapidly appear in other places.
Cultural Anthropologist are always engage in two kinds of activities to understand the customs, behavior, lifeways,
beliefs through Ethnography (based on field work) and Ethnology (based on cross cultural comparison).
Ethnography:
Ethnography is the description of society or culture. An ethnographer attempts to depict an entire society
or a particular set of cultural institutions or practices.
Ethnography provides an account of a particular community, society, or culture. During ethnographic field
work, ethnographer gathers data that he or she organizes, describes, analyzes, and interprets to build and
present that account, which may be in the form of a book, article, or film. Traditionally, ethnographers have
lived in small communities and studied local behavior, beliefs, customs, social life, economic activities,
politics, and religion.
Serena Nanda in her book “ Anthropology” said that Ethnography is a major research tool in cultural
anthropology; includes both fieldwork among people in a society and the written results of such fieldwork.
Ethnographies may be either emic or etic, or they may combine the two. An emic ethnography attempts to
capture what ideas and practices mean to members of a culture. It attempts to give readers a sense of what
it feels like to be a member of the culture it describes. An etic ethnography describes and analyzes culture
according to principles and theories drawn from Western scientific tradition, such as ecology, economy, or
psychology.
Ethnology:
It is the attempt to find general principles or laws that govern cultural phenomena. Ethnologists compare and
contrast practices in different cultures to find regularities. Conrad Kottak said that Ethnology examines,
interprets, analyzes, and compares the results of ethnography—the data gathered in different societies. It uses
such data to compare and contrast and to make generalizations about society and culture. Looking beyond the
particular to the more general, ethnologists attempt to identify and explain cultural differences and similarities,
to test hypotheses, and to build theory to enhance our understanding of how social and cultural systems work.
Although most cultural anthropologists focus on current-day cultures, studying the ways in which societies
change demands a knowledge of their past. As a result, many cultural anthropologists are drawn to historical
ethnography: description of the cultural past based on written records, interviews, and archaeology.

Two Dimensions of Cultural Anthropology

Ethnography Ethnology
Requires field work to collect data Uses data usually collected by a series oof
researcher
Often descriptive Usually synthetic
Group/ Community Specific Comparative/ Cross cultural
Biological /Physical Anthropology:
Conrad Kottak in his book “Anthropology: Appreciating Human Diversity” write down that “biological
Anthropology is the study of human biological variation in time and space.”
Carol. R. Ember and Melvin Ember said that “Biological Anthropology is the study of humans as biological
organisms, dealing with the emergence and evolution of humans and with contemporary biological variations among
human populations.”
Serena Nanda and Richard L. Warms give the definition of Physical Anthropology in their Book “Culture
Counts.”
According to them “ Physical/ Biological Anthropology is the subdiscipline of anthropology that studies people from a
biological perspective, focusing primarily on aspects of humankind that are genetically
inherited.”
Anthropologists in this subdiscipline study humans as physical and biological entities. Understanding human biology
is critical to anthropology because all human culture rests on a biological base. For example, we have highly accurate
depth perception, hands with opposable thumbs, and the ability to manipulate objects with great precision. These
features are fundamental to making tools, and without them, human culture
would be vastly different, if it existed at all. Anthropologists are engaged in an often-fierce debate about the biological
origins of specific behaviors, but no one doubts that the form of the human body and the capacities of the human mind
both shape and are shaped by culture.
We can understand biological Anthropology’s concept through two major foci. These are Human Paleontology and
Primatology. But at the same time Conrad Kottak said that The focus on biological variation
unites five special interests within biological
anthropology:
1. Human evolution as revealed by the fossil record (paleoanthropology).
2. Human genetics.
3. Human growth and development.
4. Human biological plasticity (the body’s ability to change as it copes with stresses, such as heat, cold, and
altitude).
5. The biology, evolution, behavior, and social life of monkeys, apes, and other nonhuman primates.
So we being an anthropologist can reconstruct the evolution of Human beings and other primates through
Paleontology and Primatology.
Human paleontology:
Human paleontology is a focus within biological anthropology that tries to answer this question. Human
paleontologists search for fossils to discover and reconstruct the evolutionary history of our species. They
extract biological and chemical data from ancient bones (Fossils) or from living humans to help discover the
biological histories of humanity and the relationships among different human groups. The findings of human
paleontologists often make spectacular news and lead us to rethink what it means to be human. For example,
the recent sequencing of the Neanderthal genome and subsequent discovery that Neanderthals are more
closely related to modern people than previously thought (Green et al. 2010, Callaway 2010) made news
across the world. This finding will give us additional information on the things that make human beings
unique as well as the characteristics we share with others.
Primatology:
It is a second well-known focus in biological anthropology. Humans are primates, and other primates, such
as apes, Old World and New World monkeys, and prosimians, are biologically very close to us. We
share about 98 percent of our genes with our closest ape relations. Studying these relatives may give us
important insights into the behavior of our evolutionary ancestors. It is useful to keep in mind that although
the 2 percent genetic difference between us and our nearest ape relations sounds like a small amount, it is
clearly extraordinarily important. In some critical way, that 2 percent makes us who we are. We learn more
about what it means to be not an ape, but to be human, by studying our nonhuman relations.
From primate studies, biological anthropologists try to discover characteristics that are distinctly human, as
opposed to those that might be part of the primate heritage. With this information, they may be able to infer
what our prehistoric ancestors were like.

CONTI……..
The inferences from primate studies are checked against the fossil record. The evidence from the earth, collected in bits
and pieces, is correlated with scientific observations of our closest living relatives. In short, biological anthropologists
piece together bits of information obtained from different sources. They construct theories that explain the changes
observed in the fossil record and then attempt to evaluate their theories by checking one kind of evidence against
another. Human paleontology thus overlaps such disciplines as geology, general vertebrate (particularly primate)
paleontology, comparative anatomy, and the study of comparative primate behavior.
Archaeological Anthropology:
Archaeology is the study of past cultures, primarily through their material remains. Archaeologists seek not only to
reconstruct the daily life and customs of peoples who lived in the past but also to trace cultural changes and to
offer possible explanations for those changes. While their subject matter is similar to that of historians,
archaeologists reach much farther back in time. Historians deal only with societies that left written records, which
limits their scope to the last 5,000 years of human history and to the small proportion of societies that developed
writing. Human societies have existed for more than a million years, however, and archaeologists serve as
historians for all those past societies that lacked a written record. With scant or no written records to study,
archaeologists must try to reconstruct history from the remains of human cultures. Some of these remains are as
grand as the Mayan temples discovered at Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, Mexico. More often, what remains is as
ordinary as bits of broken pottery, stone tools, and garbage heaps. Most archaeologists deal with prehistory, the
time before written records. But a specialty within archaeology, called historical archaeology, studies the remains
of recent peoples who left written records. This specialty, as its name implies, employs the methods of both
archaeologists and historians to study recent societies. To understand how and why ways of life have changed
through time in different parts of the world, archaeologists collect materials from sites of human occupation.
Usually, these sites must be unearthed. On the basis of materials they have excavated and otherwise collected, they
then ask a variety of questions: Where, when, and why did the distinctive human characteristic of toolmaking first
emerge? Where, when, and why did agriculture first develop? Where, when, and why did people first begin to live
in cities?
To collect the data they need to suggest answers to these and other questions, archaeologists use
techniques and findings borrowed from other disciplines, as well as what they can infer from
anthropological studies of recent and contemporary cultures. For example, to guess where to dig for
evidence of early toolmaking, archaeologists rely on geology to tell them where sites of early human
occupation are likely to be found, because of erosion and uplifting, near the surface of the earth. More
recently, archaeologists have
employed aerial photography and even radar imaging via satellite (a technique developed by NASA) to
pinpoint sites. To infer when agriculture first developed, archaeologists date the relevant excavated
materials by a process originally developed by chemical scientists. Information from the present and
recent past can also help illuminate the distant past. For example, to try to understand why cities first
emerged, archaeologists may use information from historians, geographers, and political scientists about
how recent and contemporary cities are related economically and politically to their hinterlands. By
discovering what recent and contemporary cities have in common, archaeologists can speculate about
why cities developed originally.
Linguistic Anthropology:
According to Conrad Kottak, “ Linguistic Anthropology studies language in its social and cultural context,
across space and over time.”
When we talk about language We don’t know (and probably never will) when our
ancestors acquired the ability to speak, although biological anthropologists have looked to the anatomy of
the face and the skull to speculate about the origin of language. And primatologists have described the
communication systems of monkeys and apes. We do know that well developed, grammatically complex
languages have existed for thousands of years. Linguistic anthropology offers further illustration of
anthropology’s interest in comparison, variation, and change.
Some linguistic anthropologists make inferences about universal features of language,
linked perhaps to uniformities in the human brain. Others reconstruct ancient languages by comparing their
contemporary descendants and in so doing make discoveries about history. Still others study linguistic
differences to discover varied perceptions and patterns of thought in different cultures.

Historical linguistics considers variation in time, such as the changes in sounds, grammar, and
vocabulary between Middle English (spoken from approximately a.d. 1050 to 1550) and modern English.
Sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation. No language is a
homogeneous system in which everyone speaks just like everyone else. How do different speakers use a
given language? How do linguistic features correlate with social factors, including class and gender
differences (Tannen 1990)?
One reason for variation is geography, as in regional dialects and accents. Linguistic variation also is
expressed in the bilingualism of ethnic groups. Linguistic and cultural anthropologists collaborate in studying
links between language and many other aspects of culture, such as how people reckon kinship and how they
perceive and classify colors.

References:
1. Anthropology: Appreciating human Diversity by Konrad Phillip Kottak.
2. Anthropology (14th edition) by Carol R. Ember, Melvin Ember and Peter N. Peregrine.
3. Culture Counts: A concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (2 nd Edition) by Serena Nanda and
Richard L. Warms