ANT2000What is anthropology?ANT2000- What is anthropology?o The study of humankind in all times and placeso 4 subdisciplines Cultural Linguistic Archaeology Physical Can cross between different disciplines and researches andmethodologyo Anthropology draws on many different disciplines Medicine History Art Economics Biology Poly Science Genetics Sociologyo The anthropological perspectives Holistic- Example: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spillo What were the different historical, cultural, economic, and political factors that led to the spill?o How were the effects of the spill variously experienced and interpreted by the people of different races, ethnicities, and economic statuses? Comparative- Example: Work Timeo Cross-culturally, do people work the same amount of time?o Are Western societies privileged by more free-time?o Who works more, women or men?o What are the effects of different types of work conditions? Relativistic- Example: China’s Reproductive Policyo Relativistically, one must consider China’s needto regulate population and evaluate the policy’s impact on various segments of Chinesesocietyo Morally (at least from Western perspective), it is considered flat wrong by manyo Anthropology is about Everything Human The study of Human Variation What kind of variation?- Biological- Social- Cultural When, where?- Through all time and spaceo Biological Variation Our 6-million year past includes at least 3 genera and many species of humans(hominims) Today we are all one (sub)species-Homo sapiens sapiens-but biologically variable- We can understand this variation as adaptations to environment, as physiological plasticity, and as resultof interplay between culture and biologyo Social Variation2 Societies ranging from small bands of mobile foragers to populous nation states and beyond Variation can be understood alternatively as- Evolutionary stages- Ecological adaptations- Histories of connections among societieso Cultural Variation If we consider culture to be symbol-based learned behavior, then we can understand how it is free to vary somewhat from biology and and society We’ll see how things often considered to be biologically determined (gender, kinship) are cultural and thus extremely
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