Anthropology the humanistic science Are you as interested as I am in knowing how when and where human life arose what the first human societies and languages were like why cultures have evolved along diverse but often remarkably convergent pathways why distinctions of rank came into being and how small bands and villages gave way to chiefdoms and chiefdoms to mighty states and empires Marvin Harris Our Kind The four fields of anthropology Anthropology is the science of humanity all of humanity in all its complexity There are four field of anthropology Cultural Anthropology Archeology Linguistic Anthropology Biological Anthropology Cultural anthropology Cultural anthropologists study the variation in thought and behavior among people of contemporary societies Archeology Archeologists also study the variation in human thought and behavior but focus on past societies Archeology however adds more than the dimension of time to the study of human cultural variation It adds an enormous number of societies to the database of experiments that humans have conducted in social living Archeology Classical archeologists focus on the reconstruction of ancient literate civilizations They get their training in departments of classics The majority of archeologists in the U S however those who study ancient preliterate civilizations get their training in departments of anthropology Linguistic anthropology Linguistic anthropologists study the variation in human languages the roots of human languages and the role of language in shaping human thought and behavior Biological anthropology Biological or physical anthropologists are biologists who study humans as organisms Biological anthropologists show us how the capacity for culture itself has evolved and how that capacity in turn has influenced our biological evolution Applied anthropology Applied anthropology is the application of anthropological knowledge to the solution of human problems Many anthropologists work in applications that is trying to solve human problems Applied anthropology Delivering better health care producing better crops teaching literacy more effectively these and other development programs across the world are enhanced by anthropological knowledge of local cultural patterns Applied anthropology All four fields of anthropology have a basic science and an applied science dimension Forensics anthropology is applied biological anthropology CRM or cultural resource management is applied archeology Bilingual education makes use of applied linguistic anthropology Medical anthropology Medical anthropology for example is based on both cultural and biological anthropology Studies of health systems and studies of the cultural correlates of disease Some anthropological questions I Biological anthropology What is the relation between modern apes and humans Who are the oldest humans and where did they develop What happened to the Neanderthals Are we still evolving What accounts for the different color of people s skin around the world Are gendered behaviors genetic Some anthropological questions II Archeology When were plants and animals domesticated When did the earliest states arise and how did complex societies evolve at all When did the first people come to America Why did complex states develop so much later in the Americas in Europe and in Africa than in China or the Middle East Some anthropological questions III Linguistics Are all human languages of equal complexity Are some languages harder to learn than others How did language originate Are all the languages of the world related to one another Why is it so hard to speak a foreign language without an accent Does language shape thought or vice versa Some anthropological questions IV Cultural and biocultural anthropology Is violence and war inevitable in human society Why do people have different cultures Why is there economic and social inequality Is it part of being human What accounts for differences in IQ scores around the world Are there innate behavioral and cognitive differences in men and women Why anthropology Partly to satisfy our curiosity about the range of variation in human thought and behavior This is a motivating force in all sciences Partly to shake the foundations of ethno centrism and to create a respect for cultural diversity And partly to help ameliorate human problems Methods There are three levels of method epistemology strategy and technique At the epistemological level there are two fundamentally different approaches in the social sciences One approach is rooted in the scientific or positivist tradition the other is rooted in the interpretive or humanistic tradition K10 19 More about these traditions later Humanism and science The methods of humanistically oriented anthropology are the same as those used in all the humanities particularly those used in the comparative study of literature and in history K10 19 The methods of scientifically oriented anthropology are the same as those used in comparative sociology and psychology K10 20 23 Strategic methods vs technique In the social and behavioral sciences the scientific tradition in cultural anthropology has in the past represented the larger tradition of natural science Psychology has in the past represented the larger tradition of experimental science Sociologists have combined these two traditions in survey research K10 327 In other words the strategic methods have been historically associated with particular social and behavioral sciences experiments with psychology questionnaire surveys with sociology participant observation with anthropology Each strategic method comprises many techniques Methodological convergence in the social sciences Today the dominant tradition in cultural anthropology is interpretivism the search for meaning rather than the search for cause K10 330 And the social and behavioral sciences are becoming less identified by their methods of data collection and analysis and more by the theoretical and practical problems they address Participant observation Most people are familiar with the method of questionnaire surveys and with the method of experiments including the idea of controls and placebos Most people are not familiar with participant observation but this method has become part of the general social science toolkit in the last 30 years K10 324 326 Participant observation Participant observation involves immersion in another culture including the learning of another culture s