Anthropology is the scientific study of humans
and human behavior and societies in the past
and present.
Social anthropology and cultural anthropology
study the norms and values of societies.
Linguistic anthropology studies how language
affects social life.
Biological or physical anthropology studies
the biological development of humans.
Archaeology, which studies past human cultures
through investigation of physical evidence,
is thought of as a branch of anthropology
in the United States and Canada, while in
Europe, it is viewed as a discipline in its
own right or grouped under other related disciplines,
such as history.
== Origin and development of the term ==
The abstract noun anthropology is first attested
in reference to history.
Its present use first appeared in Renaissance
Germany in the works of Magnus Hundt and Otto
Casmann.
Their New Latin anthropologia derived from
the combining forms of the Greek words ánthrōpos
(ἄνθρωπος, "human") and lógos (λόγος,
"study").
(Its adjectival form appeared in the works
of Aristotle.)
It began to be used in English, possibly via
French Anthropologie, by the early 18th century.
=== Through the 19th century ===
In 1647, the Bartholins, founders of the University
of Copenhagen, defined l'anthropologie as
follows:
Anthropology, that is to say the science that
treats of man, is divided ordinarily and with
reason into Anatomy, which considers the body
and the parts, and Psychology, which speaks
of the soul.
Sporadic use of the term for some of the subject
matter occurred subsequently, such as the
use by Étienne Serres in 1839 to describe
the natural history, or paleontology, of man,
based on comparative anatomy, and the creation
of a chair in anthropology and ethnography
in 1850 at the National Museum of Natural
History (France) by Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages
de Bréau.
Various short-lived organizations of anthropologists
had already been formed.
The Société Ethnologique de Paris, the first
to use Ethnology, was formed in 1839.
Its members were primarily anti-slavery activists.
When slavery was abolished in France in 1848
the Société was abandoned.
Meanwhile, the Ethnological Society of New
York, currently the American Ethnological
Society, was founded on its model in 1842,
as well as the Ethnological Society of London
in 1843, a break-away group of the Aborigines'
Protection Society.
These anthropologists of the times were liberal,
anti-slavery, and pro-human-rights activists.
They maintained international connections.
Anthropology and many other current fields
are the intellectual results of the comparative
methods developed in the earlier 19th century.
Theorists in such diverse fields as anatomy,
linguistics, and Ethnology, making feature-by-feature
comparisons of their subject matters, were
beginning to suspect that similarities between
animals, languages, and folkways were the
result of processes or laws unknown to them
then.
For them, the publication of Charles Darwin's
On the Origin of Species was the epiphany
of everything they had begun to suspect.
Darwin himself arrived at his conclusions
through comparison of species he had seen
in agronomy and in the wild.
Darwin and Wallace unveiled evolution in the
late 1850s.
There was an immediate rush to bring it into
the social sciences.
Paul Broca in Paris was in the process of
breaking away from the Société de biologie
to form the first of the explicitly anthropological
societies, the Société d'Anthropologie de
Paris, meeting for the first time in Paris
in 1859.
When he read Darwin, he became an immediate
convert to Transformisme, as the French called
evolutionism.
His definition now became "the study of the
human group, considered as a whole, in its
details, and in relation to the rest of nature".Broca,
being what today would be called a neurosurgeon,
had taken an interest in the pathology of
speech.
He wanted to localize the difference between
man and the other animals, which appeared
to reside in speech.
He discovered the speech center of the human
brain, today called Broca's area after him.
His interest was mainly in Biological anthropology,
but a German philosopher specializing in psychology,
Theodor Waitz, took up the theme of general
and social anthropology in his six-volume
work, entitled Die Anthropologie der Naturvölker,
1859–1864.
The title was soon translated as "The Anthropology
of Primitive Peoples".
The last two volumes were published posthumously.
Waitz defined anthropology as "the science
of the nature of man".
By nature he meant matter animated by "the
Divine breath"; i.e., he was an animist.
Following Broca's lead, Waitz points out that
anthropology is a new field, which would gather
material from other fields, but would differ
from them in the use of comparative anatomy,
physiology, and psychology to differentiate
man from "the animals nearest to him".
He stresses that the data of comparison must
be empirical, gathered by experimentation.
The history of civilization, as well as ethnology,
are to be brought into the comparison.
It is to be presumed fundamentally that the
species, man, is a unity, and that "the same
laws of thought are applicable to all men".Waitz
was influential among the British ethnologists.
In 1863 the explorer Richard Francis Burton
and the speech therapist James Hunt broke
away from the Ethnological Society of London
to form the Anthropological Society of London,
which henceforward would follow the path of
the new anthropology rather than just ethnology.
It was the 2nd society dedicated to general
anthropology in existence.
Representatives from the French Société
were present, though not Broca.
In his keynote address, printed in the first
volume of its new publication, The Anthropological
Review, Hunt stressed the work of Waitz, adopting
his definitions as a standard.
Among the first associates were the young
Edward Burnett Tylor, inventor of cultural
anthropology, and his brother Alfred Tylor,
a geologist.
Previously Edward had referred to himself
as an ethnologist; subsequently, an anthropologist.
Similar organizations in other countries followed:
The Anthropological Society of Madrid (1865),
the American Anthropological Association in
1902, the Anthropological Society of Vienna
(1870), the Italian Society of Anthropology
and Ethnology (1871), and many others subsequently.
The majority of these were evolutionist.
One notable exception was the Berlin Society
for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory
(1869) founded by Rudolph Virchow, known for
his vituperative attacks on the evolutionists.
Not religious himself, he insisted that Darwin's
conclusions lacked empirical foundation.
During the last three decades of the 19th
century, a proliferation of anthropological
societies and associations occurred, most
independent, most publishing their own journals,
and all international in membership and association.
The major theorists belonged to these organizations.
They supported the gradual osmosis of anthropology
curricula into the major institutions of higher
learning.
By 1898 the American Association for the Advancement
of Science was able to report that 48 educational
institutions in 13 countries had some curriculum
in anthropology.
None of the 75 faculty members were under
a department named anthropology.
=== 20th and 21st centuries ===
This meager statistic expanded in the 20th
century to comprise anthropology departments
in the majority of the world's higher educational
institutions, many thousands in number.
Anthropology has diversified from a few major
subdivisions to dozens more.
Practical anthropology, the use of anthropological
knowledge and technique to solve specific
problems, has arrived; for example, the presence
of buried victims might stimulate the use
of a forensic archaeologist to recreate the
final scene.
The organization has reached global level.
For example, the World Council of Anthropological
Associations (WCAA), "a network of national,
regional and international associations that
aims to promote worldwide communication and
cooperation in anthropology", currently contains
members from about three dozen nations.Since
the work of Franz Boas and Bronisław Malinowski
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
social anthropology in Great Britain and cultural
anthropology in the US have been distinguished
from other social sciences by its emphasis
on cross-cultural comparisons, long-term in-depth
examination of context, and the importance
it places on participant-observation or experiential
immersion in the area of research.
Cultural anthropology, in particular, has
emphasized cultural relativism, holism, and
the use of findings to frame cultural critiques.
This has been particularly prominent in the
United States, from Boas' arguments against
19th-century racial ideology, through Margaret
Mead's advocacy for gender equality and sexual
liberation, to current criticisms of post-colonial
oppression and promotion of multiculturalism.
Ethnography is one of its primary research
designs as well as the text that is generated
from anthropological fieldwork.In Great Britain
and the Commonwealth countries, the British
tradition of social anthropology tends to
dominate.
In the United States, anthropology has traditionally
been divided into the four field approach
developed by Franz Boas in the early 20th
century: biological or physical anthropology;
social, cultural, or sociocultural anthropology;
and archaeology; plus anthropological linguistics.
These fields frequently overlap but tend to
use different methodologies and techniques.
European countries with overseas colonies
tended to practice more ethnology (a term
coined and defined by Adam F. Kollár in 1783).
It is sometimes referred to as sociocultural
anthropology in the parts of the world that
were influenced by the European tradition.
== Fields ==
Anthropology is a global discipline involving
humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.
Anthropology builds upon knowledge from natural
sciences, including the discoveries about
the origin and evolution of Homo sapiens,
human physical traits, human behavior, the
variations among different groups of humans,
how the evolutionary past of Homo sapiens
has influenced its social organization and
culture, and from social sciences, including
the organization of human social and cultural
relations, institutions, social conflicts,
etc.
Early anthropology originated in Classical
Greece and Persia and studied and tried to
understand observable cultural diversity.
As such, anthropology has been central in
the development of several new (late 20th
century) interdisciplinary fields such as
cognitive science, global studies, and various
ethnic studies.
According to Clifford Geertz,
"anthropology is perhaps the last of the great
nineteenth-century conglomerate disciplines
still for the most part organizationally intact.
Long after natural history, moral philosophy,
philology, and political economy have dissolved
into their specialized successors, it has
remained a diffuse assemblage of ethnology,
human biology, comparative linguistics, and
prehistory, held together mainly by the vested
interests, sunk costs, and administrative
habits of academia, and by a romantic image
of comprehensive scholarship."
Sociocultural anthropology has been heavily
influenced by structuralist and postmodern
theories, as well as a shift toward the analysis
of modern societies.
During the 1970s and 1990s, there was an epistemological
shift away from the positivist traditions
that had largely informed the discipline.
During this shift, enduring questions about
the nature and production of knowledge came
to occupy a central place in cultural and
social anthropology.
In contrast, archaeology and biological anthropology
remained largely positivist.
Due to this difference in epistemology, the
four sub-fields of anthropology have lacked
cohesion over the last several decades.
=== Sociocultural ===
Sociocultural anthropology draws together
the principle axes of cultural anthropology
and social anthropology.
Cultural anthropology is the comparative study
of the manifold ways in which people make
sense of the world around them, while social
anthropology is the study of the relationships
among individuals and groups.
Cultural anthropology is more related to philosophy,
literature and the arts (how one's culture
affects the experience for self and group,
contributing to a more complete understanding
of the people's knowledge, customs, and institutions),
while social anthropology is more related
to sociology and history.
In that, it helps develop an understanding
of social structures, typically of others
and other populations (such as minorities,
subgroups, dissidents, etc.).
There is no hard-and-fast distinction between
them, and these categories overlap to a considerable
degree.
Inquiry in sociocultural anthropology is guided
in part by cultural relativism, the attempt
to understand other societies in terms of
their own cultural symbols and values.
Accepting other cultures in their own terms
moderates reductionism in cross-cultural comparison.
This project is often accommodated in the
field of ethnography.
Ethnography can refer to both a methodology
and the product of ethnographic research,
i.e. an ethnographic monograph.
As a methodology, ethnography is based upon
long-term fieldwork within a community or
other research site.
Participant observation is one of the foundational
methods of social and cultural anthropology.
Ethnology involves the systematic comparison
of different cultures.
The process of participant-observation can
be especially helpful to understanding a culture
from an emic (conceptual, vs. etic, or technical)
point of view.
The study of kinship and social organization
is a central focus of sociocultural anthropology,
as kinship is a human universal.
Sociocultural anthropology also covers economic
and political organization, law and conflict
resolution, patterns of consumption and exchange,
material culture, technology, infrastructure,
gender relations, ethnicity, childrearing
and socialization, religion, myth, symbols,
values, etiquette, worldview, sports, music,
nutrition, recreation, games, food, festivals,
and language (which is also the object of
study in linguistic anthropology).
Comparison across cultures is a key element
of method in sociocultural anthropology, including
the industrialized (and de-industrialized)
West.
Cultures in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample
(SCCS) of world societies are:
=== Biological ===
Biological anthropology and physical anthropology
are synonymous terms to describe anthropological
research focused on the study of humans and
non-human primates in their biological, evolutionary,
and demographic dimensions.
It examines the biological and social factors
that have affected the evolution of humans
and other primates, and that generate, maintain
or change contemporary genetic and physiological
variation.
=== Archaeological ===
Archaeology is the study of the human past
through its material remains.
Artifacts, faunal remains, and human altered
landscapes are evidence of the cultural and
material lives of past societies.
Archaeologists examine this material remains
in order to deduce patterns of past human
behavior and cultural practices.
Ethnoarchaeology is a type of archaeology
that studies the practices and material remain
of living human groups in order to gain a
better understanding of the evidence left
behind by past human groups, who are presumed
to have lived in similar ways.
=== Linguistic ===
Linguistic anthropology (not to be confused
with anthropological linguistics) seeks to
understand the processes of human communications,
verbal and non-verbal, variation in language
across time and space, the social uses of
language, and the relationship between language
and culture.
It is the branch of anthropology that brings
linguistic methods to bear on anthropological
problems, linking the analysis of linguistic
forms and processes to the interpretation
of sociocultural processes.
Linguistic anthropologists often draw on related
fields including sociolinguistics, pragmatics,
cognitive linguistics, semiotics, discourse
analysis, and narrative analysis.
== Key topics by field: sociocultural ==
=== Art, media, music, dance and film ===
==== Art ====
One of the central problems in the anthropology
of art concerns the universality of 'art'
as a cultural phenomenon.
Several anthropologists have noted that the
Western categories of 'painting', 'sculpture',
or 'literature', conceived as independent
artistic activities, do not exist, or exist
in a significantly different form, in most
non-Western contexts.
To surmount this difficulty, anthropologists
of art have focused on formal features in
objects which, without exclusively being 'artistic',
have certain evident 'aesthetic' qualities.
Boas' Primitive Art, Claude Lévi-Strauss'
The Way of the Masks (1982) or Geertz's 'Art
as Cultural System' (1983) are some examples
in this trend to transform the anthropology
of 'art' into an anthropology of culturally
specific 'aesthetics'.
==== Media ====
Media anthropology (also known as the anthropology
of media or mass media) emphasizes ethnographic
studies as a means of understanding producers,
audiences, and other cultural and social aspects
of mass media.
The types of ethnographic contexts explored
range from contexts of media production (e.g.,
ethnographies of newsrooms in newspapers,
journalists in the field, film production)
to contexts of media reception, following
audiences in their everyday responses to media.
Other types include cyber anthropology, a
relatively new area of internet research,
as well as ethnographies of other areas of
research which happen to involve media, such
as development work, social movements, or
health education.
This is in addition to many classic ethnographic
contexts, where media such as radio, the press,
new media, and television have started to
make their presences felt since the early
1990s.
==== Music ====
Ethnomusicology is an academic field encompassing
various approaches to the study of music (broadly
defined), that emphasize its cultural, social,
material, cognitive, biological, and other
dimensions or contexts instead of or in addition
to its isolated sound component or any particular
repertoire.
==== Visual ====
Visual anthropology is concerned, in part,
with the study and production of ethnographic
photography, film and, since the mid-1990s,
new media.
While the term is sometimes used interchangeably
with ethnographic film, visual anthropology
also encompasses the anthropological study
of visual representation, including areas
such as performance, museums, art, and the
production and reception of mass media.
Visual representations from all cultures,
such as sandpaintings, tattoos, sculptures
and reliefs, cave paintings, scrimshaw, jewelry,
hieroglyphics, paintings, and photographs
are included in the focus of visual anthropology.
=== Economic, political economic, applied
and development ===
==== 
Economic ====
Economic anthropology attempts to explain
human economic behavior in its widest historic,
geographic and cultural scope.
It has a complex relationship with the discipline
of economics, of which it is highly critical.
Its origins as a sub-field of anthropology
begin with the Polish-British founder of anthropology,
Bronisław Malinowski, and his French compatriot,
Marcel Mauss, on the nature of gift-giving
exchange (or reciprocity) as an alternative
to market exchange.
Economic Anthropology remains, for the most
part, focused upon exchange.
The school of thought derived from Marx and
known as Political Economy focuses on production,
in contrast.
Economic anthropologists have abandoned the
primitivist niche they were relegated to by
economists, and have now turned to examine
corporations, banks, and the global financial
system from an anthropological perspective.
==== Political economy ====
Political economy in anthropology is the application
of the theories and methods of Historical
Materialism to the traditional concerns of
anthropology, including, but not limited to,
non-capitalist societies.
Political economy introduced questions of
history and colonialism to ahistorical anthropological
theories of social structure and culture.
Three main areas of interest rapidly developed.
The first of these areas was concerned with
the "pre-capitalist" societies that were subject
to evolutionary "tribal" stereotypes.
Sahlin's work on hunter-gatherers as the "original
affluent society" did much to dissipate that
image.
The second area was concerned with the vast
majority of the world's population at the
time, the peasantry, many of whom were involved
in complex revolutionary wars such as in Vietnam.
The third area was on colonialism, imperialism,
and the creation of the capitalist world-system.
More recently, these political economists
have more directly addressed issues of industrial
(and post-industrial) capitalism around the
world.
==== Applied ====
Applied anthropology refers to the application
of the method and theory of anthropology to
the analysis and solution of practical problems.
It is a "complex of related, research-based,
instrumental methods which produce change
or stability in specific cultural systems
through the provision of data, initiation
of direct action, and/or the formulation of
policy".
More simply, applied anthropology is the practical
side of anthropological research; it includes
researcher involvement and activism within
the participating community.
It is closely related to development anthropology
(distinct from the more critical anthropology
of development).
==== Development ====
Anthropology of development tends to view
development from a critical perspective.
The kind of issues addressed and implications
for the approach simply involve pondering
why, if a key development goal is to alleviate
poverty, is poverty increasing?
Why is there such a gap between plans and
outcomes?
Why are those working in development so willing
to disregard history and the lessons it might
offer?
Why is development so externally driven rather
than having an internal basis?
In short, why does so much planned development
fail?
=== Kinship, feminism, gender and sexuality
===
==== 
Kinship ====
Kinship can refer both to the study of the
patterns of social relationships in one or
more human cultures, or it can refer to the
patterns of social relationships themselves.
Over its history, anthropology has developed
a number of related concepts and terms, such
as "descent", "descent groups", "lineages",
"affines", "cognates", and even "fictive kinship".
Broadly, kinship patterns may be considered
to include people related both by descent
(one's social relations during development),
and also relatives by marriage.
==== Feminist ====
Feminist anthropology is a four field approach
to anthropology (archeological, biological,
cultural, linguistic) that seeks to reduce
male bias in research findings, anthropological
hiring practices, and the scholarly production
of knowledge.
Anthropology engages often with feminists
from non-Western traditions, whose perspectives
and experiences can differ from those of white
European and American feminists.
Historically, such 'peripheral' perspectives
have sometimes been marginalized and regarded
as less valid or important than knowledge
from the western world.
Feminist anthropologists have claimed that
their research helps to correct this systematic
bias in mainstream feminist theory.
Feminist anthropologists are centrally concerned
with the construction of gender across societies.
Feminist anthropology is inclusive of birth
anthropology as a specialization.
The first African-American female anthropologist
and Caribbeanist is said to be Vera Mae Green
who studied ethnic and family relations in
the Caribbean as well as the United States,
and thereby tried to improve the way black
life, experiences, and culture were studied.
=== Medical, nutritional, psychological, cognitive
and transpersonal ===
==== 
Medical ====
Medical anthropology is an interdisciplinary
field which studies "human health and disease,
health care systems, and biocultural adaptation".
It is believed that William Caudell was the
first to discover the field of medical anthropology.
Currently, research in medical anthropology
is one of the main growth areas in the field
of anthropology as a whole.
It focuses on the following six basic fields:
the development of systems of medical knowledge
and medical care
the patient-physician relationship
the integration of alternative medical systems
in culturally diverse environments
the interaction of social, environmental and
biological factors which influence health
and illness both in the individual and the
community as a whole
the critical analysis of interaction between
psychiatric services and migrant populations
("critical ethnopsychiatry": Beneduce 2004,
2007)
the impact of biomedicine and biomedical technologies
in non-Western settings
Other subjects that have become central to
medical anthropology worldwide are violence
and social suffering (Farmer, 1999, 2003;
Beneduce, 2010) as well as other issues that
involve physical and psychological harm and
suffering that are not a result of illness.
On the other hand, there are fields that intersect
with medical anthropology in terms of research
methodology and theoretical production, such
as cultural psychiatry and transcultural psychiatry
or ethnopsychiatry.
==== Nutritional ====
Nutritional anthropology is a synthetic concept
that deals with the interplay between economic
systems, nutritional status and food security,
and how changes in the former affect the latter.
If economic and environmental changes in a
community affect access to food, food security,
and dietary health, then this interplay between
culture and biology is in turn connected to
broader historical and economic trends associated
with globalization.
Nutritional status affects overall health
status, work performance potential, and the
overall potential for economic development
(either in terms of human development or traditional
western models) for any given group of people.
==== Psychological ====
Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary
subfield of anthropology that studies the
interaction of cultural and mental processes.
This subfield tends to focus on ways in which
humans' development and enculturation within
a particular cultural group – with its own
history, language, practices, and conceptual
categories – shape processes of human cognition,
emotion, perception, motivation, and mental
health.
It also examines how the understanding of
cognition, emotion, motivation, and similar
psychological processes inform or constrain
our models of cultural and social processes.
==== Cognitive ====
Cognitive anthropology seeks to explain patterns
of shared knowledge, cultural innovation,
and transmission over time and space using
the methods and theories of the cognitive
sciences (especially experimental psychology
and evolutionary biology) often through close
collaboration with historians, ethnographers,
archaeologists, linguists, musicologists and
other specialists engaged in the description
and interpretation of cultural forms.
Cognitive anthropology is concerned with what
people from different groups know and how
that implicit knowledge changes the way people
perceive and relate to the world around them.
==== Transpersonal ====
Transpersonal anthropology studies the relationship
between altered states of consciousness and
culture.
As with transpersonal psychology, the field
is much concerned with altered states of consciousness
(ASC) and transpersonal experience.
However, the field differs from mainstream
transpersonal psychology in taking more cognizance
of cross-cultural issues – for instance,
the roles of myth, ritual, diet, and texts
in evoking and interpreting extraordinary
experiences.
=== Political and legal ===
==== Political ====
Political anthropology concerns the structure
of political systems, looked at from the basis
of the structure of societies.
Political anthropology developed as a discipline
concerned primarily with politics in stateless
societies, a new development started from
the 1960s, and is still unfolding: anthropologists
started increasingly to study more "complex"
social settings in which the presence of states,
bureaucracies and markets entered both ethnographic
accounts and analysis of local phenomena.
The turn towards complex societies meant that
political themes were taken up at two main
levels.
Firstly, anthropologists continued to study
political organization and political phenomena
that lay outside the state-regulated sphere
(as in patron-client relations or tribal political
organization).
Secondly, anthropologists slowly started to
develop a disciplinary concern with states
and their institutions (and on the relationship
between formal and informal political institutions).
An anthropology of the state developed, and
it is a most thriving field today.
Geertz' comparative work on "Negara", the
Balinese state, is an early, famous example.
==== Legal ====
Legal anthropology or anthropology of law
specializes in "the cross-cultural study of
social ordering".
Earlier legal anthropological research often
focused more narrowly on conflict management,
crime, sanctions, or formal regulation.
More recent applications include issues such
as human rights, legal pluralism, and political
uprisings.
==== Public ====
Public anthropology was created by Robert
Borofsky, a professor at Hawaii Pacific University,
to "demonstrate the ability of anthropology
and anthropologists to effectively address
problems beyond the discipline – illuminating
larger social issues of our times as well
as encouraging broad, public conversations
about them with the explicit goal of fostering
social change".
=== Nature, science and technology ===
==== Cyborg ====
Cyborg anthropology originated as a sub-focus
group within the American Anthropological
Association's annual meeting in 1993.
The sub-group was very closely related to
STS and the Society for the Social Studies
of Science.
Donna Haraway's 1985 Cyborg Manifesto could
be considered the founding document of cyborg
anthropology by first exploring the philosophical
and sociological ramifications of the term.
Cyborg anthropology studies humankind and
its relations with the technological systems
it has built, specifically modern technological
systems that have reflexively shaped notions
of what it means to be human beings.
==== Digital ====
Digital anthropology is the study of the relationship
between humans and digital-era technology,
and extends to various areas where anthropology
and technology intersect.
It is sometimes grouped with sociocultural
anthropology, and sometimes considered part
of material culture.
The field is new, and thus has a variety of
names with a variety of emphases.
These include techno-anthropology, digital
ethnography, cyberanthropology, and virtual
anthropology.
==== Ecological ====
Ecological anthropology is defined as the
"study of cultural adaptations to environments".
The sub-field is also defined as, "the study
of relationships between a population of humans
and their biophysical environment".
The focus of its research concerns "how cultural
beliefs and practices helped human populations
adapt to their environments, and how their
environment across space and time.
The contemporary perspective of environmental
anthropology, and arguably at least the backdrop,
if not the focus of most of the ethnographies
and cultural fieldworks of today, is political
ecology.
Many characterize this new perspective as
more informed with culture, politics and power,
globalization, localized issues, century anthropology
and more.
The focus and data interpretation is often
used for arguments for/against or creation
of policy, and to prevent corporate exploitation
and damage of land.
Often, the observer has become an active part
of the struggle either directly (organizing,
participation) or indirectly (articles, documentaries,
books, ethnographies).
Such is the case with environmental justice
advocate Melissa Checker and her relationship
with the people of Hyde Park.
=== Historical ===
Ethnohistory is the study of ethnographic
cultures and indigenous customs by examining
historical records.
It is also the study of the history of various
ethnic groups that may or may not exist today.
Ethnohistory uses both historical and ethnographic
data as its foundation.
Its historical methods and materials go beyond
the standard use of documents and manuscripts.
Practitioners recognize the utility of such
source material as maps, music, paintings,
photography, folklore, oral tradition, site
exploration, archaeological materials, museum
collections, enduring customs, language, and
place names.
=== Religion ===
The anthropology of religion involves the
study of religious institutions in relation
to other social institutions, and the comparison
of religious beliefs and practices across
cultures.
Modern anthropology assumes that there is
complete continuity between magical thinking
and religion, and that every religion is a
cultural product, created by the human community
that worships it.
=== Urban ===
Urban anthropology is concerned with issues
of urbanization, poverty, and neoliberalism.
Ulf Hannerz quotes a 1960s remark that traditional
anthropologists were "a notoriously agoraphobic
lot, anti-urban by definition".
Various social processes in the Western World
as well as in the "Third World" (the latter
being the habitual focus of attention of anthropologists)
brought the attention of "specialists in 'other
cultures'" closer to their homes.
There are two main approaches to urban anthropology:
examining the types of cities or examining
the social issues within the cities.
These two methods are overlapping and dependent
of each other.
By defining different types of cities, one
would use social factors as well as economic
and political factors to categorize the cities.
By directly looking at the different social
issues, one would also be studying how they
affect the dynamic of the city.
== Key topics by field: archaeological and
biological ==
=== 
Anthrozoology ===
Anthrozoology (also known as "human–animal
studies") is the study of interaction between
living things.
It is an interdisciplinary field that overlaps
with a number of other disciplines, including
anthropology, ethology, medicine, psychology,
veterinary medicine and zoology.
A major focus of anthrozoologic research is
the quantifying of the positive effects of
human-animal relationships on either party
and the study of their interactions.
It includes scholars from a diverse range
of fields, including anthropology, sociology,
biology, and philosophy.
=== Biocultural ===
Biocultural anthropology is the scientific
exploration of the relationships between human
biology and culture.
Physical anthropologists throughout the first
half of the 20th century viewed this relationship
from a racial perspective; that is, from the
assumption that typological human biological
differences lead to cultural differences.
After World War II the emphasis began to shift
toward an effort to explore the role culture
plays in shaping human biology.
=== Evolutionary ===
Evolutionary anthropology is the interdisciplinary
study of the evolution of human physiology
and human behaviour and the relation between
hominins and non-hominin primates.
Evolutionary anthropology is based in natural
science and social science, combining the
human development with socioeconomic factors.
Evolutionary anthropology is concerned with
both biological and cultural evolution of
humans, past and present.
It is based on a scientific approach, and
brings together fields such as archaeology,
behavioral ecology, psychology, primatology,
and genetics.
It is a dynamic and interdisciplinary field,
drawing on many lines of evidence to understand
the human experience, past and present.
=== Forensic ===
Forensic anthropology is the application of
the science of physical anthropology and human
osteology in a legal setting, most often in
criminal cases where the victim's remains
are in the advanced stages of decomposition.
A forensic anthropologist can assist in the
identification of deceased individuals whose
remains are decomposed, burned, mutilated
or otherwise unrecognizable.
The adjective "forensic" refers to the application
of this subfield of science to a court of
law.
=== Palaeoanthropology ===
Paleoanthropology 
combines the disciplines of paleontology and
physical anthropology.
It is the study of ancient humans, as found
in fossil hominid evidence such as petrifacted
bones and footprints.
Genetics and morphology of specimens are crucially
important to this field.
Markers on specimens, such as enamel fractures
and dental decay on teeth, can also give insight
into the behaviour and diet of past populations.
== Organizations ==
Contemporary anthropology is an established
science with academic departments at most
universities and colleges.
The single largest organization of anthropologists
is the American Anthropological Association
(AAA), which was founded in 1903.
Its members are anthropologists from around
the globe.In 1989, a group of European and
American scholars in the field of anthropology
established the European Association of Social
Anthropologists (EASA) which serves as a major
professional organization for anthropologists
working in Europe.
The EASA seeks to advance the status of anthropology
in Europe and to increase visibility of marginalized
anthropological traditions and thereby contribute
to the project of a global anthropology or
world anthropology.
Hundreds of other organizations exist in the
various sub-fields of anthropology, sometimes
divided up by nation or region, and many anthropologists
work with collaborators in other disciplines,
such as geology, physics, zoology, paleontology,
anatomy, music theory, art history, sociology
and so on, belonging to professional societies
in those disciplines as well.
=== List of major organizations ===
== Ethics ==
As the field has matured it has debated and
arrived at ethical principles aimed at protecting
both the subjects of anthropological research
as well as the researchers themselves, and
professional societies have generated codes
of ethics.Anthropologists, like other researchers
(especially historians and scientists engaged
in field research), have over time assisted
state policies and projects, especially colonialism.Some
commentators have contended:
That the discipline grew out of colonialism,
perhaps was in league with it, and derives
some of its key notions from it, consciously
or not.
(See, for example, Gough, Pels and Salemink,
but cf. Lewis 2004).
That ethnographic work is often ahistorical,
writing about people as if they were "out
of time" in an "ethnographic present" (Johannes
Fabian, Time and Its Other).
=== Cultural relativism ===
As part of their quest for scientific objectivity,
present-day anthropologists typically urge
cultural relativism, which has an influence
on all the sub-fields of anthropology.
This is the notion that cultures should not
be judged by another's values or viewpoints,
but be examined dispassionately on their own
terms.
There should be no notions, in good anthropology,
of one culture being better or worse than
another culture.Ethical commitments in anthropology
include noticing and documenting genocide,
infanticide, racism, mutilation (including
circumcision and subincision), and torture.
Topics like racism, slavery, and human sacrifice
attract anthropological attention and theories
ranging from nutritional deficiencies to genes
to acculturation have been proposed, not to
mention theories of colonialism and many others
as root causes of Man's inhumanity to man.
To illustrate the depth of an anthropological
approach, one can take just one of these topics,
such as "racism" and find thousands of anthropological
references, stretching across all the major
and minor sub-fields.
=== 
Military involvement ===
Anthropologists' involvement with the U.S.
government, in particular, has caused bitter
controversy within the discipline.
Franz Boas publicly objected to US participation
in World War I, and after the war he published
a brief expose and condemnation of the participation
of several American archaeologists in espionage
in Mexico under their cover as scientists.But
by the 1940s, many of Boas' anthropologist
contemporaries were active in the allied war
effort against the Axis Powers (Nazi Germany,
Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan).
Many served in the armed forces, while others
worked in intelligence (for example, Office
of Strategic Services and the Office of War
Information).
At the same time, David H. Price's work on
American anthropology during the Cold War
provides detailed accounts of the pursuit
and dismissal of several anthropologists from
their jobs for communist sympathies.Attempts
to accuse anthropologists of complicity with
the CIA and government intelligence activities
during the Vietnam War years have turned up
surprisingly little.
Many anthropologists (students and teachers)
were active in the antiwar movement.
Numerous resolutions condemning the war in
all its aspects were passed overwhelmingly
at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological
Association (AAA).Professional anthropological
bodies often object to the use of anthropology
for the benefit of the state.
Their codes of ethics or statements may proscribe
anthropologists from giving secret briefings.
The Association of Social Anthropologists
of the UK and Commonwealth (ASA) has called
certain scholarship ethically dangerous.
The AAA's current 'Statement of Professional
Responsibility' clearly states that "in relation
with their own government and with host governments
... no secret research, no secret reports
or debriefings of any kind should be agreed
to or given."Anthropologists, along with other
social scientists, are working with the US
military as part of the US Army's strategy
in Afghanistan.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that
"Counterinsurgency efforts focus on better
grasping and meeting local needs" in Afghanistan,
under the Human Terrain System (HTS) program;
in addition, HTS teams are working with the
US military in Iraq.
In 2009, the American Anthropological Association's
Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology
with the US Security and Intelligence Communities
released its final report concluding, in part,
that, "When ethnographic investigation is
determined by military missions, not subject
to external review, where data collection
occurs in the context of war, integrated into
the goals of counterinsurgency, and in a potentially
coercive environment – all characteristic
factors of the HTS concept and its application
– it can no longer be considered a legitimate
professional exercise of anthropology.
In summary, while we stress that constructive
engagement between anthropology and the military
is possible, CEAUSSIC suggests that the AAA
emphasize the incompatibility of HTS with
disciplinary ethics and practice for job seekers
and that it further recognize the problem
of allowing HTS to define the meaning of "anthropology"
within DoD."
== Post–World War II developments ==
Before WWII British 'social anthropology'
and American 'cultural anthropology' were
still distinct traditions.
After the war, enough British and American
anthropologists borrowed ideas and methodological
approaches from one another that some began
to speak of them collectively as 'sociocultural'
anthropology.
=== Basic trends ===
There are several characteristics that tend
to unite anthropological work.
One of the central characteristics is that
anthropology tends to provide a comparatively
more holistic account of phenomena and tends
to be highly empirical.
The quest for holism leads most anthropologists
to study a particular place, problem or phenomenon
in detail, using a variety of methods, over
a more extensive period than normal in many
parts of academia.
In the 1990s and 2000s, calls for clarification
of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer
knows where his or her own culture ends and
another begins, and other crucial topics in
writing anthropology were heard.
These dynamic relationships, between what
can be observed on the ground, as opposed
to what can be observed by compiling many
local observations remain fundamental in any
kind of anthropology, whether cultural, biological,
linguistic or archaeological.Biological anthropologists
are interested in both human variation and
in the possibility of human universals (behaviors,
ideas or concepts shared by virtually all
human cultures).
They use many different methods of study,
but modern population genetics, participant
observation and other techniques often take
anthropologists "into the field," which means
traveling to a community in its own setting,
to do something called "fieldwork."
On the biological or physical side, human
measurements, genetic samples, nutritional
data may be gathered and published as articles
or monographs.
Along with dividing up their project by theoretical
emphasis, anthropologists typically divide
the world up into relevant time periods and
geographic regions.
Human time on Earth is divided up into relevant
cultural traditions based on material, such
as the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, of particular
use in archaeology.
Further cultural subdivisions according to
tool types, such as Olduwan or Mousterian
or Levalloisian help archaeologists and other
anthropologists in understanding major trends
in the human past.
Anthropologists and geographers share approaches
to culture regions as well, since mapping
cultures is central to both sciences.
By making comparisons across cultural traditions
(time-based) and cultural regions (space-based),
anthropologists have developed various kinds
of comparative method, a central part of their
science.
=== Commonalities between fields ===
Because anthropology developed from so many
different enterprises (see History of anthropology),
including but not limited to fossil-hunting,
exploring, documentary film-making, paleontology,
primatology, antiquity dealings and curatorship,
philology, etymology, genetics, regional analysis,
ethnology, history, philosophy, and religious
studies, it is difficult to characterize the
entire field in a brief article, although
attempts to write histories of the entire
field have been made.Some authors argue that
anthropology originated and developed as the
study of "other cultures", both in terms of
time (past societies) and space (non-European/non-Western
societies).
For example, the classic of urban anthropology,
Ulf Hannerz in the introduction to his seminal
Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban
Anthropology mentions that the "Third World"
had habitually received most of attention;
anthropologists who traditionally specialized
in "other cultures" looked for them far away
and started to look "across the tracks" only
in late 1960s.Now there exist many works focusing
on peoples and topics very close to the author's
"home".
It is also argued that other fields of study,
like History and Sociology, on the contrary
focus disproportionately on the West.In France,
the study of Western societies has been traditionally
left to sociologists, but this is increasingly
changing, starting in the 1970s from scholars
like Isac Chiva and journals like Terrain
("fieldwork"), and developing with the center
founded by Marc Augé (Le Centre d'anthropologie
des mondes contemporains, the Anthropological
Research Center of Contemporary Societies).
Since the 1980s it has become common for social
and cultural anthropologists to set ethnographic
research in the North Atlantic region, frequently
examining the connections between locations
rather than limiting research to a single
locale.
There has also been a related shift toward
broadening the focus beyond the daily life
of ordinary people; increasingly, research
is set in settings such as scientific laboratories,
social movements, governmental and nongovernmental
organizations and businesses.
== See also ==
Anthropology portal
== Notes
