What do we study?

Anthropology is the study of human beings, both physically and culturally, in the past and present, mostly in the non-Western world, mostly through the method of fieldwork.

• "Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities."
  • Eric Wolf
• "Anthropology is the only discipline that can access evidence about the entire human experience on this planet."
  • Michael Brian Schiffer
• "Anthropology provides a scientific basis for dealing with the crucial dilemma of the world today: how can peoples of different appearance, mutually unintelligible languages, and dissimilar ways of life get along peaceably together?"
  • Clyde Kluckhohn

Characteristics of Anthropology

What makes anthropology unique in the way people are studied?

• Holistic

  • Whole approach--looking at everything about people--studying people both culturally and physically--a general rather than a specialized approach.

• Evolutionary

  • Studying people during all time periods from the distant past through ancient civilizations to the present.

• Non-Western Emphasis

  • Studying and comparing people all over the world, emphasizing those non-Western cultures (Africa, Middle East, Asia, Australia, Oceania, Latin America, North American Indians, etc.) and ethnic groups that other disciplines tend to de-emphasize.

• Fieldwork Method

  • Studying people mainly through fieldwork (participant observation), the first-hand study of people that requires an anthropologist to live where he/she is doing research, to learn the local language, and to become as much a part of the group as any outsider can.

Four main subfields

• Cultural Anthropology

  • The study of living peoples' ways of life, mostly in the non-Western world, and mostly through fieldwork.

• Physical Anthropology

  • The study of peoples and non-human primates as biological beings both in the past (evolution) and the present.

• Anthropological Linguistics

  • The study of languages, mostly non-Western and mostly preliterate, and of the nature of language.

• Archaeology

  • The study of past peoples' ways of life, through the excavation and analysis of artifacts.

Two orientations

• Academic Anthropology

  • The study of any of the above four subfields for the knowledge and insights they provide about humankind.

• Applied Anthropology

  • The use of any of the above four subfields to solve peoples' practical, and often pressing, problems.