Anthropology

a quick summary

 

Anthropology is the study of what makes us humans. Anthropology strives to understand the different aspects of the human experience, and this is called in anthropology “Holism”, in other words anthropology claims to be holistic and studies man is his totality. Furthermore, anthropology is concerned with man’ biology, environment, space, blood relation, culture, beliefs, ethics, and history. It examines the humans’ development and social interactions and theorizing on different facets, such as: race, ethnicity, language and kinship. It is a multidimensional discipline covering a plethora of layers.

Anthropology has always been charged of ethnocentrism consolidating the hegemony of the white over other races. More than that, anthropologists were all whites adopting a vantage position believing that all non white races are born with a congenital deficiency lacking the characteristics of the white man perfection. Moreover, there are two types of anthropologists: the first is called “participant observation anthropologists”, the ones who integrate in the society or community they are willing to study, they take deep observation in the field work through emersion. The second type is labeled the “armchair anthropologists”, the ones who base their theories and investigation on the data which is collected by the previous type of anthropologists. So we can say that “armchair anthropologists” are the ones who emphasize or criticize the participant observation anthropologists’ work.

Alongside with the above, anthropologists use one or more of the four techniques that are: ethnography, participant observation, ethnology, and holism. Ethnography is the primary method of social and cultural anthropology, it is a research method central to knowing the world from the standpoint of its social relations. In other words, ethnography is the study of ethnic groups, races and cultures, and its aim is to spot out the racial, ethnic or cultural differences. It’s the act of classifying races and demonstrating the European supremacy. Moreover, anthropologists practice observation in the field work through emersion, living among the indigenous people and practicing their daily life rituals. Most anthropologists maintain the vision of otherness to end up with data and theory that endorse the white supremacy. Ethnology is the scientific study of ethnic groups. The use of ethnology in anthropology is the act of analyzing cultures, especially in regard to their historical development and the similarities and dissimilarities between them. It deals also with the origin, distribution, and distinguishing characteristics of human societies. Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc) cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave. In anthropology, it is concerned with all human beings across times and places, and with all dimensions of humanity (evolutionary, biophysical, sociopolitical, economic, cultural, psychological, etc.).

Furthermore, there are four major subparts of anthropology: archeology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology, and each focuses on different set of research interests. Archeology is the study of the diversity of human behavior in the past, in other words it studies the human cultures in the past. Archeologists study the history of the different communities and cultural practices by excavating sites of archaic and ancient civilizations. They search for the artifact that are left behind the earlier people, then date and analyze evidence to help reconstruct everyday life during a particular time period by a specific group of people. This grants scientists the ability to understand the evolution of human behavior and culture throughout time.

Biological anthropology which is known also as physical anthropology is the area that specializes in the diversity of human bodies in the past and the present. In other words, Biological anthropology is the study of human biological variation and evolution. Biological anthropologists seek to document and explain the pattern of biological variation among contemporary human populations, trace the evolution of our lineage through time in the fossil record, and provide a comparative perspective on human uniqueness by placing our species in the context of other living primates. Biological anthropologists hold the Darwinian theory of evolutionism, believing in the natural selection.

While linguistic anthropology is the study of diversity of human language in the past and present, and its relationship to social groups, practices and values. It studies the role of language in the social lives of the individuals and communities. Linguistic anthropology explores how language shapes communication. Moreover, linguistic anthropologists study the ways in which people negotiate, contest, and reproduce cultural forms and social relations through language. They examine the ways in which language provides insights into the nature and evolution of culture and human society.

Additionally, culture is described as the complex whole of collective human beliefs with a structured stage of civilization that can be specific to a nation or time period. And individuals use culture to adapt and transform the world they live in. So, cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology which focuses on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. Cultural anthropology was entangled in otherness and so it paved the way to colonialism since it takes race as a justification to the conquest of other spaces to collect data and come up with theories.

Now since we have introduced the definition of anthropology, identified its techniques and defined its branches, it is high time to shed lights on some prominent anthropologists alongside with their theories. Given the aforementioned, here are some of the most prominent cultural anthropologists. The first to start with is BronisLaw Malinowski. He was the first to provide firsthand intrinsic information. In theory, an emic view (inside perspective) is supposedly accurate, verifiable, objective, and scientific as this point of view fumbles into intrinsic rituals and cultural behaviors, but in reality, it has been tarnished by the ethnocentric view, to perpetuate and historicize the supremacy of the white race and culture.

An etic view (outsider’s perspective) is the opinion of an anthropologist who hasn’t done emersion. In reality, both these are biased, ethnocentric, unreliable, lack concrete data and evidence, and both seem to historicize the supremacy of the white which keeps the cultural abyss between the white and the non-white especially that anthropologists write from a subject position. Malinowski theorizes also on functionalism which argues that culture functioned to meet the needs of individuals rather than society as a whole. He reasoned that when the needs of individuals, who comprise society, are met, and then the needs of society are met. To Malinowski, the feelings of people and their motives were crucial knowledge to understand the way their society functioned. Another, prominent cultural anthropologist is Margaret mead. She conducted research on adolescent behaviorism in South pacific. She said ado behavior is also a matter of biological & cultural environment. The major reason is cultural universals: universals and ubiquitous rituals shared by many people across cultures: language, religious rituals, symbolism, marriage, kinship. Language is a means of interaction and socialization; it provides shapes for our thoughts and feelings and forms an identity marker. Language can be texts, signs, body, symbols, tattoos, drawings, etc. All these are signifiers and holders of meaning, messages, and rituals. They are more expressive, intelligible, have more power, and can last.

E. B. Taylor, an English anthropologist regarded as the father of cultural anthropology. He is best known for providing the earliest and complete definition of culture as follows: : “Culture… is that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by [a human] as a member of society.” His most important work is Primitive Culture in 1871, which is influenced in part by Darwinian’s theory of biological evolution, developed the theory of an evolutionary, progressive relationship from primitive to modern cultures. Moreover, evolutionism (Darwinism) is based on three principles. First is the survival of the fittest which indicates that only the most powerful species can survive. The power is reflected in peoples’ adaptability to their environment, physical and biological perfection. The theory implied that the none white are not fit physically and biologically, there is a missing link, as we so in the movie “Man to Man” and how those Victorians anthropologists believed that there is a missing link between the European white race and those “pigmies” (Africans). The second is the natural selection which stipulates that the white man is born to lead, dominate and disseminate his culture among other subordinate species. Eventually, the last principle is psychic unity which stands for the belief that all species share the same stages of evolutionism from primitivism to civilization.

Franz Boas is another prominent anthropologist known for his theories on cultural relativism and particularism. Before becoming interested in the field of anthropology, Boas studied geography, mathematics, and physics. Boas introduced the theory of cultural relativism, which is the idea that all people have equally developed cultures. This theory also holds the belief that the differences between peoples were the result of historical, social, and geographic conditions.  Other anthropologists, frequently called cultural relativists, argue that the evolutionary view is ethnocentric, deriving from a human disposition to characterize groups other than one’s own as inferior, and that all surviving human groups have evolved equally but in different ways. Eventually, cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, rather than be judged against the criteria of another. Franz Boas also theorizes on particularism or historical particularism which argues that each society is a collective representation of its unique historical past. Boas rejected parallel evolutionism, the idea that all societies are on the same path and have reached their specific level of development the same way all other societies have. Instead, historical particularism showed that societies could reach the same level of cultural development through different paths.

Moreover, diffusionism as an anthropological school of thought was an attempt to understand the distribution of culture in terms of the origin of culture traits and their spread from one society to another. Versions of diffusionists’ thought included the conviction that all cultures originated from one culture center (heliocentric diffusion); the more reasonable view that cultures originated from a limited number of culture centers (culture circles); and finally the notion that each society is influenced by others but that the process of diffusionism is both contingent and arbitrary. Diffusionism has debunked the notion of psychic unity, it believes that culture disseminates through trades, wars, colonialism and immigration. There are many prominent diffusionists such as: Franz Boas, Sapir, and Kroeber. Moreover, Boas rejects ethnocentrism, denies derogatory language and refutes cultural hierarchy; he is the first American anthropologist to humanize anthropology believing that cultures must be understood as particular unique and autonomous entities.

However, Alfred Kroeber (1948) stated that acculturation consists of those changes in one culture brought about by contact with another culture, resulting in an increased similarity between the two cultures. This type of change may be reciprocal, however, very often the process is asymmetrical and the result is the (usually partial) absorption of one culture into the other. Kroeber believed that acculturation is gradual rather than abrupt. He connected the process of diffusionism with the process of acculturation by considering that diffusionism contributes to acculturation and that acculturation necessarily involves diffusionism. He did attempt to separate the two processes by stating that diffusionism is a matter of what happens to the elements of a culture; whereas acculturation is a process of what happens to a whole culture.

 

To conclude, throughout this paper I tried hard to shed lights on definition of anthropology, its techniques that are used by anthropologists and some prominent anthropologists alongside with all their theories to make a brief article about what we have studied during classes before the lockdown. Eventually, anthropology is a manifold discipline which deals with many areas of study, such as: archeology, biology, culture, etc. However, it doesn’t raise up to its core values since it is considered to be ethnocentric and focalizes the white man supremacy.