Why Anthropology Is Important SHARE BACK TO TOP Why Anthropology Is Important Recently retired Professor Gordon McEwan, an expert on the Incas and their predecessors, has helped students thrive in our multicultural world What's Inside: The Nursing Resource Center A Taste of Home Of course, learning to see the world through someone else's . Anthropology is the systematic study of humanity, with the goal of understanding the origins and distinctiveness of our species and the great diversity in our forms of social existence through space and time. Marital sexual violence is an important but understudied form of domestic violence in societies throughout the world, including in Vietnam. 1. Ansichten: 2. Last of Their Kind: What Is Lost When Cultures Die. 1.4: Why is Anthropology Important? Living in societies throughout the world, and conducting research with people in diverse cultures, were dreams that began to emerge for me when I was an undergraduate student studying anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the early 1980s. Participant observation research allows anthropologists to obtain a special kind of knowledge that is rarely acquired through other, more limited research methods. They study other societies to gain a clearer perspective on our own. The thing about perspective is that it doesn't make the problem that caused it go away. For all of these reasons, studying anthropology is the most broadly useful of undergraduate disciplines. One division, called cultural anthropology, focuses on an understanding of the way that people live in different societies or cultures around the world. For example, in 2010 some cultural anthropologists critiqued the American Anthropological Associations mission statement, which stated that the disciplines goal was to advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects.[7] These scholars wanted to replace the word science with public understanding. They argued that some anthropologists do not use the scientific method of inquiry; instead, they rely more on narratives and interpretations of meaning. Myron J. Aronoff Recipient of the 2013 AIS-Israel Institute Lifetime Achievement Award " Anthropology and Political Science does the important work of demonstrating fruitful openings in two fields of study. I conducted interviews and surveys and also shared daily and ritual experiences with people to learn about inadequate access to nutritious food, and social structural sources of this kind of health problem. I published an ethnography about my research in Ifugao, titled Struggling with Development: The Politics of Hunger and Gender in the Philippines. important thing a mother gives a child; it is the substance of her own body, and in most parts of the world mothers milk is still the only safe food for infants. Ill admit that the razor-blade example is somewhat crude. This article sets the context and defines the term as well as analyzing the scope and importance of political science. And yet they stood their ground, and because they did, as Charles King writes, anthropology came into its own on the front lines of the great moral battle of our time [as it] anticipated and in good measure built the intellectual foundations for the seismic social changes of the last hundred years from womens suffrage and civil rights to sexual revolution and marriage equality.. Ego is the main threat to self-awareness; it is the . Through their research, anthropologists contribute unique and important forms of knowledge and information to diverse groups, including local communities, nations, and global social movements, such as feminist, racial, indigenous, environmental, LGBTQ, and other social movements. At the beginning of each course we read environmental historian William Cronons Only ConnectThe Goals of a Liberal Education (he has a great discussable listbe able to talk to anyone, read widely, think critically, problem solveat the end) because anthropology is about breadth and making connections (with others, and seeing patterns). It covers MELC 1: Discuss the nature, g. Beauty really does lie in the eye of the beholder. People need the anthropological perspective because it shows patterns of behavior and those patterns can be helpful to avoid possible repeating of history. Where a fascination with the exotic initially brought me to anthropology, it is the disciplines ability to shed light on what many of us see as normal, common, and taken-for-granted that has kept me with it through three degrees (bachelors, masters, and Ph.D.) and a fifteen-year career as a college professor. If human beings are the agents of cultural loss, he would note, we cansurelybe facilitators of cultural survival. It is just one way among a multitude of others. As such, they cannot be seen or touched, and yet the way we see a. It enables him to adjust himself to the environment. This is an introductory article for the module on political science. A tireless campaigner for human rights, Boas maintained always that anthropology as a science only made sense if it was practiced in the service of a higher tolerance. Never has the voice of anthropology been more important. A. Converging Radial Directions: Draw and complete the diagram in your notebook by writing the importance of knowing the perspective of anthropology, Far ahead of his time, Boas recognized that every distinct social community, every cluster of people distinguished by language or adaptive inclination, was a unique facet of the human legacy and its promise. eccentric career plans. Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Introduction. What was it that allowed our culture to go from zero to 60 in a generation, as women moved from the kitchen to the boardroom, people of color from the woodshed to the White House, gay men and women from the closet to the altar? Every Friday I encourage my students to Have an anthropological weekend and ask them on Monday to describe how this happened. stem from the toxic idea that people are other We must put that idea aside and learn to value different cultures.[8] This anthropological perspective is an essential skill for nearly any career in todays globalized world. Everybody does it but we all do it different; this is culture. Knowledge of society, social groups, social institutions, associations, their functions etc. Studying anthropology, then, gave me a reason to learn more about the unusual artwork that filled my childhood home and to connect with a faraway side of my family that I hardly knew anything about. I learned about the deep pain and suffering experienced by abused women, as well as the numerous ways many of these women and their fellow community members have worked to put an end to the violence. Because of the diverse subject matter it encompasses, anthropology has become, especially since the middle of the 20th century, a collection of . As you may have noticed from the above discussion of the anthropological sub-disciplines, anthropologists are not unified in what they study or how they conduct research. While anthropologists often specialize in one subfield, their specific research contributes to a broader understanding of the human condition, which is made up of culture, language, biological and social adaptations, as well as human origins and evolution. How do different languages adapt to new technologies? Studying anthropology fosters broad knowledge of other cultures, skills in observation and analysis, critical thinking, clear communication, and applied problem-solving. These perspectives make anthropology distinct from related disciplines like history, sociology, and psychology that ask similar questions about the past, societies, and human nature. They learn about the complexities of peoples lives intimately, including their social relationships, their bodily and emotional experiences, and the powerful institutional forces influencing their lives. What are the costs and benefits of identifying individuals involved in this study? What, he asked, was the nature of knowing? Whites were smart and industrious, Blacks physically strong but lazy, and some people were barely distinguishable from animals; as late as 1902 it was debated in parliament in Australia whether aborigines were human beings. On days when I am feeling particularly playful, I say that after getting through the As, I knew Anthropology was for me. This makes it an important tool for comprehending ourselves. Anthropology places such ideas within the broader context of human lifeways, or what anthropologists call culture. The purpose of social study is to understand all of that sentimentality. This research is inductive: based on day-to-day observations, the anthropologist asks increasingly specific questions about the group or about the human condition more broadly. Even as he graced the cover of Time magazine in 1936, a German Jew in exile from a homeland already dripping in blood, Boas railed against the cruel conceits and stupidity of scientific racism. How do seemingly random beliefs and convictions converge into this thing called culture, a term that he was the first to promote as an organizing principle, a useful point of intellectual departure. They study the past to help interpret the present. Through my research experiences, I have participated in the rich daily lives of farmers, woodcarvers, hospital personnel, government employees, shopkeepers, students, and other groups of people. These perspectives make anthropology distinct from related disciplines like history, sociology, and psychology that ask similar questions about the past, societies, and human nature. We also acknowledge previous National Science Foundation support under grant numbers 1246120, 1525057, and 1413739. Some sub-disciplines, like biological anthropology and archaeology, use a deductive, scientific approach. To understand human behavior. The fieldwork and participant observation research methods provide cultural anthropologists the opportunity to live with a group of people for several months or years. His latest book is Magdalena: River of Dreams (Knopf 2020). 2. Anthropology encourages us to extend our perspectives beyond familiar social contexts to view things from the perspectives of others. Stallings told the students that it is important for people to be part of the "citizen-government.". Respecting the cultural differences between one another. Does the Gillette Fusion Five Razor, with its five blades, really offer a better shave than the four-bladed Schick Quattro? Most people find these kinds of questions difficult to answer. This type of research takes a great amount of time and effort, but produces a uniquely deep and contextual type of knowledge. I never imagined I would earn a Ph.D. researching the mostly middle-class, largely multi-racial, independent hip-hop scene in the San Francisco Bay Area. Included in the day were . A new introduction, written by Katie Nelson and Lara Braff, places cultural anthropology in a four-fields context and offers students information about the variety of careers and perspectives in the discipline of anthropology. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998. Observations of an impoverished health system in Dominica and family health experiences with dysentery during fieldwork led me toward medical anthropology and public health and so I completed a M.P.H. Aimed at raising awareness regarding the importance of teaching anthropology through all grade levels, including higher education, the theme of this year was employability with a degree in anthropology. Looking through that course catalogue, I didnt really know what anthropology was but resolved to test-the-waters by taking several classes the following year. Manners dont make the man; men and women invent the manners. Fossils began to be reliably associated with particular geologic strata, and fossils of recent human ancestors were discovered, most famously the first Neanderthal specimen, unearthed in 1856. I was born in Ghana, West Africa, where my American father had spent several years working with local artisans at the National Cultural Centre in Kumasi. Often the answer is simply because that is how it is done. People typically believe that their ways of thinking and acting are normal; but, at a more extreme level, some believe their ways are better than others. So, I opened the course catalogueback then it was a physical bookand started going through it alphabetically. The key theme in this article is that political science as a field of study has acquired importance in recent years due to the explosion in interest of the matters related to the working of the political economy. It is through comparison that we learn more about the range of possible responses to varying contexts and problems. Race truly is a fiction. Anthropologists also study our ancient past and human origins, particularly through the subfield of archaeology, which recovers and analyzes material and physical remains.Students who major in anthropology are curious about other cultures and other times. Differences in customs and beliefs reflected differences in intelligence and destiny, with every culture finding its rung on an evolutionary ladder rising from the savage to the barbarian to the civilized of the Strand in London, with technological wizardry, the great achievement of the West, being the sole measure of progress and success. By looking at other cultures and societies, anthropologists are able to reflect on various ways of being human. Each was a product of its own history. The LibreTexts libraries arePowered by NICE CXone Expertand are supported by the Department of Education Open Textbook Pilot Project, the UC Davis Office of the Provost, the UC Davis Library, the California State University Affordable Learning Solutions Program, and Merlot. Using these patterns, functionalist can see how they bring people together. The ethnographic process involves the research method of participant-observation fieldwork: you participate in peoples lives, while observing them and taking field notes that, along with interviews and surveys, constitute the research data. We also acknowledge previous National Science Foundation support under grant numbers 1246120, 1525057, and 1413739. I tell students during the first week of classes that one of my goals is to convince them that much of what theyve learned about many familiar topics (race, sex and gender, kinship, marriage, languages, religion, evolution, social media, and globalization) is biased, or incomplete. After all, anthropologists are social scientists. Everything Boas proposed ran against orthodoxy. Boas would not live to see his insights and intuitions confirmed by hard science, let alone define the zeitgeist of a new global culture. I conducted interviews and surveys and also shared daily and ritual experiences with people to learn about inadequate access to nutritious food, and social structural sources of this kind of health problem. Culture is a strong part of people's lives. We create our social realms, Boas would say, determine what we then define as being common sense, universal truths, the appropriate rules and codes of behavior. There, a coup and other circumstances turned my one-year fellowship into a two-year experience/adventure. An anthropological perspective is. An important reason for this program is to encourage people to participate in the political process and increase civic engagement among college students. Following my Peace Corps experience, I entered graduate school in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley and became a cultural anthropologist in the mid-1990s, specializing in medical anthropology. Harrison, Anthony Kwame. Using my own anthropological biography as an illustration, I want to stress that the discipline does not showcase diverse human lifeways to further exoticize those who live differently from us. Why do we respond the way we do? The superiority of the white man was accepted with such assurance that the Oxford English Dictionary in 1911 had no entries for racism or colonialism. The catalyst, as Charles King reminds us, was the wisdom and scientific genius of Franz Boas and a small band of courageous scholarsMargaret Mead, Alfred Kroeber, Elsie Clews Parsons, Melville Herskovits, Edward Sapir, Robert Lowie, Ruth Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston and many others contrarians all, who came into his orbit, destined to change the world. This is important in helping to understand how one language relates to another and how humans have communicated with one another over time. The first is realizing that everyone involved has a unique perspective. Knowledge about the State is of great significance to modern man. Yes, anthropology helps to see the familiar in a new light. We might compare the roles of men and women in different societies, or contrast how different religious groups conflict within a given society. Concepts like oppression, inequality, and intersectionality are realities in society that . I hope my research on wife abuse will contribute to the emergence of a deeper understanding of the social and cultural sources of gender violence in order to end this violence, and greater awareness of its scope and its negative effects on women. A person makes good with social values. The word ethnography also refers to the end result of our fieldwork. Anthropologists aim to study and present their human subjects in a clear and un biased way. Anthropologists across the subfields use unique perspectives to conduct their research. It is the study of humankind in all times and all places. Just as social structures and forces shape our lives, our choices and actions influence the nature of society. Cultural anthropologists research is unique because it often involves analysis of the intersection of global social, political and economic forces and the everyday experiences of members of a cultural group. It helps us to determine the most efficient means for reaching the goals agreed upon. Anthropology is the broadest, most fundamental of academic subjects and should be at the core of a modern undergraduate education. I use these other topicsmusic, recreation, and higher educationas avenues through which to explore races multiple meanings and unequal consequences. Ethnographic research can help us to understand the extent of a global problem such as gender violence, the everyday experiences of those facing abuse, and the struggles and accomplishments of people actively working to improve their societies. degree at the Harvard School of Public Health before receiving a Fulbright Fellowship to go to Benin University in southern Nigeria. To address these questions, anthropologists are obligated to follow a professional code of ethics that guides us through ethical considerations in our research.[6]. In recent decades, anthropologists have been reflecting on the significance and relevance of anthropological research. WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY? Investigating and revealing the nature of the past Assessing present genetic diversity through evolutionary history Expanding knowledge of primate behavior, biology and diversity Investigative Observing people/data/things Organizing ideas/materials/objects/people Analyzing relationships between factors Evaluating Sampling Cultural This has included anthropologists who are working in each of anthropologys four subfields. The significance of the study of Political Science is discussed below: (1) Imparting Knowledge of the State: However, the primary aim of the study of Political Science is to inculcate knowledge of the State, its origin, nature, structure and functions. By understanding how nonhuman primates behave, we discover more about ourselves (after all, humans are primates)! As one former cultural anthropology student observed, I believe an anthropology course has one basic goal: to eliminate ethnocentrism. Political scientists have the most to gain by becoming aware of the historical specificity of their models, perhaps developing less American and ethnocentric perspectives that can index . Because of its breadth, students who study anthropology go on to work in a wide variety of careers in medicine, museums, field archaeology, historical preservation, education, international business, documentary filmmaking, management, foreign service, law, and many more. Often known as holism, the job of an anthropologist is to study and research different human experiences. I am currently the Gloria D. Smith Professor of Africana Studies at Virginia Techa school that, oddly enough, does not have an anthropology program. While I was a graduate student, I returned to the community in which I lived in Ifugao Province to conduct research for my dissertation which focused on malnutrition, particularly among women and children. Both men shared stories with students about their experience in Congress. Applying the results of our ethnographic research and making our research accessible to our students and the public can make the research of anthropologists useful toward alleviating the problems people face in our society, and in countries globally. Like. What is the importance of knowing the perspective of anthropology, sociology and political science. And by understanding human behavior, we hope that it may result in de Anthropology can be defined as the comparative study of humans, their societies and their cultural worlds. Today, such activism seems as pass as a pith helmet. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. Before any of these struggles could flourish, something fundamental, some flash of insight, had to challenge and, in time, shatter the intellectual foundations that supported archaic beliefs as irrelevant to our lives today as the notions of 19th-century clergymen, certain that the earth was but 6,000 years old. As for the blind, deaf and dumb, the cripples, morons, Mongoloids, and the mad, they were best locked away, lobotomized and even killed to remove them from the gene pool. The comprehensiveness of anthropology stems from its emphasis on context, reflected in the perspectives offered by the discipline's four fields: sociocultural, biological, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology. Most are surprised at the far-flung origins of what they wear. We asked three cultural anthropologists Anthony Kwame Harrison, Bob Myers, and Lynn Kwiatkowski to describe what drew them to the discipline and to explain how they use anthropological perspectives in their varied research projects. Perhaps fittingly it took an outsider to remind anthropologists why anthropology matters. Then I went back to the U.S. and taught for two years at Long Island University before moving to rural Alfred University in western New York, where I now work. While we study a particular culture to learn more about it and to answer specific research questions, we are also exploring fundamental questions about human society, behavior, or experiences. This type of research takes a great amount of time and effort but produces a uniquely deep and contextual type of knowledge. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners. In Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition, Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges, 2020, under CC BY-NC 4.0. Those two things can go hand-in-hand. And if you believe that wisdom may be found in all spiritual traditions, that people in all places are always dancing with new possibilities for life, that one preserves jam but not culture, then you share a vision of compassion and inclusion that represents perhaps the most sublime revelation of our species, the scientific realization that all of humanity is one interconnected and undivided whole.