ANTH 205 Lecture 2

« previous | Wednesday, January 16, 2013 | next »

Reading Material

Julia Childs "Keep on Cooking" song

Anthropology

Study of human beings from all times and all places; how they're similar and how they're different.

Aspects of Anthropology:

• holistic/holism: studies of all human existence: past, present, and future
  • biology, society, language, culture, etc.
  • any aspect of human existence is integrated and no dimension can be understood in isolation: everything is related (food, religion, language, dress, etc.)
• comparative: compares people and societies across time and place (seek generalizations, and understand reasons behind differences)
  • Anthropologists will study anything as long as it's related to people (but in practice, they specialize in a certain field)
  • Example: Why do Australians and Americans love beef, but Hindu and other such cultures do not eat beef?

Culture: A difficult concept to define (as stated in MARB 403

Humanities:

• Study the human condition through analytic, critical, and speculative methods (c.f. natural sciences
• Humanities include languages, literature, philosophy, religious studies, arts, and social sciences
• social sciences: history, business admin, political science, economy, education, geography, law, psychology, and anthropology

Note: Popular Misconception: Anthropologists DO NOT study primitive or non-industrial societies alone; they study everything (including their own culture)

Subfields of Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology

• Studies Culture
• Most common subfield in US
• do two things: ethnography and ethnology

Archaeology

NOT Indiana Jones

• Reconstructs, describes, and interprets human behavior and cultural patterns based on material remains
• Any physical materials or remains that humans have made, used, or modified
• Three subcategories based on time periods: prehistoric, classical (Greek/Roman times), and historic (written history)
• Terrestrial vs. Nautical (shipwrecks) vs. Underwater (anything) vs. Maritime (docks/harbors) Archaeology
• Note: TAMU started and founded discipline of Nautical Archaeology

Biological (Physical) Anthropology

• Prof's second favorite
• Studies human biological diversity by studying:
  1. Human evolution as revealed by fossil record (paleoanthropology)
  2. Human genetics
  3. Human growth and development
  4. Human biological plasticity
  5. biology, evolution, behavior, and social life of non-human primates

Linguistic Anthropology

• Unfortunately not represented at Texas A&M
• Studies languages (comparison variation, and change) in social and cultural context
• "Humans are the only species known to have language" ^???

Anthropology is a Science

A systematic field of study or body of knowledge that aims, through experiment, observation, and deduction, to produce reliable explanations of phenomena, with reference to the material and physical world

Applied Anthropology

• Academic anthropology collects the data through research
• Applied anthropology uses the data collected by academic anthropology to "make the world suck a little bit less"

Fields include

• Public health
• family planning
• business
• economic development
• government
• cultural resource management
• and forensics

Note: Obama's mama was a llama an applied anthropologist

What's the Point?

Anthropology provides a scientific basis for dealing with the cultural dilemma of the world today: how can peoples of different appearance, mutually unitelligible languages, and dissimilar ways of life get along peaceably together? Clyde Kluckhohn, anthropologist and social theorist

"…and that's not Sesame Street crap…"

Understand and appreciate cultural diversity (and that's why this is an ICD)

Note: Go through the first floor of the anthropology building next semester (when it's finished with renovations)

Until Next Time

• Read Ember - Culture and Culture Change.