Anthropology is the study of humans –culture, biological development, and social development. Ethnography is a way to study humans and cultures.
Anthropology was a course that I wanted to take in college. Every semester, I would try to sign up for a class, but the availability never matched up with my schedule. As a result, I never got the opportunity to take a course.
But a few years ago, I came across a book called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I was at the book store one day and picked it up to see what it was all about. I skimmed through it, looked at some of the pictures, and was interested.
The first couple of times reading it was overwhelming. It’s a big book with big ideas, and I’m a slow reader. I would complete a chapter and see that there are still hundreds more pages to read.
But the book is thought-provoking. And that’s why I kept reading it.
Harari does a good job of explaining human history and the various theories of it.
After completing the book, which is a blend of history, psychology and anthropology, I wanted to learn more about the latter topic (remember, it was a course I wanted to take).
I felt like Sapiens was a good intro to the social science, but nothing in-depth. There weren’t any anthropological theories in it, even though it talked a lot about history, culture, and society.
So, I did some research on it (thank the universe for the internet). And here’s what I learned after reading a couple of articles and watching a few videos online.
What is Anthropology?
Anthropology, according to Merriam-Webster, is “the study of human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture.”
Basically, it’s the study of the evolution of humans socially, culturally, and biologically.
To study this, anthropologists mainly use a research method called ethnography. This type of research requires an anthropologist to be hands-on. To conduct an experiment, they would live amongst the community that they wish to understand better.
This means that they participated in daily activities and learned the community’s language. Learning the language is important because they need to communicate with them and ask questions.
History of Ethnography
Ethnography was developed in the 1700s as an offset to how research was performed then.
Anthropology is a social science that was created during a time when Europeans were exploring (and imperializing) the world. Social scientists wanted to understand the foreign people they were constantly interacting with better (thus the development of anthropology.)
But during these times, researchers simply studied indigenous communities by speculation.
American researcher Bronislaw Malinowski and Britain researcher Franz Boas deemed this ineffective. They believed that their predecessors only observed how other communities lived rather than living with them and performing long-term fieldwork (aka ethnography).
These two researchers wanted to fully understand other cultures and communities. To them, ethnography was the best way to achieve this.
The Branches of Anthropology
Anthropology can be broken up into five branches:
- Social Anthropology – the study of behavioural patterns
- Cultural Anthropology – the study of norms, values, and traditions
- Linguistic Anthropology – the study of language and social life
- Biological Anthropology – the study of physical human development
- Visual Anthropology – the study of visual arts (images, video, etc.)
All of these sections serve as its own discipline. Usually, people will spend most of their time learning one of these as they are all vast topics.
The topic that I wanted to take in college was cultural anthropology. To me, this course was appealing because I like history, especially ancient history. This course would’ve talked about how people lived in the past and why they did the things that they did.
I also wanted to take biological anthropology (just the intro course) because evolution is interesting and a concept that everyone needs to understand. I also needed some science credits, so yeah…
All in all, after doing (really, really) light research on anthropology, I noticed that it is great science for teaching empathy. If you understand the “other,” you’re more likely to be compassionate towards them. You’ll become less ignorant and more open-minded.
READ MORE: What is sociology?
So, is anthropology something you would delve into? Why or why not?