An introduction to the discipline of Anthropology

welcome to the macat multimedia series and to my cat's introduction to anthropology anthropology is the study of people and their cultures its roots stretch back more than a thousand years to exotic travelers tales imagining strange societies and peoples whose behavior fascinated early explorers but scholars began the serious study of human culture only late in the 19th century early anthropologists studied customs and beliefs in pre-industrial societies in the hope of opening windows onto their own pasts in order to explain how institutions like religion or the family had come to be some of the texts that emerged during this period continue to be influential among them marcel mosses book the gift which argued that gifts far from being free create complex bonds of reciprocal obligation that helped to underpin cultures it was not until the early 20th century though that anthropology began to focus heavily on ethnography the intensive long term fieldwork that has become its best-known tool Franz boas in the United States in bronislaw malinowski in Britain rejected much of their predecessors work as speculation and insisted on living among the people they studied and talking to them in their own languages the questions asked by anthropology got more ambitious - rather than trying to understand how institutions developed over time scholars began to ask how they fitted together to create a functioning society this is the structural functionalist tradition perhaps best exemplified by EE evans-pritchard's witchcraft oracles and magic a book which demonstrated that belief in witchcraft made perfect sense when understood as a way of keeping order in society human culture is complex and anthropology quickly developed into a number of specializations political anthropology questioned the assumptions of global politics as when James Ferguson issued his challenge to the international development industry in the anti politics machine and showed that aid is often directed to meet political goals rather than human needs medical anthropology explores differing experiences of medicine and disease and Victor Turner in the ritual process explored the power of symbols through the performance of religious ceremonies feminist anthropology too has asked fundamental questions about the ways in which we understand society Lila Avila God wonders why Western academics see the clothes worn by Muslim women as symbols of subjugation rather than acceptance of a moral system and why they expect Afghans to cast aside their burkas when they themselves would never wear a pair of shorts to an opera the 1960s saw further advances in anthropological theory beginning with Claude Libby Strauss's ambitious attempts to study cultures as structures of human thought his book structural anthropology drew on a model derived from linguistics to introduce what became known as structuralism the theory that cultures are built on hidden underpinnings formed from human perceptions and activity and the idea that all of these are constructs that are packed with meaning a decade later Clifford Gertz advanced another idea his the interpretation of cultures suggested that culture should not be studied scientifically and in search of laws but interpretive ly by scholars in search of meaning this fresh thinking forced a reexamination of much ethnographic fieldwork but it also liberated anthropology from a focus on the reproduction of culture that had made it blind to social change Johannes Fabian's time and the other provides an example of anthropologists radically rethinking the ways in which they approach the people whom they study Fabian pointed out how easy was to fall into the trap of writing about people as if they inhabited not just another place but another time his work helped to inspire the development of historical anthropology and texts like Eric Wolf's Europe and the people without history which gave voice to people whose stories had formerly been ignored today anthropologists still seek new ways to re-evaluate old problems and apply ethnographic methods to modern people in a rapidly changing and globalizing world we'll introduce you to anthropologists past and present and to the endlessly fascinating world of human culture come inside to find out more macat learn better think smarter aim higher

Channel: Macat

Views: 483,760

Rating: 4.9086418 out of 5

Keywords: Anthropology

Id: J5aglbgTEig

Length: 5min 27sec (327 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2016