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While the following article discusses the relationship among anthropology's subfields and related fields, the emphasis is on [[social anthropology]] and [[cultural anthropology]]. Interested readers should consult entries for [[Archaeology]], [[Biological anthropology]], and [[Primatology]] for further information on their specific histories and current issues.

 

 

In the [[United States]] and [[Canada]], and to a lesser extent in [[United Kingdom|Britain]] and other English-speaking countries, anthropology has often been conceived of as comprising four related fields of study:

As might be inferred from the above list of subfields, anthropology is a methodologically diverse discipline, incorporating both [[qualitative methods]] and [[quantitative methods]]. [[Ethnographies]]—intensive [[case studies]] based on field research—have historically had a central place in the literature of sociocultural and linguistic anthropology, but are increasingly supplemented by [[Multimethodology|mixed-methods approaches]]. Currently, technological advancements are spurring methodological innovation across anthropology's subfields. [[Radiocarbon dating]], [[population genetics]], [[GPS]], and digitial video- and audio-recording are just a few of the many technologies spurring new developments in anthropological research.

 

{{main|History of anthropology}}

The anthropologist [[Eric Wolf]] once described anthropology as "the most scientific of the humanities, and the most humanistic of the sciences." Contemporary anthropologists claim a number of earlier thinkers as their forebears, and the discipline has several sources; [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]], for example, claimed [[Montaigne]] and [[Rousseau]] as important influences. Anthropology can best be understood as an outgrowth of the [[Age of Enlightenment]], a period when Europeans attempted systematically to study human behavior. The traditions of [[jurisprudence]], [[history]], [[philology]], and [[sociology]] then evolved into something more closely resembling the modern views of these disciplines and informed the development of the [[social sciences]], of which anthropology was a part. At the same time, the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] reaction to the Enlightenment produced thinkers, such as [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] and later [[Wilhelm Dilthey]], whose work formed the basis for the "culture concept," which is central to the discipline.

 

 

Early anthropology was divided between proponents of [[unilineal evolution|unilinealism]], who argued that all societies passed through a single evolutionary process, from the most primitive to the most advanced, and various forms of non-lineal theorists, who tended to subscribe to ideas such as diffusionism. Most 19th-century social theorists, including anthropologists, viewed non-European societies as windows onto the pre-industrial human past. As academic disciplines began to differentiate over the course of the 19th century, anthropology grew increasingly distinct from natural history, on the one hand, and from purely historical or literary fields such as Classics, on the other.

Anthropology as it emerged among the colonial powers (mentioned above) has generally taken a different path than that in the countries of southern and central Europe (Italy, Greece, and the successors to the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires). In the former, the ecounter with multiple, distinct cultures, often very different in organization and language from those of Europe, has led to a continuing emphasis on cross-cultural comparison and a receptiveness to certain kinds of cultural relativism.<ref>On varieties of cultural relativism in anthropology, see Spiro, Melford E. (1987) "Some Reflections on Cultural Determinism and Relativism with Special Reference to Emotion and Reason," in ''Culture and Human Nature: theoretical papers of Melford E. Spiro''. Edited by B. Kilborne and L. L. Langness, pp. 32-58. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.</ref> In the successor states of continental Europe, on the other hand, anthropologists often joined with folklorists and linguists in the nationalist/nation-building enterprise. Ethnologists in these countries tended to focus on differentiating among local ethnolinguistic groups, documenting local folk culture, and representing the prehistory of the nation through museums and other forms of public education.<ref>Gellner, Ernest. (1998) ''Language and solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski, and the Habsburg dilemma''. New York: Cambridge University Press.</ref> In this scheme, Russia occupied a middle position. On the one hand, it had a large Asian region of highly distinct, pre-industrial, often non-literate peoples, similar to the situation in the Americas; on the other hand, Russia also participated to some degree in the nationalist discourses of Central and Eastern Europe. After the Revolution of 1917, anthropology in the USSR and later the Soviet Bloc countries were highly shaped by the need to conform to Marxist theories of social evolution.<ref>Gellner, Ernest, ed. (1980) ''Soviet and Western anthropology''. New York: Columbia University Press.</ref>

 

[[Edward Burnett Tylor|E. B. Tylor]] (1832 October 2–1917 January 2) and [[James Frazer|James George Frazer]] (1854 January 1 – 1941 May 7) are generally considered the antecedants to modern sociocultural anthropology in Britain. Though Tylor undertook a field trip to [[Mexico]], both he and Frazer derived most of the material for their comparative studies through extensive readings of Classical materials (literature and history of Greece and Rome), the work of the early European folklorists, and reports from missionaries, travelers, and contemporaneous ethnologists. Tylor advocated strongly for unilinealism and a form of "uniformity of mankind" <ref>[http://www.aaanet.org/gad/history/044stocking.pdf Stocking, George Jr. (1963) "Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of Invention," ''American Anthropologist'', 65:783-799, 1963]</ref>. Tylor in particular laid the groundwork for theories of cultural diffusionism, stating that there are three ways that different groups can have similar cultural forms or technologies: "independent invention, inheritance from ancestors in a distant region, transmission from one race [sic] to another."<ref>Tylor, E. B. (1865) ''Researches into the early history of mankind

the development of civilization.'' London: John Murray.</ref> Tylor formulated one of the early and influential anthropological conceptions of '''culture''' as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."<ref>Tylor, E. B. (1871) ''Primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion,art, and custom''. 2 vols. London, John Murray.</ref> However, as Stocking notes, Tylor mainly concerned himself with describing and mapping the distribution of particular elements of culture, rather than with the larger function, and generally seemed to assume a Victorian idea of progress rather than the idea of non-directional, multilineal cultural development proposed by later anthropologists. Tylor also theorized about the origins of religious feelings in human beings, proposing a theory of animism as the earliest stage, and noting that "religion" has many components, of which he believed the most important to be belief in supernatural beings (as opposed to moral systems, cosmology, etc.). James George Frazer, a Scottish scholar with a broad knowledge of Classics, also concerned himself with religion, myth, and magic. His comparative studies, most influentially in the numerous editions of [[The Golden Bough]], analyzed similarities in religious belief and symbolism worldwide.

[[Max Gluckman]], together with many of his colleagues at the [[Rhodes-Livingstone Institute]] and students at [[Manchester University]], collectively known as the [[Manchester School (anthropology)|Manchester School]], took BSA in new directions through their introduction of explicitly Marxist-informed theory, their emphasis on conflicts and conflict resolution, and their attention to the ways in which individuals negotiate and make use of the social structural possibilities. Later in the 1960s and 1970s, [[Edmund Leach]] and his students [[Mary Douglas]] and [[Nur Yalman]], among others, introduced French structuralism in the style of [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]]; while British anthropology has continued to emphasize social organization and economics over purely symbolic or literary topics, differences among British, French, and American sociocultural anthropologies have diminished with increasing dialogue and borrowing of both theory and methods. Today, social anthropology in Britain engages internationally with many other social theories and has branched in many directions.

 

From its beginnings in the early 19th century through the early 20th century, anthropology in the United States was influenced by the presence of [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] societies. As in other colonial powers (including Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the countries of Latin America) this encounter with colonial subjects manifested in several ways. Curiosity, admiration, desire to "reform" or "civilize" native practices, or simple puzzlement at how societies could function with such different social and political systems, all motivated early ethnographers. Practical concerns of [[Missionary|Christian missionaries]] and colonial administrators, seeking to communicate with native peoples or figure out how to incorporate them, helped gain funding and institutional attention. Statements of ethnologists (as well as many amateurs, missionaries, and colonial administrators, who were not clearly distinguished from more committed scholars in this era prior to professionalization of anthropology) often played into political debates around the definition humanity and citizenship. These conflicts between what may be seen as the pursuit of pure knowledge or the facilitation of intercultural understanding on the one hand, and the potentially exploitative, oppressive, or coercive uses to which that knowledge might be put, on the other, concerned many early anthropologists and has become a major source of controversy and self-examination within the discipline since at least the mid-20th century.

 

[[Cultural anthropology]] in the United States was influenced greatly by the ready availability of Native American societies as ethnographic subjects. The field was pioneered by staff of the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs]] and the Smithsonian Institution's [[Bureau of American Ethnology]], men such as [[John Wesley Powell]] and [[Frank Hamilton Cushing]]. [[Lewis Henry Morgan]] (1818-1881), a lawyer from [[Rochester, New York]], became an advocate for and ethnological scholar of the [[Iroquois]]. His comparative analyses of religion, government, material culture, and especially kinship patterns proved to be influential contributions to the field of anthropology. Like other scholars of his day (such as [[Edward Tylor]]), Morgan argued that human societies could be classified into categories of cultural evolution on a scale of progression that ranged from ''savagery'', to ''barbarism'', to ''civilization''. Generally, Morgan used technology (such as bowmaking or pottery) as an indicator of position on this scale.<ref>This would be influential on the ideas of [[Karl Marx]], who dedicated [[Das Kapital]] to Morgan.</ref>

 

Influenced by the German tradition, Boas argued that the world was full of distinct ''cultures,'' rather than societies whose evolution could be measured by how much or how little "civilization" they had. He believed that each culture has to be studied in its particularity, and argued that cross-cultural generalizations, like those made in the [[natural science]]s, were not possible. In doing so, he fought discrimination against immigrants, African Americans, and Native North Americans.<ref>Stocking, George W. (1968) ''Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the history of anthropology''. London: The Free Press.</ref> Many American anthropologists adopted his agenda for social reform, and theories of race continue to be popular targets for anthropologists today. The so-called "Four Field Approach" has its origins in Boasian Anthropology, dividing the discipline in the four crucial and interrelated fields of sociocultural, biological, linguistic, and prehistoric anthropology.

 

Boas used his positions at [[Columbia University]] and the [[American Museum of Natural History]] to train and develop multiple generations of students. His first generation of students included [[Alfred Kroeber]], [[Robert Lowie]], [[Edward Sapir]] and [[Ruth Benedict]], all of whom produced richly detailed studies of indigenous North American cultures. They provided a wealth of details used to attack the theory of a single evolutionary process. Kroeber and Sapir's focus on Native American languages helped establish [[linguistics]] as a truly general science and free it from its historical focus on [[Indo-European languages]].

 

The publication of [[Alfred Kroeber]]'s textbook, ''Anthropology,'' marked a turning point in American anthropology. After three decades of amassing material, Boasians felt a growing urge to generalize. This was most obvious in the 'Culture and Personality' studies carried out by younger Boasians such as [[Margaret Mead]] and [[Ruth Benedict]]. Influenced by psychoanalytic psychologists such as [[Sigmund Freud]] and [[Carl Jung]], these authors sought to understand the way that individual personalities were shaped by the wider cultural and social forces in which they grew up. Though such works as ''Coming of Age in Samoa'' and ''The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'' remain popular with the American public, Mead and Benedict never had the impact on the discipline of anthropology that some expected. Boas had planned for Ruth Benedict to succeed him as chair of Columbia's anthropology department, but she was sidelined by [[Ralph Linton]], and Mead was limited to her offices at the [[American Museum of Natural History|AMNH]].

 

Canadian anthropology began, as in other parts of the Colonial world, as ethnological data in the records of travellers and missionaries. In Canada, [[Jesuit]] [[Missionary|missionaries]] such as Fathers LeClercq, Le Jeune and Sagard, in the 1600s, provide the oldest ethnographic records of native tribes in what was then the Domain of Canada.

 

Canadian Anthropology is characterized by a combination of Americanist Boasian-influenced interest in Native American tribes and peoples, British Anthropological concerns with social function and process, and Francophone concerns with small, rural and ethnically isolated community studies. Issues of disparity, continuity and change, political-economy, environment and cultural ecology, and personality, culture and symbolism predominated the discourse from World War I to the Vietnam War era.

 

Anthropology in France has a less clear genealogy than the British and American traditions, in part because many French writers influential in anthropology have been trained or held faculty positions in sociology, philosophy, or other fields rather than in anthropology. Most commentators consider [[Marcel Mauss]] (1872-1950), nephew of the influential sociologist [[Émile Durkheim]] to be the founder of the French anthropological tradition. Mauss belonged to Durkheim's [[Année Sociologique]] group; and while Durkheim and others examined the state of modern societies, Mauss and his collaborators (such as [[Henri Hubert]] and [[Robert Hertz]]) drew on ethnography and philology to analyze societies which were not as 'differentiated' as European nation states. Two works by Mauss in particular proved to have enduring relevance: ''[[The Gift (book)|Essay on the Gift]]'' a seminal analysis of [[trade|exchange]] and [[reciprocity (cultural anthropology)|reciprocity]], and his Huxley lecture on the notion of the person, the first comparative study of notions of person and selfhood cross-culturally.<ref>Mauss, Marcel (1938) "A category of the human mind: the notion of person; the notion of self.," in M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes, eds. ''The Category of the Person: anthropology, philosophy, history''. Pp. 1-25. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Originally given as “Une categorie de l’Esprit Humain: La Notion de Personne, Celle de ‘Moi’,” for the Huxley Memorial Lecture and appeared in the ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'', 68.</ref>

 

The most important French social theorist since Foucault and Lévi-Strauss is [[Pierre Bourdieu]], who trained formally in philosophy and sociology and eventually held the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France. Like Mauss and others before him, however, he worked on topics both in sociology and anthropology. His fieldwork among the Kabyles of Algeria places him solidly in anthropology, while his analysis of the function and reproduction of fashion and cultural capital in European societies places him as solidly in sociology.

 

Before [[World War II|WWII]] British 'social anthropology' and American 'cultural anthropology' were still distinct traditions. After the war, enough British and American anthropologists either borrowed ideas and approaches from each other that some began to speak of them collectively as 'sociocultural' anthropology.

 

Structuralism also influenced a number of developments in 1960s and 1970s, including [[Psychological anthropology#Cognitive Anthropology|cognitive anthropology]] and componential analysis. Authors such as [[David Schneider (anthropologist)|David Schneider]], [[Clifford Geertz]], and [[Marshall Sahlins]] developed a more fleshed-out concept of culture as a web of meaning or signification, which proved very popular within and beyond the discipline. In keeping with the times, much of anthropology became politicized through the [[Algerian War of Independence]] and opposition to the [[Vietnam War]];{{fact}} [[Marxism]] became a more and more popular theoretical approach in the discipline.<ref>Nugent, Stephen ''[http://www.ingentaconnect.com/search/article?title=anthropology&title_type=tka&year_from=1998&year_to=2007&database=1&pageSize=20&index=4 Some reflections on anthropological structural Marxism]'' The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Volume 13, Number 2, June 2007, pp. 419-431(13)</ref> By the 1970s the authors of volumes such as ''Reinventing Anthropology'' worried about anthropology's relevance.

 

 

In the late 1980s and 1990s authors such as [[George Marcus]] and [[James Clifford]] pondered ethnographic authority, particularly how and why anthropological knowledge was possible and authoritative. They were reflecting trends in research and discourse initiated by Feminists in the academy, although they excused themselves from commenting specifically on those pioneering critics.<ref>Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (1986) ''Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography''. Berkeley: University of California Press.</ref> Nevertheless, key aspects of feminist theorsing and methods became de rigeur as part of the 'post-modern moment' in anthropology: Ethnographies became more reflexive, explicitly addressing the author's methodology, cultural, gender and racial positioning, and their influence on his or her ethnographic analysis. This was part of a more general trend of [[postmodernism]] that was popular contemporaneously.<ref>Gellner, Ernest (1992) Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion. London/New York: Routledge. Pp: 26-50</ref> Currently anthropologists have begun to pay attention to [[globalization]], [[medicine]] and [[biotechnology]], [[indigenous rights]], and the anthropology of industrialized societies.

 

During the first four decades of the 20th century, American cultural anthropology developed under the powerful influence of Franz Boas and his students and their struggle against racial determinism and the ethnocentrism of 19th-century cultural evolutionism. With the additional impact of the Great Depression and World War II, American anthropology developed a pronounced liberal-left tone by the 1950s. However, the discipline's deep involvement with nonwestern cultures put it in a vulnerable position during the campus upheavals of the late 1960s and in the subsequent "culture wars." The "politics of anthropology" has become a pervasive concern since then. Whatever the realities, the notion of anthropology as somehow complicit in morally unacceptable projects has become a significant topic both within the discipline and in "cultural studies" and "post-colonialism," etc.<ref>Asad, Talal, ed. (1973) Anthropology & the Colonial Encounter. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.</ref><ref>van Breman, Jan, and Akitoshi Shimizu (1999) ''Anthropology and Colonialism in Asia and Oceania''. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.</ref>

 

Other political controversies come from the emphasis in American anthropology on [[cultural relativism]] and its long-standing antipathy to the concept of race.<ref>[http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm American Anthropological Association Statement on Race (17 May 1998)</ref> The development of [[sociobiology]] in the late 1960s was opposed by cultural anthropologists such as [[Marshall Sahlins]], who argued that these positions were reductive. While authors such John Randal Baker continued to develop the biological concept of race into the 1970s, the rise of genetics has proven to be central to developments on this front. As genetics continues to advance as a science, scholars such as [[Cavalli-Sforza|Luca Cavalli-Sforza]] have continued to transform and advance notions of race through the use of recent developments in [[genetics]], such as tracing past migrations of peoples through their [[mitochondrial]] and [[Y chromosome|Y-chromosomal]] [[DNA]], and [[ancestry-informative marker]]s.

 

<div class="references-small"><references/></div>

 

* Barley, Nigel (1983) ''The innocent anthropologist: notes from a mud hut''. London: British Museum Publications.

* Geertz, Clifford (1995) ''After the fact: two countries, four decades, one anthropologist''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

* Rabinow, Paul. (1977) ''Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco''.

 

* Asad, Talal, ed. (1973) ''Anthropology & the Colonial Encounter''. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

* Barth, Fredrik, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silverman. 2005. ''One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American anthropology''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

* Trencher, Susan. (2000) ''Mirrored Images: American Anthropology and American Culture, 1960-1980''.

 

* Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (1986) ''Writing culture : the poetics and politics of ethnography''. Berkeley: University of California Press.

* Geertz, Clifford (1973) ''The Interpretation of Cultures''. New York: Basic Books.

* Shweder, Richard A., and Robert A. LeVine, eds. (1984) ''Culture Theory: essays on mind, self, and emotion''. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

 

* [[Anthrozoology]]

* [[توکمپوهنه]]

* [[ديني وګړپوهنه]]

 

{{wiktionary}}

{{wikiversity3|School:Anthropology|Anthropology|The School of Anthropology}}

* [http://www.anthropology.net Anthropology.net] Community orientated anthropology web portal with user run blogs, forums, tags, and a wiki.

* [http://www.cybercultura.it Cybercultura] Collection of web resources about anthropology of cyberspace (in Italian)

* [http://www.observacionesfilosoficas.net/antropologia.htm Anthropology |Antropología Filosofica in Revista Observaciones Filosoficas] (in Spanish)

 

* [http://www.aaanet.org/ American Anthropological Association Homepage] Home page of largest professional organization of anthropologists

* [http://www.movinganthropology.org The Moving Anthropology Student Network/Moving Anthropology Social Network (MASN)] International network of anthropology students and young academics

* [http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/research/researchcentres/creaindex.html Centre for Research in Evolutionary Anthropology (CREA)]

 

* [http://anthro.amnh.org/anthro.html Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History] Over 160,000 objects from Pacific, North American, African, Asian ethnographic collections with images and detailed description, linked to the original catalogue pages

* [http://www.aio.anthropology.org.uk The Anthropological Index Online] Online biblographic database.

* [http://www.anthrosource.net/ AnthroSource] Online journals of the American Anthropological Association.

 

* [http://www.anthrobase.com Anthrobase.com] - Collection of anthropological texts

* [http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/ Palomar College Anthropology Tutorials] - Tutorials on anthropological topics such as economic systems, kinship, subsistence, religion, and evolution

 

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