The Anthropological Perspective

Generally, the lay public associates the field of anthropology with the romantic adventures of archeologists such as Indiana Jones. In fact, it is the broadest of the social sciences, incorporating perspectives from biology, history (or prehistory), linguistics, and contemporary ethnology. The four subfields of anthropology are called: cultural anthropology (which is what we do at Cedar Crest), archeology, biological or physical anthropology, and linguistics. In American graduate programs, students are required to have taken courses in all four subfields, though they usually specialize in one. The reasoning behind this breadth of training is the assumption that, if we are to truly understand human behavior, we need to see the potential contributions of culture and past traditions, biology and evolved dispositions, and even, language.

Anthropology is the study of humankind, both ancient and contemporary. Traditionally, the province of study was non-Western, small-scale societies. The rite of passage for most cultural anthropologists is long-term community fieldwork in a distant setting. The purpose of fieldwork is to provide the lived experience of the other and rendering the lifeways and beliefs of other people in an interpretable way. Anthropology is holistic in the sense of providing through case studies a complete picture of another group in terms of its material and economic conditions, social organization, intellectual life and expressive traditions.

In addition to being holistic, anthropology is comparative in the sense of examining one society against another. In this mode, the differences across groups become striking. While the field is known for its penchant for trotting out examples of diversity from human groups, the more serious goal is to try to see and explain societies as coherent wholes. Societies are not grab bags of disparate traits. It is possible to explain the reasons for certain traits and customs. We look for the inter-connections between environment and technology, technology and economic systems, economic organization and social organization, and the like.

In recent decades, many anthropologists have turned their attention back to their own societies. Although the complexity of contemporary societies is daunting, it is still possible to use the classic tools of ethnographic inquiry to do fieldwork. Community studies continue to be done; contemporary examples include Appalachian communities, coal mining and steel towns, and urban neighborhoods. There is even a recent study of Colonial Williamsburg.

Links:

Harvard Pluralism Project ( www.pluralism.org/affiliates/richardson/index.php)
American Anthropological Association (www.aaanet.org)
FOSAP-Federation of Small Anthropology Programs (www.fosap.org)

Some Resources:

The best concise explanation of cultural anthropology I have found is:
Michael Carrithers: Why Humans Have Culture (Oxford UP)

Two general references, useful for a snapshot of world cultures, are:
Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology (David Levinson and Carol Ember) and Encyclopedia of World Cultures (David Levinson, general editor)