1-13-06 What is anthropology?

· What is anthropology?

o Our definition (from the syllabus): Anthropology is a comparative, holistic discipline that seeks to understand humans in the broadest sense by studying their geographical and chronological diversity.

§ Comparative: crosscultural, synchronic (same time), diachronic (over time)

§ Holistic: studying human beings from many angles. Some of the contrasting vantage points we bring together within anthropology: science and the humanities; culture and environment; present and past; Western and non-Western; small-scale study and large-scale comparison.

§ The four subfields of (American) anthropology:

· Physical anthropology

o Human evolution and genetics

o Human development and plasticity

o Primate evolution and behavior

· Archaeology

o Understanding past human behavior through material remains: social institutions and relations, ecology, household patterns, the rise of states.

· Cultural anthropology

o Ethnographic research through participant observation

o Ethnology synthesizes data and looks for patterns crossculturally

· Linguistic anthropology

o Language in social, cultural, and historical context

	Past	Present
Biological variability	Bioarchaeology	Physical anthropology
Behavioral variability	Archaeology	Cultural anthropology
Linguistic Variability	Linguistic anthropology (historical linguistics)	Linguistic anthropology (structural linguistics)

§ Some specialties within anthropology transcend or combine these subfields, e.g.:

· Public anthropology

· Bioarchaeology

· Human ecology

· Readings - some questions for thought:

· Bower, “Slumber’s Unexplored Landscape” (PB 7)

o What does crosscultural sleep research suggest about relationships between culture and biology?

o What might Westerners gain by applying some of the results of crosscultural sleep research? That is, what advantages might there be in recognizing that our idea of “normal” sleep is culturally shaped, and perhaps changing some of our norms and behaviors accordingly?

o How is sleep research done by anthropologists different from that done by researchers in other fields? How do these different kinds of research complement each other in better understanding human sleep patterns?

· “From Tikal to Tucson” (PB 16)

o What kinds of data could “garbagology” research generate that might be missed by other kinds of research?

o What kinds of conclusions might we draw from discrepancies between self-reported behavior and evidence from “garbagology”?

· Mead, “Letter from Peri—Manus II” (PB 20)

o What kinds of changes, and what continuities, did Mead observe in the Manus over 37 years of fieldwork?

o What is the task of the anthropological fieldworker, according to Mead?

o What are some challenges Mead observes about anthropological fieldwork?

· Laabs, “Corporate Anthropologists” (PB 23)

o How is business anthropology, as described here, similar to and different from the kind of fieldwork Margaret Mead described?

o What benefits might a corporation recognize in consulting an anthropologist?

o What special challenges might an anthropologist face in working for a corporation?