©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Introducing Cultural Anthropology Roberta Edwards Lenkeit

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Anthropology: What Are Its Subfields and Perspectives?

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. What Do Anthropologists Study?  The Subfields of Anthropology –Cultural Anthropology –Archaeology –Linguistics –Biological Anthropology

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. The four fields of Anthropology

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Cultural Anthropology  Ethnography: The descriptive study of one culture, subculture, or microculture based on fieldwork.  Ethnology: The comparative study of cultures; it presents analytical generalizations about human culture.

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Archaeology  Archaeology is the systematic study of the remains of previous cultures as a means of reconstructing the lifeways of people who lived in the past.

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Archaeology The areas of focus in archaeology include:  Prehistoric Archaeology –Artifacts –Ecofacts  Historical Archaeology  Cultural Resource Management  Experimental Archaeology  Applied Archaeology

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Linguistics Linguistics is the study of language; research areas include:  Descriptive Linguistics  Historical Linguistics  Ethnolinguistics  Sociolinguistics

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Biological Anthropology  Biological anthropology, also called Physical anthropology, studies Homo sapiens as biological beings both in the present and in the past.  Paleoanthropology  Primatology  Contemporary Human Variation  Forensic Anthropology

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. How Anthropology Is Unique  Anthropology is Holistic  Anthropologists Do Fieldwork  Anthropologists Focus on the Comparative Method  The Perspective of Cultural Relativism –Cultural Ethnocentrism  Should There Be Any Universal Values?

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Anthropology is Holistic  Holistic –Biological Perspective –Cultural Perspective –Broad Time Frame

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Anthropologists Do Fieldwork  Cultural Anthropology in the Field  Archaeology in the Field  Linguistics in the Field  Biological Anthropology in the Field

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Anthropologists Focus on the Comparative Method  The Comparative Method is Used in all Fields of Anthropology

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. The Perspective of Cultural Relativism  Cultural Relativism  Ethnocentrism

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Should There Be Any Universal Values?  Arguments FOR  Arguments AGAINST

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. The Scientific Approach in Anthropology  Scientific Method  Postmodernism in Anthropology—A Humanistic View

©2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Summary  Anthropology is the study of humans throughout the world spanning the last 4 million years.  It is a holistic discipline.  Anthropologists seek to explain human cultural behavior using the scientific method.  Anthropologists include a humanistic perspective.