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What is Anthropology ?
Has 4 disciplines:
1. Biological/Physical
2. Linguistic
4. Social or Cultural
All the natural and social sciences ask distinctive questions which unify all 4 fields. How many
different ways are there to being a human being ? How are the different elements of human
past fit into 1? What leads to change ?
Its the study of the diversity of human bodies and behaviours in the past and in the present.
The homanans led to present human beings by branching of through evolution which took about
6-7 million years.
Linguistic Anthropology is different from Linguistics. Do all languages follow the same logic ?
Language is related to social practices and social performances. Different groups and
different cultures make use of language differently.
Ethnography is the holistic analysis of a small scale society (based on forms of economy which
are made of small groups, who you know is more important than what you know, face to face
interaction is crucial) using the field work method of investigation. Large scale societies are
dominated by large industries and create mass production.
Social Cultural System: Human Ecology (how people react to their environment) overlaps with
Economy (system of production distribution), this in turn overlaps with Social structure
(system of social groupings in different societies), this overlaps with Cosmology (consists of
religion, philosophy)/Ideology (consists of the approach to political organization, translation of
religion into politics)/Morality (peoples notion of right and wrong).
Field work is living with the people for considerable time to gain more knowledge (participant
observation). Read Eller ch2 pgs 35-41)
Weber: Human action and speech in terms of culture eg. mentality, religion. Verstehem
understand mentality.
When people do ethnography they are looking at the culture as a whole but they need to use
theory to answer why by generalising.