INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY

Lecture on March 05 & 12, 2009

Room 412, 4th Fl.
Faculty of Communication
President University
Kota Jababeka – Cikarang Baru
Bekasi 17550
INDONESIA

Literature :
Miller, D. Barbara; Wood, Bernard (2006), ANTHROPOLOGY, USA, Pearson Education Inc.

By. Hendra Manurung, S.IP, M.A in Area Studies of European Countries

ANTHROPOLOGY & SOCIAL SCIENCES

 What is Anthropology ?
 The study of
 human nature, human culture and society, and the
human past;
 how human biology, prehistory and history, economics,
politics, religion, and kinship shape one another to make
human life what it is;
 local contexts situated in broader social, cultural, and
political matrices;
 what it means to be human.
ANTHROPOLOGY & SOCIAL SCIENCES

 Anthropology’s Four Subfields are :

 Biological (physical) Anthropology
 The study of human beings as living organisms different from and
similar to other animals. (subfields: primatology &
paleoanthropology)
 Archaeology (often spelled “Archeology”)
 The study of human remains for evidence of past cultural activity.
 Linguistic anthropology
 The study of language in relation to the broader cultural, historical,
and biological contexts that make language possible.
 Cultural & Social Anthropology
 The study of cultural variation in people’s learned beliefs, ideas, and
behaviors as members of a society.
Basic Concepts in Socio-cultural Anthropology

 Culture
 Comparative (cross-cultural comparison, generalization)
 Holistic (integrative, whole greater than parts)
 Domains of culture (biology, psychology, politics,
economics, history, kinship, religion, communication,
performance, etc.)
 Symbol (abstract relationships)
 Explaining human nature: dualism & determinism,
materialism & idealism, empiricism & positivism,
qualitative & quantitative (cf. holism)
 Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism
 Fieldwork (extensive, intensive involvement with a group)
 Participant-observation (in multiple local contexts)
 Reflexivity (highlighting inter-subjective meaning
creation)
 Ethnography (writing about cultures)
 Culture
 People’s learned beliefs, ideas, and behaviors as
members of a society.
 Human culture is learned, shared, patterned,
adaptive, and symbolic.
 The main way in which human groups differ from
one another.
 Began over 5 million years ago with hominid
bipedal and opposable thumb & fingers; 2,5 million
years ago with stone tools; 200,000 years ago with
homo sapiens’ complex symbolic representation
and social organization.
What is field work in cultural anthropology ?

 Firsthand exploration of a society and

culture.
 Develops a holistic perspective about a
culture.
 Reveals the difference between what
people say they do and what they do.
Fieldwork Techniques :
 Participantobservation
 Photography and filming
 Recording life histories
 Using historical archives
Common Issues in Fieldwork
 Fieldwork is done by colleting data & testing a
hypothesis, such as :
 Community acceptance
 Appropriate data-gathering techniques.
 Understand local political structure
 Choosing knowledgeable informants.
 Coping with culture shock.
 Learning a new language.
 Reevaluate findings in the light of
new evidence.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Participant-
observation

Advantages Disadvantages
- Enhances rapport - Small sample size.
- Enables fieldworkers to - Difficult to obtain
distinguish actual and standardized comparable data
expected behavior - Problems of recording
- Permits observation of - Obtrusive effect on subject
nonverbal behavior matter
 Ethnography in world history
 Anthropology began in the late 19th Century
as a comparative science.
 Ethnographers concentrated on small-scale,
technologically simpler societies.
 Cultures were place on evolutionary scales
of cultural development.
Ethnography in early 20th century
Franz Boas insisted that
fieldwork was essential for
holistic study.
Refer to Malinowski,
ethnography is “the main
goal for an ethnographer
was to obtain the native’s
point of view”.
 Feminist anthropology :
 Questions gender bias in ethnography and
cultural theory.
 Men, who had limited access to women’s
lives, performed much of the fieldwork.
 Ignoring women’s perspectives
perpetuates the oppression of women.
 Evolutionism is :

 Allcultures pass through the same developmental

stages in the same order.
 Evolution is unidirectional and leads to higher
levels of culture.
 A deductive approach is used to apply general
theories to specific cases.
 Ethnocentric because evolutionists put their own
societies at the top.
Functionalism
 Through fieldwork, anthropologists can understand how cultures
work for the individual and the society.
 Society is like a biological organism with many interconnected
parts.
 Empirical fieldwork is essential.
 The structure of any society contains indispensable functions
without which the society could not continue.
 Radcliffe Brown is a structural functionalist, who discern and
describe the role of social institutions in the smooth working of
society and preserving social solidarity.
 Malinowski’s psychological functionalism in 7 universal human
needs:
 Nutrition, reproduction, bodily comfort, safety, relaxation,
movement, and growth.
 Psychological Anthropology in Culture &
Personality
 Anthropologists need to explore the
relationships between psychological
and cultural variables.
 Personality is result of cultural
learning.
 Universal temperaments associated
with males and females do not exist.
 Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
 Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)
Native Anthropology
 Study of one’s own society.
 Maintain the social distance of the outsider
to stay objective and avoid going as a
Native.
 “Going Native”
 Becoming more common as native
cultures disappear.
Ethical Fieldwork

Anthropologists must :
Obtain consent of the people to be
studied.
Protect them from risk.
Respect their privacy and

dignity.
The Development of Anthropology
 Anthropology is the
study of humankind in
all times and places

 Anthropologists are
from many different
societies
Canadian Anthropology
 Anthropological studies began in the 18th
and 19th centuries
 Museums, academic departments and
applied research influenced the
development of anthropology
 Canadian anthropologists shape
government policies and many are
advocates for 1st nation people
The Discipline of Anthropology
 Biological
Anthropology

 Socio-cultural
Anthropology
Biological Anthropology
 The systematic study
of humans as
biological organisms
Anthropology Applied
 Forensic
Anthropology
 The identification of
human skeleton
remains for legal
purposes
 Forensic
anthropology still be
used for health and
medicine purposes
nowadays.
Socio-cultural Anthropology
 Focusing on
human behavior
 Avoiding culture
bound theories
 Ethnography
 Ethnology
 Ethno history
Ethnomethodology
 The term etnomethodology was coined by
Harold Garfinkel, supposing it to mean ‘people’s
methods’, to refer to an approach to the
sociology of everyday life, that became popular
in the 1960s. Etnomethodology is concerned
with the way in which members of society create
the ordered social work in which they live (Andre
Edgar & Peter Sedwick in cultural theory, The
Key Concepts, 2003)
What is communication in socio-cultural
anthropology ?
 Communication concentrates on the
human aspect of processing information,
regardless of the medium or
communication system that being utilized
 These models are similar to each other,
but each adds at least one important
element to the process and definition of
modern communication
 The Linear Model of Modern
Communication

Message Signal Received Message

Signal

Information Receiver Destination

Transmitter
Source

Noise
source
The Communication Process in Socio-
cultural anthropology
Assignment to be submitted on March 12,
2009 at 12.00 a.m
 Can cultural anthropology be used to study modern
societies and large-scale urban societies?
 What’s the difference between sociology and
anthropology? Is it a matter of methods, topics, scale,
academic tradition, or what?
 Share your ideas about the difference between society
and culture. Give some examples
 Is cultural anthropology, as a soft science, less valid as a
means of understanding reality, compared with hard
sciences, such as mathematics, physics, biology, and
chemistry?