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Using These Slides

These PowerPoint slides have been designed for use by students and instructors using the Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity textbook by Conrad Kottak. These files contain short outlines of the content of the chapters, as well as selected photographs, maps, and tables. Students may find these outlines useful as a study guide or a tool for review. Instructors may find these files useful as a basis for building their own lecture slides or as handouts. Both audiences will notice that many of the slides contain more text than one would use in a typical oral presentation, but it was felt that it would be better to err on the side of a more complete outline in order to accomplish the goals above. Both audiences should feel free to edit, delete, rearrange, and rework these files to build the best personalized outline, review, lecture, or handout for their needs.

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Contents of Student CD-ROM CDStudent CD-ROMthis fully interactive student CD-ROM is packaged free of charge with every new textbook and features the following unique tools: How To Ace This Course: Animated book walk-through Expert advice on how to succeed in the course (provided on video by the University of Michigan) Learning styles assessment program Study skills primer Internet primer Guide to electronic research Chapter-by-Chapter Electronic Study Guide: Video clip from a University of Michigan lecture on the text chapter Interactive map exercise Chapter objectives and outline Key terms with an audio pronunciation guide Self-quizzes (multiple choice, true/false, and short-answer questions with feedback indicating why your answer is correct or incorrect) Critical thinking essay questions Internet exercises Vocabulary flashcards Chapter-related web links Cool Stuff: Interactive globe Study break links

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Contents of Online Learning Center

Students Online Learning Centerthis free web-based student supplement features many of the same tools as the Student CD-ROM (so students can access these materials either online or on CD, whichever is convenient), but also includes: An entirely new self-quiz for each chapter (with feedback, so students can take two pre-tests prior to exams) Career opportunities Additional chapter-related readings Anthropology FAQs PowerPoint lecture notes Monthly updates

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C h a p t e r

What is Anthropology?
This chapter introduces students to the textbook by discussing how Anthropology is defined and how it relates to other academic fields. It also discusses the different subfields and dimensions that exist within Anthropology.

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What is Anthropology?


Anthropology is the study of the human species and its immediate ancestors.


Anthropology is holistic in that the discipline is concerned with studying the whole of the human condition: past, present and future. Anthropology studies biology, society, language, and culture. Anthropology offers a unique cross-cultural perspective by constantly comparing the customs of one society with those of others. Society is organized life in groups, a feature that humans share with other animals. Cultures are traditions and customs, transmitted through learning, that govern the beliefs and behaviors of the people exposed to them. While culture is not biological, the ability to use it rests in hominid biology.
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People share both society and culture.



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Adaptation, Variation, and Change



Adaptation is the process by which organisms cope with environmental stresses.



Human adaptation involves interaction between culture and biology to satisfy individual goals. Four types of human adaptation:
   

cultural (technological) adaptation genetic adaptation long-term physiological or developmental adaptation immediate physiological adaptation

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Adaptation, Variation, and Change



Humans are the most adaptable animals in the world, having the ability to inhabit widely variant ecological niches.


Humans, like all other animals use biological means to adapt to a given environment. Humans are unique in having cultural means of adaptation.

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Adaptation, Variation, and Change



Through time, social and cultural means of adaptation have become increasingly important for human groups. Human groups have devised diverse ways of coping with a wide range of environments. The rate of this cultural adaptation has been rapidly accelerating during the last 10,000 years.


 

Food production developed between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago after millions of years during which hunting and gathering was the sole basis for human subsistence. The first civilizations developed between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago. More recently, the spread of industrial production has profoundly affected human life.
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Four Subdisciplines of Anthropology

The academic discipline of American anthropology is unique in that it includes four subdisciplines: cultural anthropology, archaeological anthropology, biological or physical anthropology, and linguistic anthropology.  This four field approach developed in the US as early American anthropologists studying native peoples of North America became interested in exploring the origins and diversity of the groups that they were studying.  This broad approach to studying human societies did not develop in Europe (e.g. Archaeology, in most European universities, is not a subdiscipline of anthropology; it is its own department).

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Origins of American Anthropology

American anthropology arose out of concern for the history and cultures of Native North Americans. Ely S. Parker was a Seneca Indian who made important contributions to early anthropology.

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Four Subdisciplines of Anthropology



Variation in Time (diachronic research): using information from contemporary groups to model changes that took place in the past, and using knowledge gained from past groups to understand what is likely to happen in the future (e.g. reconstructing past languages using principles based on modern ones). Variation in Space (synchronic research): comparing information collected from human societies existing at the same or roughly the same time, but from different geographic locations (e.g. the race concept in the US, Brazil, and Japan). Any conclusions about human nature must be pursued with a comparative, cross-cultural approach.
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Cultural Forces and Human Biology



Cultural traditions promote certain activities and abilities, discourage others, and set standards of physical well-being and attractiveness.


Participation and achievement in sports is determined by cultural factors, not racial ones. In Brazilian culture, women should be soft, with big hips and buttocks, not big shoulders; since competitive swimmers tend to have big, strong, shoulders and firm bodies, competitive swimming is not very popular among Brazilian females. In the US, there arent many African-American swimmers or hockey players, not because of some biological reason, but because those sports arent as culturally significant as football, basketball, baseball, and track.
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Intelligence Tests


There is no conclusive evidence for biologically based contrasts in intelligence between rich and poor, black and white, or men and women.


The best indicators of how any individual will perform on an intelligence test are environmental, such as educational, economic, and social background. All standard tests are culture-bound and biased because they reflect the training and life experiences of those who develop and administer them.

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Culture and Sports

Years of swimming sculpt a distinctive physique. The countries that tend to produce successful female swimmers are the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Scandinavia, and the former Soviet Union, where this body type isnt as stigmatized for women as it is in Latin countries.

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Intelligence Tests


Jensenism asserts that African-Americans are hereditarily incapable of doing as well as whites.


Named for Arthur Jensen, the educational psychologist who observed that on average African-Americans perform less well on intelligence tests that Euro-Americans and AsianAmericans. This racist notion of the inborn inferiority of AfricanAmericans recently resurfaced in the 1994 book The Bell Curve by Richard Hernnstein and Charles Murray.

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The Bell Curve (1994)

Like Jensen, Hernnstein and Murray disregard more convincing environmental explanations in favor of a genetic one to explain patterns observed in intelligence test scores.  An environmental explanation acknowledges that for many reasons, both genetic and environmental, some people are smarter than others, however these differences in intelligence cannot be generalized to characterize whole populations or social groups.  Psychologists have come up with many ways to measure intelligence, but there are problems with all of them.

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Intelligence Tests


Intelligence tests reflect the experiences of the people who write them.


Middle- and upper-class children do well because they share the test makers educational expectations and standards. The SATs claim to measure intellectual aptitude but they also measure the type and quality of high school education, linguistic and cultural background, and parental wealth. Studies have shown that performance on the SATs can be improved by coaching and preparation, placing those students who can pay for an SAT preparation course at an advantage.

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Intelligence Tests


Cultural biases in testing affect performance by people in other cultures as well as different groups in the same nation.


Native Americans scored the lowest of any group in the US, but when the environment during growth and development for Native Americans is similar to that of middle-class whites, the test scores tend to equalize (e.g. the Osage Indians). At the start of World War I, African-Americans living in the north scored on average better than whites living in the south due to the better public school systems in the north.

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Cultural Anthropology


Cultural Anthropology combines ethnography and ethnology to study human societies and cultures for the purpose of explaining social and cultural similarities and differences. Ethnography produces an account (a book, an article, or a film) of a particular community, society, or culture based on information that is collected during fieldwork.  Generally, ethnographic fieldwork involves living in the community that is being studied for an extended period of time (e.g. 6 months to 2 years).  Ethnographic fieldwork tends to emphasize local behavior, beliefs, customs, social life, economic activities, politics, and religion, rather then developments at the national level.  Since cultures are not isolated, ethnographers must investigate the local, regional, national, and global systems of politics, economics, and information that expose villagers to external influences.
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Cultural Anthropology


Ethnology examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares the ethnographic data gathered in different societies to make generalizations about society and culture.


Ethnology uses ethnographic data to build models, test hypotheses, and create theories that enhance our understanding of how social and cultural systems work. Ethnology works from the particular (ethnographic data) to the general (theory).

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Cultural Anthropology
Comparison between Ethnography and Ethnology ETHNOGRAPHY requires fieldwork to collect data descriptive group/community specific ETHNOLOGY draws upon data collected by a series of researchers synthetic comparative/cross-cultural

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Archaeological Anthropology
Archaeological anthropology reconstructs, describes, and interprets past human behavior and cultural patterns through material remains.  The material remains of a culture include artifacts (e.g. potsherds, jewelry, and tools), garbage, burials, and the remains of structures.  Archaeologists use paleoecological studies to establish the ecological and subsistence parameters within which given group lived.


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Archaeological Anthropology
The archaeological record provides archaeologists the unique opportunity to look at changes in social complexity over thousands and tens of thousands of years (this kind of time depth is not accessible to ethnographers).  Archaeology is not restricted to prehistoric societies.



Historical archaeology combines archaeological data and textual data to reconstruct historically known groups.] William Rathjes garbology project in Tucson, Arizona.

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Biological Anthropology
 

Biological, or physical, anthropology investigates human biological diversity across time and space. There are five special interests within biological anthropology:
   

paleoanthropology: human evolution as revealed by the fossil record human genetics human growth and development human biological plasticity: the bodys ability to change as it copes with stresses such as heat, cold, and altitude primatology: the study of the biology, evolution, behavior, and social life of primates.

Biological anthropology is multidisciplinary as it draws on biology, zoology, geology, anatomy, physiology, medicine, public health, osteology, and archaeology.
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Biological Anthropology

Paleoanthropologists study the fossil record of human evolution. This photo shows Professor Teuku Jacob with early fossil skulls from Java, Indonesia.

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Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic anthropology is the study of language in its social and cultural context across space and time.  Some linguistic anthropologists investigate universal features of language that may be linked to uniformities in the human brain.  Historical linguists reconstruct ancient languages and study linguistic variation through time.  Sociolinguistics investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation to discover varied perceptions and patterns of thought in different cultures.

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Theoretical/Academic Anthropology


Theoretical/academic anthropology includes the four subfields discussed above (cultural, archaeological, biological, and linguistic anthropology).


Directed at collecting data to test hypotheses and models that were created to advance the field of anthropology. Generally, theoretical/academic anthropology is carried out in academic institutions (e.g. universities and specialized research facilities).

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Applied Anthropology


Applied anthropology is the application of any of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and techniques to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems.


Some standard subdivisions have developed in applied anthropology: medical anthropology, environmental anthropology, forensic anthropology, and development anthropology. Applied anthropologists are generally employed by international development agencies, like the World Bank, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations.
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Medical Anthropology
Medical anthropology studies health conditions from a cross-cultural perspective. In Uganda's Mwiri primary school children are taught about HIV.

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Applied Anthropology
Applied anthropologists assess the social and cultural dimensions of economic development.  Development projects often fail when planners ignore the cultural dimensions of development.  Applied anthropologists work with local communities to identify specific social conditions that will influence the failure or success of a development project.


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Two Dimensions of Anthropology

The Four Subfields and Two Dimensions of Anthropology GENERAL ANTHROPOLOGY Cultural Anthropology Archaeological Anthropology Biological or Physical Anthropology Linguistic Anthropology APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY Medical Anthropology Cultural Resource Management (CRM) Forensic Anthropology

Non-government Organizations (NGOs)

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Anthropology and Other Fields

Anthropologys own broad scope has always lent it to interdisciplinary collaboration.  Anthropology is a science, in that it is a systematic field of study that uses experiments, observations, and deduction to produce reliable explanations of human cultural and biological phenomena.  Anthropology is also one of the humanities, in that is encompasses the study and cross-cultural comparison of languages, texts, philosophies, arts, music, performances and other forms of creative expression.

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Cultural Anthropology and Sociology

Formerly, sociology focused on western societies while anthropology looked at exotic societies.  Cultural anthropological methodologies have primarily been in-depth and qualitative (e.g. participant observation).  Sociological methodologies tended to be mainly quantitative (statistically based).  The trend toward increasing interdisciplinary cooperation (deconstruction) is causing these differences to disappear.


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Political Science and Economics

While other disciplines have looked at such institutions as economics and politics as distinct and amenable to separate analysis, anthropology has emphasized their relatedness to other aspects of the general social order.  Anthropology has tended to emphasize cross-cultural variation in such institutions, in contrast to the almost exclusively Western orientation of the other disciplines.


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Anthropology and the Humanities

The anthropological concept of culture has gained increasing influence in the humanities treatment of human artifacts.  In turn, cultural studies have brought a fuller recognition of the influence such artifacts may exert on human behavior.


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Anthropology and Psychology

Anthropology has contributed a cross-cultural perspective to concepts developed in psychology.  The school of cultural anthropology known as culture and personality has emphasized child rearing practices as the fundamental means for transmitting culture.


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Anthropology and History

The convergence between the disciplines of anthropology and history has been marked, particularly during the last decade.  Recent treatments of colonial history have emphasized the importance of understanding the cultural contexts of historical records.  Kottak argues for some continued distinction between history and anthropology, on the basis of historys focus on the movement of individuals through roles, as opposed to anthropologys focus on change in structure or form.

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