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Ruth Benedict, acolyte of the great Franz Boas and in 1947 president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), reputedly said that the very purpose of anthropology was to make the world safe for human differences. Boas never called for the elimination of judgment, only its suspension so that the very judgments we are ethically and morally obliged to make as human beings may be informed ones. Culture, society, and politics are concepts. Thinking through a sociological perspective helps us to understand the situations of others and allows us to better understand the reason people are in the situations they are in. We live today in the social landscape of their dreams. I resided in a wooden hut with a thatched roof in a small village for much of my stay there, as well as another more modern home, made of galvanized iron. For all of these reasons, studying anthropology is the most broadly useful of undergraduate disciplines. What is anthropology and why is it important? Unlike these other disciplines, anthropologists also compare across societies, and between humans and other primates. Anthropologists do not judge other cultures based on their values nor do they view other ways of doing things as inferior. Here is some reasons why is sociology important: Social Values: Social values are important for everyone. Anthropologists of all the subfields use comparison to learn what humans have in common, how we differ, and how we change. Quite simply, just because we all take some belief or style of behavior for granted in the present, does not mean human beings everywhere, or throughout human history, would have agreed. A biological anthropologist studying monkeys in South America might consider the species physical adaptations, foraging patterns, ecological conditions, and interactions with humans in order to answer questions about their social behaviors. Some people will never get it; their egos won't let them. Ethnocentrism is not a useful perspective in contexts in which people from different cultural backgrounds come into close contact with one another, as is the case in many cities and communities throughout the world. It is just one way among a multitude of others. Searching the origins of society and religion, writing the "history of their evolution," seemed to be the most popular topic of nineteenth-century anthropology. When asked that question, humanity responds in 7,000 different languages, voices that collectively comprise our repertoire for dealing with all the challenges that will confront us as a species. What is the importance of knowing the perspective of anthropology sociology? Some anthropologists have called for greater efforts to share our anthropological findings with the public in order to try to solve significant historical, social, biological, and environmental problems. All of which raises a question. I hope my research on wife abuse will contribute to the emergence of a deeper understanding of the social and cultural sources of gender violence in order to end this violence, and greater awareness of its scope and its negative effects on women. Anthropology is the broadest, most fundamental of academic subjects and should be at the core of a modern undergraduate education. Anthropologists also study our ancient past and human origins, particularly through the subfield of archaeology, which recovers and analyzes material and physical remains.Students who major in anthropology are curious about other cultures and other times. So cooking becomes Discover world-changing science. Perhaps fittingly it took an outsider to remind anthropologists why anthropology matters. I have also explored how race impacts peoples senses of belonging in various social spacesfor instance, African American participation in downhill skiing or the experiences of underrepresented students at historically white colleges and universities. Whether this intellectual potential is exercised through technological innovation, as has been the great achievement of the West, or through the untangling of complex threads of memory inherent in a myth, a priority of many other peoples in the world, is simply a matter of choice and orientation, adaptive insights and cultural emphasis. Thinking from a sociological perspective allows one to better understand other people's circumstances and the reasons why they are in the situations they are in. I conducted interviews and surveys and also shared daily and ritual experiences with people to learn about inadequate access to nutritious food, and social structural sources of this kind of health problem. Activity 2. Of course, learning to see the world through someone else's . How do seemingly random beliefs and convictions converge into this thing called culture, a term that he was the first to promote as an organizing principle, a useful point of intellectual departure. Cultures under threat are neither fragile nor vestigial; in every instance, they are living dynamic peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces. Ego is the main threat to self-awareness; it is the . 14. Some sub-disciplines, like biological anthropology and archaeology, use a deductive, scientific approach. How should one resolve the competing interests of the funding agency and the community? It allows us to connect on a deeper level and build stronger, more meaningful relationships. For example, in 2010 some cultural anthropologists critiqued the American Anthropological Associations mission statement, which stated that the disciplines goal was to advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects.[7] These scholars wanted to replace the word science with public understanding. They argued that some anthropologists do not use the scientific method of inquiry; instead, they rely more on narratives and interpretations of meaning. How is this connected to that? The sociological imagination points to the crux of the sociological perspectivethat society is a social product, and, as such, its structures and institutions are changeable. Through my research experiences, I have participated in the rich daily lives of farmers, woodcarvers, hospital personnel, government employees, shopkeepers, students, and other groups of people. Converging Radial Directions: Draw and complete the diagram in your notebook by writing the importance of knowing the perspective of anthropology, For anthropologists, cultural relativism is especially important. Why do we believe what we believe? One of the most important things that anthropology does is create a basis for questioning taken-for-granted notions of progress. All of this is to say that anthropology offers one of the most biting critiques of modernity, which challenges us to slow down and think about whether the new technologies we are constantly being presented with make sense. Thus food becomes not just a symbol of, but the reality of, love and security. Environmental anthropology deals broadly with culture and environment. Studying anthropology fosters broad knowledge of other cultures, skills in observation and analysis, critical thinking, clear communication, and applied problem-solving. As such, they cannot be seen or touched, and yet the way we see a. This type of research takes a great amount of time and effort but produces a uniquely deep and contextual type of knowledge. Investigating and revealing the nature of the past Assessing present genetic diversity through evolutionary history Expanding knowledge of primate behavior, biology and diversity Investigative Observing people/data/things Organizing ideas/materials/objects/people Analyzing relationships between factors Evaluating Sampling Cultural Why do we behave the way we do? These perspectives make anthropology distinct from related disciplines like history, sociology, and psychology that ask similar questions about the past, societies, and human nature. Although I am not calling for a mass return to foraging, when we consider the significant worldwide issues that humans face todaysuch things as global warming, the threat of nuclear war, accelerating ethnic conflicts, and a world population that has grown from one billion to nearly eight billion over the past two hundred yearswe are left with difficult questions about whether 10,000 years of agriculture and a couple hundred years of industrialization have been in humanitys best long-term interests. Kommentare: 0. The catalyst, as Charles King reminds us, was the wisdom and scientific genius of Franz Boas and a small band of courageous scholarsMargaret Mead, Alfred Kroeber, Elsie Clews Parsons, Melville Herskovits, Edward Sapir, Robert Lowie, Ruth Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston and many others contrarians all, who came into his orbit, destined to change the world. I lived in Ifugao for almost four years. Respecting the cultural differences between one another. How does our perspective change upon learning that for the vast majority of human historysome say as much as ninety-nine percent of itpeople lived a foraging lifestyle (commonly referred to as hunting and gathering)? Race and gender are cultural constructs, derived not from biology but born in the realm of ideas. None existed in an absolute sense; every culture was but a model of reality. Concepts in one discipline are used in the other. As one former cultural anthropology student observed, I believe an anthropology course has one basic goal: to eliminate ethnocentrism. Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification. Similarly, the anthropological concept of ethnocentrism is incredibly useful when paired with different examples of how people define family, recognize leadership, decide what is and is not edible, and the like. In Vietnam, I have had the opportunity to live with a family in a commune in Hanoi, and in nearby provinces. The study of the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture (Kottak, 2012, p. 2). This has included anthropologists who are working in each of anthropologys four subfields. If you recognize that marriage need not exclusively imply a man and a woman, that single mothers can be good mothers, and that two men or two women can raise good families as long as there is love in the home, its because youve embraced values and intuitions inconceivable to your great-grandparents. In 1871 Darwin published The Descent of Man, which argued that human beings shared a recent common ancestor with the great African apes. Social anthropology plays a central role in an era when global understanding and recognition of diverse ways of seeing the world are of critical social, political and economic importance. WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY? The key anthropological perspectives are holism, relativism, comparison, and fieldwork. It helps anthropologists to avoid equating "human nature," for example, with the peculiarities of our own contemporary society. Sociology improves our understanding of society and increases the power of social action, capabilities, talents and limitations. Anthropology can also help us imagine and design futures that attend to human and environmental complexity. Through my anthropological training, I have made a career exploring how race influences our perceptions of popular music. This led me to pursue graduate work in anthropology despite the fact that I had taken only one anthropology course in college. His core idea, distilled in the notion of cultural relativism, was a radical departure, as unique in its way as was Einsteins theory of relativity in the discipline of physics.