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Anthropology is the study of Archaeology, which studies past human cultures through investigation of physical evidence, is thought of as a branch of anthropology in the United States,[4] although in Europe, it is viewed as a discipline in its own right, or related to other disciplines. Eric R. Wolf states "Ideas about race, culture and peoplehood or ethnicity have long served to orient anthropology's inquiries ...."[5]


  • Origin and development of the term 1
    • Through the 19th century 1.1
    • 20th & 21st century 1.2
  • Fields 2
    • Sociocultural 2.1
    • Biological 2.2
    • Archaeological 2.3
    • Linguistic 2.4
  • Key topics by field: sociocultural 3
    • Art, media, music, dance and film 3.1
      • Art 3.1.1
      • Media 3.1.2
      • Music 3.1.3
      • Visual 3.1.4
    • Economic, political economic, applied and development 3.2
      • Economic 3.2.1
      • Political economy 3.2.2
      • Applied 3.2.3
      • Development 3.2.4
    • Kinship, feminism, gender and sexuality 3.3
      • Kinship 3.3.1
      • Feminist 3.3.2
    • Medical, nutritional, psychological, cognitive and transpersonal 3.4
      • Medical 3.4.1
      • Nutritional 3.4.2
      • Psychological 3.4.3
      • Cognitive 3.4.4
      • Transpersonal 3.4.5
    • Political and legal 3.5
      • Political 3.5.1
      • Legal 3.5.2
      • Public 3.5.3
    • Nature, science and technology 3.6
      • Cyborg 3.6.1
      • Digital 3.6.2
      • Ecological 3.6.3
      • Environmental 3.6.4
    • Historical 3.7
    • Religion 3.8
    • Urban 3.9
  • Key topics by field: archaeological and biological 4
    • Anthrozoology 4.1
    • Biocultural 4.2
    • Evolutionary 4.3
    • Forensic 4.4
    • Palaeoanthropology 4.5
  • Organizations 5
    • List of major organizations 5.1
  • Controversial ethical stances 6
    • Ethics of cultural relativism 6.1
    • Ethical stance to military involvement 6.2
  • Post–World War II developments 7
    • Basic trends 7.1
    • Commonalities between fields 7.2
  • See also 8
  • Notes 9
  • References 10
  • Further reading 11
    • Dictionaries and encyclopedias 11.1
    • Fieldnotes and memoirs 11.2
    • Histories 11.3
    • Textbooks and key theoretical works 11.4
  • External links 12

Origin and development of the term

The abstract noun anthropology is first attested in reference to history.[6][n 1] Its present use first appeared in Renaissance Germany in the works of Magnus Hundt and Otto Casmann.[7] Their New Latin anthropologia derived from the combining forms of the Greek words ánthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος, "human") and lógos (λόγος, "study").[6] (Its adjectival form appeared in the works of Aristotle.)[6] It began to be used in English, possibly via French anthropologie, by the early 18th century.[6][n 2]

Through the 19th century

In 1647, the Bartholins, founders of the University of Copenhagen, defined l'anthropologie as follows:[8]


Sporadic use of the term for some of the subject matter occurred subsequently, such as the use by Société Ethnologique de Paris, the first to use Ethnology, was formed in 1839. Its members were primarily anti-slavery activists. When slavery was abolished in France in 1848 the Société was abandoned.

Meanwhile, the Ethnological Society of New York, currently the American Ethnological Society, was founded on its model in 1842, as well as the Ethnological Society of London in 1843, a break-away group of the Aborigines' Protection Society.[9] These anthropologists of the times were liberal, anti-slavery, and pro-human-rights activists. They maintained international connections.

Anthropology and many other current fields are the intellectual results of the comparative methods developed in the earlier 19th century. Theorists in such diverse fields as anatomy, linguistics, and Ethnology, making feature-by-feature comparisons of their subject matters, were beginning to suspect that similarities between animals, languages, and folkways were the result of processes or laws unknown to them then.[10] For them, the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was the epiphany of everything they had begun to suspect. Darwin himself arrived at his conclusions through comparison of species he had seen in agronomy and in the wild.

Darwin and Wallace unveiled evolution in the late 1850’s. There was an immediate rush to bring it into the social sciences. Paul Broca in Paris was in the process of breaking away from the Société de biologie to form the first of the explicitly anthropological societies, the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, meeting for the first time in Paris in 1859.[11][n 4] When he read Darwin he became an immediate convert to Transformisme, as the French called evolutionism.[12] His definition now became "the study of the human group, considered as a whole, in its details, and in relation to the rest of nature".[13]

Broca, being what today would be called a neurosurgeon, had taken an interest in the pathology of speech. He wanted to localize the difference between man and the other animals, which appeared to reside in speech. He discovered the speech center of the human brain, today called Broca's area after him. His interest was mainly in Biological anthropology, but a German philosopher specializing in psychology, Theodor Waitz, took up the theme of general and social anthropology in his six-volume work, entitled Die Anthropologie der Naturvölker, 1859-1864. The title was soon translated as "The Anthropology of Primitive Peoples". The last two volumes were published posthumously.

Waitz defined anthropology as "the science of the nature of man". By nature he meant matter animated by "the Divine breath";[14] i.e., he was an animist. Following Broca’s lead, Waitz points out that anthropology is a new field, which would gather material from other fields, but would differ from them in the use of comparative anatomy, physiology, and psychology to differentiate man from "the animals nearest to him". He stresses that the data of comparison must be empirical, gathered by experimentation.[15] The history of civilization as well as ethnology are to be brought into the comparison. It is to be presumed fundamentally that the species, man, is a unity, and that "the same laws of thought are applicable to all men".[16]

Waitz was influential among the British ethnologists. In 1863 the explorer Richard Francis Burton and the speech therapist James Hunt broke away from the Ethnological Society of London to form the Anthropological Society of London, which henceforward would follow the path of the new anthropology rather than just ethnology. It was the 2nd society dedicated to general anthropology in existence. Representatives from the French Société were present, though not Broca. In his keynote address, printed in the first volume of its new publication, The Anthropological Review, Hunt stressed the work of Waitz, adopting his definitions as a standard.[17][n 5] Among the first associates were the young Edward Burnett Tylor, inventor of cultural anthropology, and his brother Alfred Tylor, a geologist. Previously Edward had referred to himself as an ethnologist; subsequently, an anthropologist.

Similar organizations in other countries followed: The American Anthropological Association in 1902, the Anthropological Society of Madrid (1865), the Anthropological Society of Vienna (1870), the Italian Society of Anthropology and Ethnology (1871), and many others subsequently. The majority of these were evolutionist. One notable exception was the Berlin Society of Anthropology (1869) founded by Rudolph Virchow, known for his vituperative attacks on the evolutionists. Not religious himself, he insisted that Darwin’s conclusions lacked empirical foundation.

During the last three decades of the 19th century a proliferation of anthropological societies and associations occurred, most independent, most publishing their own journals, and all international in membership and association. The major theorists belonged to these organizations. They supported the gradual osmosis of anthropology curricula into the major institutions of higher learning. By 1898 the American Association for the Advancement of Science was able to report that 48 educational institutions in 13 countries had some curriculum in anthropology. None of the 75 faculty members were under a department named anthropology.[18]

20th & 21st century

This meagre statistic expanded in the 20th century to comprise anthropology departments in the majority of the world’s higher educational institutions, many thousands in number. Anthropology has diversified from a few major subdivisions to dozens more. Practical anthropology, the use of anthropological knowledge and technique to solve specific problems, has arrived; for example, the presence of buried victims might stimulate the use of a forensic archaeologist to recreate the final scene. Organization has reached global level. For example, the World Council of Anthropological Associations (WCAA), "a network of national, regional and international associations that aims to promote worldwide communication and cooperation in anthropology", currently contains members from about three dozen nations.[19]

Since the work of Franz Boas and Bronisław Malinowski in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, social anthropology in Great Britain and cultural anthropology in the US have been distinguished from other social sciences by its emphasis on cross-cultural comparisons, long-term in-depth examination of context, and the importance it places on participant-observation or experiential immersion in the area of research. Cultural anthropology in particular has emphasized cultural relativism, holism, and the use of findings to frame cultural critiques.[20] This has been particularly prominent in the United States, from Boas' arguments against 19th-century racial ideology, through Margaret Mead's advocacy for gender equality and sexual liberation, to current criticisms of post-colonial oppression and promotion of multiculturalism. Ethnography is one of its primary research designs as well as the text that is generated from anthropological fieldwork.[21][22][23]

In Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries, the British tradition of social anthropology tends to dominate. In the United States, anthropology has traditionally been divided into the four field approach developed by Franz Boas in the early 20th century: biological or physical anthropology; social, cultural, or sociocultural anthropology; and archaeology; plus anthropological linguistics. These fields frequently overlap, but tend to use different methodologies and techniques.

European countries with overseas colonies tended to practice more [61]




Part of a series on
Anthropology of religion
Social and cultural anthropology

The anthropology of religion involves the study of religious institutions in relation to other social institutions, and the comparison of religious beliefs and practices across cultures. Modern anthropology assumes that there is complete continuity between magical thinking and religion,[63][n 6] and that every religion is a cultural product, created by the human community that worships it.[64]


Urban anthropology is concerned with issues of urbanization, poverty, and neoliberalism. Ulf Hannerz quotes a 1960s remark that traditional anthropologists were "a notoriously agoraphobic lot, anti-urban by definition". Various social processes in the Western World as well as in the "Third World" (the latter being the habitual focus of attention of anthropologists) brought the attention of "specialists in 'other cultures'" closer to their homes.[65] There are two principle approaches in urban anthropology: by examining the types of cities or examining the social issues within the cities. These two methods are overlapping and dependent of each other. By defining different types of cities, one would use social factors as well as economic and political factors to categorize the cities. By directly looking at the different social issues, one would also be studying how they affect the dynamic of the city.[66]

Key topics by field: archaeological and biological


Anthrozoology (also known as "human–animal studies") is the study of interaction between living things. It is a burgeoning interdisciplinary field that overlaps with a number of other disciplines, including anthropology, ethology, medicine, psychology, veterinary medicine and zoology. A major focus of anthrozoologic research is the quantifying of the positive effects of human-animal relationships on either party and the study of their interactions.[67] It includes scholars from a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, biology, and philosophy.[68][69][n 7]


Biocultural anthropology is the scientific exploration of the relationships between human biology and culture. Physical anthropologists throughout the first half of the 20th century viewed this relationship from a racial perspective; that is, from the assumption that typological human biological differences lead to cultural differences.[70] After World War II the emphasis began to shift toward an effort to explore the role culture plays in shaping human biology.


Evolutionary anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of the evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and the relation between hominins and non-hominin primates. Evolutionary anthropology is based in natural science and social science, combining the human development with socioeconomic factors. Evolutionary anthropology is concerned with both biological and cultural evolution of humans, past and present. It is based on a scientific approach, and brings together fields such as archaeology, behavioral ecology, psychology, primatology, and genetics. It is a dynamic and interdisciplinary field, drawing on many lines of evidence to understand the human experience, past and present.


Forensic anthropology is the application of the science of physical anthropology and human osteology in a legal setting, most often in criminal cases where the victim's remains are in the advanced stages of decomposition. A forensic anthropologist can assist in the identification of deceased individuals whose remains are decomposed, burned, mutilated or otherwise unrecognizable. The adjective "forensic" refers to the application of this subfield of science to a court of law.


Paleoanthropology combines the disciplines of paleontology and physical anthropology. It is the study of ancient humans, as found in fossil hominid evidence such as petrifacted bones and footprints.


Contemporary anthropology is an established science with academic departments at most universities and colleges. The single largest organization of Anthropologists is the American Anthropological Association (AAA), which was founded in 1903.[71] Membership is made up of anthropologists from around the globe.[72]

In 1989, a group of European and American scholars in the field of anthropology established the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) which serves as a major professional organization for anthropologists working in Europe. The EASA seeks to advance the status of anthropology in Europe and to increase visibility of marginalized anthropological traditions and thereby contribute to the project of a global anthropology or world anthropology.


List of major organizations

Controversial ethical stances

Anthropologists, like other researchers (especially historians and scientists engaged in field research), have over time assisted state policies and projects, especially colonialism.[74][75]

Some commentators have contended:


Ethics of cultural relativism

As part of their quest for scientific objectivity, present-day anthropologists typically urge cultural relativism, which has an influence on all the sub-fields of anthropology.[21] This is the notion that cultures should not be judged by another's values or viewpoints, but be examined dispassionately on their own terms. There should be no notions, in good anthropology, of one culture being better or worse than another culture.[77]

Ethical commitments in anthropology include noticing and documenting genocide, infanticide, racism, mutilation (including circumcision and subincision), and torture. Topics like racism, slavery, and human sacrifice attract anthropological attention and theories ranging from nutritional deficiencies[78] to genes[79] to acculturation have been proposed, not to mention theories of colonialism and many others as root causes of Man's inhumanity to man. To illustrate the depth of an anthropological approach, one can take just one of these topics, such as "racism" and find thousands of anthropological references, stretching across all the major and minor sub-fields.[80][81]

Ethical stance to military involvement





Anthropologists, along with other social scientists, are working with the US military as part of the US Army's strategy in Afghanistan.[83] The Christian Science Monitor reports that "Counterinsurgency efforts focus on better grasping and meeting local needs" in Afghanistan, under the Human Terrain System (HTS) program; in addition, HTS teams are working with the US military in Iraq.[84] In 2009, the American Anthropological Association's Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities released its final report concluding, in part, that, "When ethnographic investigation is determined by military missions, not subject to external review, where data collection occurs in the context of war, integrated into the goals of counterinsurgency, and in a potentially coercive environment – all characteristic factors of the HTS concept and its application – it can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology. In summary, while we stress that constructive engagement between anthropology and the military is possible, CEAUSSIC suggests that the AAA emphasize the incompatibility of HTS with disciplinary ethics and practice for job seekers and that it further recognize the problem of allowing HTS to define the meaning of "anthropology" within DoD."[85]

Post–World War II developments


Basic trends

There are several characteristics that tend to unite anthropological work. One of the central characteristics is that anthropology tends to provide a comparatively more holistic account of phenomena and tends to be highly empirical.[20] The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a particular place, problem or phenomenon in detail, using a variety of methods, over a more extensive period than normal in many parts of academia.

In the 1990s and 2000s (decade), calls for clarification of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer knows where his or her own culture ends and another begins, and other crucial topics in writing anthropology were heard. These dynamic relationships, between what can be observed on the ground, as opposed to what can be observed by compiling many local observations remain fundamental in any kind of anthropology, whether cultural, biological, linguistic or archaeological.[86]

Biological anthropologists are interested in both human variation[87] and in the possibility of human universals (behaviors, ideas or concepts shared by virtually all human cultures).[88] They use many different methods of study, but modern population genetics, participant observation and other techniques often take anthropologists "into the field," which means traveling to a community in its own setting, to do something called "fieldwork." On the biological or physical side, human measurements, genetic samples, nutritional data may be gathered and published as articles or monographs.


Commonalities between fields

Because anthropology developed from so many different enterprises (see History of Anthropology), including but not limited to fossil-hunting, exploring, documentary film-making, paleontology, primatology, antiquity dealings and curatorship, philology, etymology, genetics, regional analysis, ethnology, history, philosophy, and religious studies,[89][90] it is difficult to characterize the entire field in a brief article, although attempts to write histories of the entire field have been made.[91]


Now there exist many works focusing on peoples and topics very close to the author's "home".[94] It is also argued that other fields of study, like History and Sociology, on the contrary focus disproportionately on the West.[95]

In France, the study of Western societies has been traditionally left to sociologists, but this is increasingly changing,[96] starting in the 1970s from scholars like Isac Chiva and journals like Terrain ("fieldwork"), and developing with the center founded by Marc Augé (Le Centre d'anthropologie des mondes contemporains, the Anthropological Research Center of Contemporary Societies).

Since the 1980s it has become common for social and cultural anthropologists to set ethnographic research in the North Atlantic region, frequently examining the connections between locations rather than limiting research to a single locale. There has also been a related shift toward broadening the focus beyond the daily life of ordinary people; increasingly, research is set in settings such as scientific laboratories, social movements, governmental and nongovernmental organizations and businesses.[97]

See also


  1. ^ Richard Harvey's 1593 Philadelphus, a defense of the legend of Brutus in British history, includes the passage "Genealogy or issue which they had, Artes which they studied, Actes which they did. This part of History is named Anthropology."
  2. ^ John Kersey's 1706 edition of The New World of English Words includes the definition "Anthropology, a Discourse or Description of Man, or of a Man's Body."
  3. ^ In French: L’Anthropologie, c’est à dire la science qui traite de l’homme, est divisée ordinairment & avec raison en l’Anatomie, qui considere le corps & les parties, et en la Psychologie, qui parle de l’Ame.[8]
  4. ^ As [11]
  5. ^ Hunt’s choice of theorists does not exclude the numerous other theorists that were beginning to publish a large volume of anthropological studies.[17]
  7. ^ Note that anthrozoology should not be confused with "animal studies", which often refers to animal testing.


  1. ^ a b c
  2. ^ a b c
  3. ^ a b c
  4. ^
  5. ^
  6. ^ a b c d Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "anthropology, n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1885.
  7. ^
  8. ^ a b .
  9. ^ Schiller 1979, pp. 130–132
  10. ^ Schiller 1979, p. 221
  11. ^ a b .
  12. ^ Schiller 1979, p. 143
  13. ^ Schiller 1979, p. 136
  14. ^ Waitz 1863, p. 1
  15. ^ Waitz 1863, p. 5
  16. ^ Waitz 1863, pp. 11–12
  17. ^ a b Hunt 1863, Introductory Address
  18. ^
  19. ^
  20. ^ a b Hylland Eriksen, Thomas. (2004) "What is Anthropology" Pluto. London. p. 79.
  21. ^ a b c
  22. ^ On varieties of cultural relativism in anthropology, see Spiro, Melford E. (1987) "Some Reflections on Cultural Determinism and Relativism with Special Reference to Emotion and Reason," in Culture and Human Nature: Theoretical Papers of Melford E. Spiro. Edited by B. Kilborne and L. L. Langness, pp. 32–58. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  23. ^
  25. ^ What is Anthropology - American Anthropological Association
  26. ^ What is Anthropology - Anthropology Report
  28. ^
  29. ^
  30. ^
  31. ^ Geertz, Behar, Clifford & James
  32. ^ a b
  33. ^ Jackson, Anthony. 1987. Anthropology at Home. New York: Tavistock Publications.
  34. ^ Mughal, Muhammad Aurang Zeb. (2015). Being and Becoming Native: A Methodological Enquiry into Doing Anthropology at Home. Anthropological Notebooks 21(1): 121-132.
  35. ^
  36. ^ Bernard, H. Russell, Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press, 2002. p.322.
  37. ^
  38. ^ University of Toronto. (n.d.). Research Subfields: Physical or Biological. Retrieved 14 March 2012, from
  39. ^ Robbins, R. H. & Larkin, S. N. (2007). Cultural Anthropology: A problem based approach. Toronto, ON: Nelson Education Ltd.
  41. ^ Robert Layton. (1981) The Anthropology of Art.
  42. ^ Deborah Spitulnik. (1993) 'Anthropology and Mass Media', Annual Review of Anthropology, 22: 293-315
  43. ^ Lila Abu-Lughod. (1997) 'The Interpretation of Cultures after Television', Representations, 59: 109-133
  44. ^
  45. ^
  46. ^
  47. ^
  50. ^ D'Andrade (1995)
  51. ^
  52. ^
  53. ^ Dumit, Joseph. Davis-Floyd, Robbie. Cyborg Anthropology. Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women, 2001
  54. ^
  55. ^
  56. ^
  57. ^ a b
  58. ^
  59. ^
  60. ^
  61. ^
  62. ^
  63. ^ a b Cassirer, Ernst (1944) An Essay On Man, pt.II, ch.7 Myth and Religion, pp. 122–3.
  64. ^ Guthrie (2000) pp. 225–6
  65. ^ Hannerz, Ulf (1980). Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology, p.1
  66. ^ Griffiths, Michael. B., Flemming Christiansen, and Malcolm Chapman. (2010) 'Chinese Consumers: The Romantic Reappraisal'. Ethnography, Sept 2010, 11, 331-357.
  67. ^ Mills, Daniel S. "Anthrozoology", The Encyclopedia of Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare. CABI 2010, pp. 28–30.
  68. ^ DeMello, Margo. Teaching the Animal: Human–Animal Studies Across the Disciplines. Lantern Books, 2010, p. xi.
  69. ^ Animals & Society Institute, accessed 23 February 2011.
  70. ^
  71. ^
  72. ^
  73. ^ Johanson, Donald and Kate Wong. Lucy's Legacy. Kindle Books. 2007; Netti, Bruno. The Study of Ethnomusicology. University of Illinois Press, 2005. Chapter One
  78. ^ Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches.
  79. ^
  80. ^
  83. ^ Christian Science Monitor
  84. ^
  85. ^ "AAA Commission Releases Final Report on Army Human Terrain System" American Anthropological Association
  92. ^ See the many essays relating to this in Prem Poddar and David Johnson, Historical Companion to Postcolonial Thought in English, Edinburgh University Press, 2004. See also Prem Poddar et al., Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures--Continental Europe and its Empires, Edinburgh University Press, 2008
  93. ^ Ulf Hannerz (1980) "Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology", ISBN 0-231-08376-9, p. 1
  94. ^ Lewis, Herbert S. (1998) The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and its Consequences American Anthropologist "100:" 716-731
  95. ^ Jack Goody (2007) The Theft of History Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-87069-0
  96. ^ *
  97. ^ Fischer, Michael M. J. Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice. Duke University Press, 2003. Don Morrell JR.

Further reading

Dictionaries and encyclopedias

  • .

Fieldnotes and memoirs


  • .

Textbooks and key theoretical works

External links

The contemporary perspective of environmental anthropology, and arguably at least the backdrop, if not the focus of most of the ethnographies and cultural fieldworks of today, is [59] Environmental anthropology is a sub-specialty within the field of anthropology that takes an active role in examining the relationships between humans and their environment across space and time.


Ecological anthropology is defined as the "study of cultural adaptations to environments".[57] The sub-field is also defined as, "the study of relationships between a population of humans and their biophysical environment".[58] The focus of its research concerns "how cultural beliefs and practices helped human populations adapt to their environments, and how people used elements of their culture to maintain their ecosystems."[57]


Digital anthropology is the study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology, and extends to various areas where anthropology and technology intersect. It is sometimes grouped with sociocultural anthropology, and sometimes considered part of material culture. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology,[54] digital ethnography, cyberanthropology,[55] and virtual anthropology.[56]


Cyborg anthropology originated as a sub-focus group within the Cyborg Manifesto could be considered the founding document of cyborg anthropology by first exploring the philosophical and sociological ramifications of the term. Cyborg anthropology studies humankind and its relations with the technological systems it has built, specifically modern technological systems that have reflexively shaped notions of what it means to be human beings.


Nature, science and technology

Public Anthropology was created by Robert Borofsky, a professor at Hawaii Pacific University, to "demonstrate the ability of anthropology and anthropologists to effectively address problems beyond the discipline - illuminating larger social issues of our times as well as encouraging broad, public conversations about them with the explicit goal of fostering social change" (Borofsky 2004).


Legal anthropology or anthropology of law specializes in "the cross-cultural study of social ordering".[51] Earlier legal anthropological research often focused more narrowly on conflict management, crime, sanctions, or formal regulation. More recent applications include issues such as human rights, legal pluralism,[52] and political uprisings.


Political anthropology concerns the structure of


Political and legal

Transpersonal anthropology studies the relationship between altered states of consciousness and culture. As with transpersonal psychology, the field is much concerned with altered states of consciousness (ASC) and transpersonal experience. However, the field differs from mainstream transpersonal psychology in taking more cognizance of cross-cultural issues—for instance, the roles of myth, ritual, diet, and texts in evoking and interpreting extraordinary experiences (Young and Goulet 1994).


Cognitive anthropology seeks to explain patterns of shared knowledge, cultural innovation, and transmission over time and space using the methods and theories of the cognitive sciences (especially experimental psychology and evolutionary biology) often through close collaboration with historians, ethnographers, archaeologists, linguists, musicologists and other specialists engaged in the description and interpretation of cultural forms. Cognitive anthropology is concerned with what people from different groups know and how that implicit knowledge changes the way people perceive and relate to the world around them.[50]




Nutritional anthropology is a synthetic concept that deals with the interplay between economic systems, nutritional status and food security, and how changes in the former affect the latter. If economic and environmental changes in a community affect access to food, food security, and dietary health, then this interplay between culture and biology is in turn connected to broader historical and economic trends associated with globalization. Nutritional status affects overall health status, work performance potential, and the overall potential for economic development (either in terms of human development or traditional western models) for any given group of people.


Other subjects that have become central to medical anthropology worldwide are violence and social suffering (Farmer, 1999, 2003; Beneduce, 2010) as well as other issues that involve physical and psychological harm and suffering that are not a result of illness. On the other hand, there are fields that intersect with medical anthropology in terms of research methodology and theoretical production, such as cultural psychiatry and transcultural psychiatry or ethnopsychiatry.

  • the development of systems of medical knowledge and medical care
  • the patient-physician relationship
  • the integration of alternative medical systems in culturally diverse environments
  • the interaction of social, environmental and biological factors which influence health and illness both in the individual and the community as a whole
  • the critical analysis of interaction between psychiatric services and migrant populations ("critical ethnopsychiatry": Beneduce 2004, 2007)
  • the impact of biomedicine and biomedical technologies in non-Western settings

Medical anthropology is an interdisciplinary field which studies "human health and disease, health care systems, and biocultural adaptation".[47] Currently, research in medical anthropology is one of the main growth areas in the field of anthropology as a whole. It focuses on the following six basic fields:


Medical, nutritional, psychological, cognitive and transpersonal

Feminist anthropology is a four field approach to anthropology (archeological, biological, cultural, linguistic) that seeks to reduce male bias in research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge. Anthropology engages often with feminists from non-Western traditions, whose perspectives and experiences can differ from those of white European and American feminists. Historically, such 'peripheral' perspectives have sometimes been marginalized and regarded as less valid or important than knowledge from the western world. Feminist anthropologists have claimed that their research helps to correct this systematic bias in mainstream feminist theory. Feminist anthropologists are centrally concerned with the construction of gender across societies. Feminist anthropology is inclusive of birth anthropology as a specialization.


Kinship can refer both to the study of the patterns of social relationships in one or more human cultures, or it can refer to the patterns of social relationships themselves. Over its history, anthropology has developed a number of related concepts and terms, such as "descent", "descent groups", "lineages", "affines", "cognates", and even "fictive kinship". Broadly, kinship patterns may be considered to include people related both by descent (one's social relations during development), and also relatives by marriage.


Kinship, feminism, gender and sexuality

Anthropology of development tends to view development from a critical perspective. The kind of issues addressed and implications for the approach simply involve pondering why, if a key development goal is to alleviate poverty, is poverty increasing? Why is there such a gap between plans and outcomes? Why are those working in development so willing to disregard history and the lessons it might offer? Why is development so externally driven rather than having an internal basis? In short why does so much planned development fail?


Applied Anthropology refers to the application of the method and theory of anthropology to the analysis and solution of practical problems. It is a, "complex of related, research-based, instrumental methods which produce change or stability in specific cultural systems through the provision of data, initiation of direct action, and/or the formulation of policy".[46] More simply, applied anthropology is the practical side of anthropological research; it includes researcher involvement and activism within the participating community. It is closely related to Development anthropology (distinct from the more critical Anthropology of development).


Political economy in anthropology is the application of the theories and methods of Historical Materialism to the traditional concerns of anthropology, including, but not limited to, non-capitalist societies. Political Economy introduced questions of history and colonialism to ahistorical anthropological theories of social structure and culture. Three main areas of interest rapidly developed. The first of these areas was concerned with the "pre-capitalist" societies that were subject to evolutionary "tribal" stereotypes. Sahlins work on Hunter-gatherers as the 'original affluent society' did much to dissipate that image. The second area was concerned with the vast majority of the world's population at the time, the peasantry, many of whom were involved in complex revolutionary wars such as in Vietnam. The third area was on colonialism, imperialism, and the creation of the capitalist world-system.[45] More recently, these Political Economists have more directly addressed issues of industrial (and post-industrial) capitalism around the world.

Political economy

Economic anthropology attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It has a complex relationship with the discipline of economics, of which it is highly critical. Its origins as a sub-field of anthropology begin with the Polish-British founder of Anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski, and his French compatriot, Marcel Mauss, on the nature of gift-giving exchange (or reciprocity) as an alternative to market exchange. Economic Anthropology remains, for the most part, focused upon exchange. The school of thought derived from Marx and known as Political Economy focuses on production, in contrast.[44] Economic Anthropologists have abandoned the primitivist niche they were relegated to by economists, and have now turned to examine corporations, banks, and the global financial system from an anthropological perspective.


Economic, political economic, applied and development

Visual anthropology is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. While the term is sometimes used interchangeably with ethnographic film, visual anthropology also encompasses the anthropological study of visual representation, including areas such as performance, museums, art, and the production and reception of mass media. Visual representations from all cultures, such as sandpaintings, tattoos, sculptures and reliefs, cave paintings, scrimshaw, jewelry, hieroglyphics, paintings and photographs are included in the focus of visual anthropology.


Ethnomusicology is an academic field encompassing various approaches to the study of music (broadly defined), that emphasize its cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dimensions or contexts instead of or in addition to its isolated sound component or any particular repertoire.


Media anthropology (also known as anthropology of media or mass media) emphasizes ethnographic studies as a means of understanding producers, audiences, and other cultural and social aspects of mass media. The types of ethnographic contexts explored range from contexts of media production (e.g., ethnographies of newsrooms in newspapers, journalists in the field, film production) to contexts of media reception, following audiences in their everyday responses to media. Other types include cyber anthropology, a relatively new area of internet research, as well as ethnographies of other areas of research which happen to involve media, such as development work, social movements, or health education. This is in addition to many classic ethnographic contexts, where media such as radio, the press, new media and television have started to make their presences felt since the early 1990s.[42][43]

A Punu tribe mask. Gabon Central Africa


One of the central problems in the anthropology of art concerns the universality of 'art' as a cultural phenomenon. Several anthropologists have noted that the Western categories of 'painting', 'sculpture', or 'literature', conceived as independent artistic activities, do not exist, or exist in a significantly different form, in most non-Western contexts.[41] To surmount this difficulty, anthropologists of art have focused on formal features in objects which, without exclusively being 'artistic', have certain evident 'aesthetic' qualities. Boas' Primitive Art, Claude Lévi-Strauss' The Way of the Masks (1982) or Geertz's 'Art as Cultural System' (1983) are some examples in this trend to transform the anthropology of 'art' into an anthropology of culturally specific 'aesthetics'.


Art, media, music, dance and film

Key topics by field: sociocultural



Archaeology is the study of the human past through its material remains. Artifacts, faunal remains, and human altered landscapes are evidence of the cultural and material lives of past societies. Archaeologists examine these material remains in order to deduce patterns of past human behavior and cultural practices. Ethnoarchaeology is a type of archaeology that studies the practices and material remains of living human groups in order to gain a better understanding of the evidence left behind by past human groups, who are presumed to have lived in similar ways.[39]



Biological Anthropology and Physical Anthropology are synonymous terms to describe anthropological research focused on the study of humans and non-human primates in their biological, evolutionary, and demographic dimensions. It examines the biological and social factors that have affected the evolution of humans and other primates, and that generate, maintain or change contemporary genetic and physiological variation.[38]

Forensic anthropologists can help identify skeletonized human remains, such as these found lying in scrub in Western Australia, c. 1900–1910.


East Eurasia
Insular Pacific
North America
South America
of world societies are: [37] (SCCS)Standard Cross-Cultural SampleComparison across cultures is a key element of method in sociocultural anthropology, including the industrialized (and de-industrialized) West. Cultures in the


Inquiry in sociocultural anthropology is guided in part by cultural relativism, the attempt to understand other societies in terms of their own cultural symbols and values.[21] Accepting other cultures in their own terms moderates reductionism in cross-cultural comparison.[35] This project is often accommodated in the field of ethnography. Ethnography can refer to both a methodology and the product of ethnographic research, i.e. an ethnographic monograph. As methodology, ethnography is based upon long-term fieldwork within a community or other research site. Participant observation is one of the foundational methods of social and cultural anthropology.[36] Ethnology involves the systematic comparison of different cultures. The process of participant-observation can be especially helpful to understanding a culture from an emic (conceptual, vs. etic, or technical) point of view.

Sociocultural anthropology draws together the principle axes of cultural anthropology and social anthropology. Cultural anthropology is the comparative study of the manifold ways in which people make sense of the world around them, while social anthropology is the study of the relationships among persons and groups.[32] Cultural anthropology is more related to philosophy, literature and the arts (how one's culture affects experience for self and group, contributing to more complete understanding of the people's knowledge, customs, and institutions), while social anthropology is more related to sociology and history.[32] in that it helps develop understanding of social structures, typically of others and other populations (such as minorities, subgroups, dissidents, etc.).[33][34] There is no hard-and-fast distinction between them, and these categories overlap to a considerable degree.


Sociocultural anthropology has been heavily influenced by structuralist and postmodern theories, as well as a shift toward the analysis of modern societies. During the 1970s and 1990s, there was an epistemological shift away from the positivist traditions that had largely informed the discipline.[31] During this shift, enduring questions about the nature and production of knowledge came to occupy a central place in cultural and social anthropology. In contrast, archaeology and biological anthropology remained largely positivist. Due to this difference in epistemology, the four sub-fields of anthropology have lacked cohesion over the last several decades.

According to Clifford Geertz,

. ethnic studies, and various global studies [29],cognitive science As such, anthropology has been central in the development of several new (late 20th century) interdisciplinary fields such as [28][27] Early anthropology originated in Classical Greece and Persia and studied and tried to understand observable cultural diversity.[26][25] Anthropology is a global discipline where humanities, social, and natural sciences are forced to confront one another. Anthropology builds upon knowledge from



