anthropology

We explain what anthropology is, its history and object of study. In addition, the characteristics of each of its fields and branches.

To understand human complexity, anthropology is associated with other sciences.

What is Anthropology?

Anthropology is the study of human being from a perspective holistic (integral), which takes into account both its most physical and animal traits, as well as those that make up its culture and their civilization. Its name comes from the Greek words anthropos, "Man", and logos, “knowledge”, So that it can be defined as the study of the humanity.

Anthropology is a science very close to other fields of scientific-social knowledge, such as sociology wave psychology, to which he often goes in search of tools. It also links with other natural Sciences, as the biology, since his approach to humanity it is much more complex and requires both a social and a biologicist look.

Obviously, it is not easy to cover such a broad topic, and that aspiration has led anthropology to become, in recent times, a complex collection of knowledge of different nature, gathered in four major fields of study: physical anthropology and anthropology. social, and his two disciplines associated: the archeology and the linguistics.

We will look at these fields in detail later, but it is important to note that very often the term “anthropology” is popularly used to refer only to social anthropology, as it is one of the broadest and most complex approaches of all.

Object of study of anthropology

Anthropology studies the human as a product of his history, culture and society.

The object of study of anthropology is humanity as a whole. Said like this, it can be a bit vague, since the human phenomenon is infinitely complex, and it always depends on the way we approach it.

However, anthropology aspires to achieve an integrative perspective of all this, which allows studying the human being within the framework of their culture and society, recognizing it at the same time as a product of them, that is, of the history of their civilization and their species.

History of anthropology

Anthropology as a formal science is relatively recent. However, the interest in the different cultural and social manifestations has existed since ancient and ancestral times. Even the civilizations expansive and imperial Antiquity Classical were interested in understanding what makes us human and how cultural and social diversity was achieved.

Greek thinkers such as Hippocrates (460-377 BC) or Aristotle (384-322 BC) left important annotations regarding human diversity and proposed ways of approaching this issue, which could take into account certain physical features such as the size and shape of the skull, for example.

It was only recently that the explorer Francois Auguste Péron (1775-1810) used the word "anthropology" for the first time, with its modern sense. He did it during his time in Australia, and as part of his work Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes ("Journey of discoveries through the southern lands"), in which he recorded many data on the Aborigines of Tasmania, who were soon after exterminated by European settlers.

At that time, Europe had started his colonial expansion all over the globe, encountering numerous cultures different from those he studied with a critical eye and naturalistic spirit, as if they were animals. From there the ethnography and the foundations were laid for the subsequent emergence of anthropology, during the nineteenth century.

The appearance of the Evolutionary theory and from scientific methodFurthermore, it contributed to the idea that a science of human societies was possible, in those same terms. Thus, anthropology was able to begin its independence from the whole of natural history (today biology).

This first anthropological and ethnological look was strongly influenced by positivism and by the idea of National identity, is known as the Classic anthropological model. In the middle of the 20th century (around 1960) it was abandoned in favor of a new model that opened the field of anthropology to new experiences and social considerations.

Importance of anthropology

Anthropology studies both biological and cultural aspects.

Anthropology is probably the discipline best prepared to understand the human phenomenon in its complexity. Not only because of its interdisciplinary and holistic perspective, but because it has accompanied the most recent transformations in the way of understanding himself and his peers of contemporary humanity.

This means that only anthropology can encompass the immense crossing of knowledge and disciplines that requires an approach to the human being, without sinning from a scientific perspective that considers us simply animals, nor from an entirely humanistic perspective, which considers us as something entirely different and distant. of the nature.

Fields of study

As we said at the beginning, anthropology encompasses four main fields of study:

  • Biological or physical anthropology. Result of the cross between anthropology and biology, he focuses his perspective on the human being on evolutionary issues and biological variability, both present and past. His approach to the human phenomenon is strongly anchored, as is evident, in the natural and the physical, to the point of studying other non-human primates to compose a biocultural view.
  • Sociocultural anthropology. Whose perspective on the human phenomenon starts from its cultural aspects, that is: its traditions, myths, values, rules, beliefs and stories. It also considers its social aspects, that is: its forms of action and organization, conflicts, contradictions and other aspects of shared life.
    It understands the human being as a social animal, which lives in communities more or less organized within which a form of thought Y behaviour common, which is culture. This field can be divided into two aspects:

    • Cultural anthropology. Arisen in the United States, as a result of the schism that occurred between social and cultural anthropologists in the twentieth century, whose interest is more cultural than social.
    • Social anthropology. Typically British, who prefers to emphasize the social perspective.
  • Archeology. Considered in the United States as an anthropological subfield and in Europe as an autonomous discipline, it focuses on the study of changes occurred throughout the prehistory and human history, through the interpretation of the remains found and preserved over the years. Use various techniques excavation, preservation and analysis of the samples.
  • Linguistic anthropology. Or anthropological linguistics, it is the meeting point of both disciplines, whose interest in the human being focuses on aspects related to language. It aims to understand the dynamics of change that language has undergone throughout the weather, as a system of representation and communication, and also as a set of cultural practices.

Branches of anthropology

Genetic anthropology studies the evolution of hominids and neighboring species.

These areas of action of anthropology generate a huge set of branches and sub-branches, such as:

  • Physical anthropology. Its main branches are:
    • Forensic anthropology. Dedicated to the identification and study of skeletal or preserved human remains, to obtain conclusions regarding the conditions of life of the deceased subject and, therefore, of its origins, if not of its reason for death.
    • Genetic anthropology. Whose field of study is evolution of hominids and species neighbors, through understanding the DNA.
    • Paleoanthropology. Also called paleontology human, is dedicated to the study of primitive humanity and its processes of evolution, from the fossil and archaeological remains found today.
  • Sociocultural anthropology. Its main branches are:
    • Urban anthropology. Focused on the study of life in the cities and its own phenomena, such as poverty, marginality, social classes, etc.
    • Anthropology of the religion. Whose field of study focuses on the great religious traditions, be they cults, churches, mystical traditions, etc.
    • Philosophical Anthropology. Which, as its name suggests, focuses on reflection on what the human being is, making use of the information regarding its history, its nature, etc.
    • Economic anthropology. Whose main field of interest is production, the Commerce and the finance, understood everything as an exclusively human activity and deeply determining in our history and our ways of socializing.
  • Archeology. Its main branches are:
    • Archaeoastronomy. As a result of the coexistence of both disciplines, he specializes in the study of astronomical and cosmological theories of ancient cultures, judging by the remains of observatories and calendars found.
    • Underwater archeology. Responsible for adapting to aquatic environments (lakes, oceans, rivers) the exercise of archeology.
    • Evolutionary Anthropology. Consisting of an interdisciplinary look at the origin of the modes of socialization and of human physical features, based on archaeological evidence.

Anthropology and sociology

For a long time, sociology and anthropology were essentially the same field of study, since they both study the human being, their culture and their models of societies.

However, today they are distinguished by their really different approaches: for example, anthropology and sociology make use of others. social Sciences to complement his studies, but the first also does it with some pure sciences, such as biology, to base his perspectives.

This is due to the fact that anthropologists prefer the qualitative rather than the quantitative approach, which allows them to obtain scientific conclusions regarding the way in which human beings construct their cultures. Instead, sociology frames its conclusions within a given society, in a less comprehensive and comprehensive way than anthropology.

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