The examples and perspective in this intro (lede) & the Overview section deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (August 2011)

Anthropology  /ænθrɵˈpɒlədʒi/ is the academic study of humanity. It deals with all that is characteristic of the human experience, from physiology and the evolutionary origins to the social and cultural organization of human societies as well as individual and collective forms of human experience. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences.^[1] The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος), "man", understood to mean humankind or humanity, and -logia (-λογία), "discourse" or "study."

Anthropology's basic concerns are the definition of human life and origin, how social relations among humans are organized, who the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens are, what the characterizations of human physical traits are, how humans behave, why there are variations among different groups of humans, how the evolutionary past of Homo sapiens has influenced its social organization and culture and so forth.^{[citation needed]}

Anthropology originated in the colonial encounter between Western people and colonized non-western peoples, as Europeans tried to understand the origins of observable cultural diversity. Today anthropology is a global discipline, and anthropologists study both Western and non-Western societies.

In the United States, where anthropology was first defined as a discipline, the field is traditionally divided into four sub-fields: cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and biological anthropology.^[2] In Europe the discipline originated as ethnology and was originally defined as the study of social organization in non-state societies, later redefined as social anthropology. Socio-cultural anthropology is considered anthropology proper in most of Europe, and in the parts of the world that were influenced by the European tradition.^[3]

Socio-cultural anthropology has been heavily influenced by structuralist and post-modern 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.^[4] 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, anthropology as a discipline has lacked cohesion over the last several decades.

Subfields[link]

In the United States, anthropology is traditionally divided into four sub-fields, each with additional branches: biological or physical anthropology, social anthropology or cultural anthropology, archaeology and anthropological linguistics.^[2] These fields frequently overlap, but tend to use different methodologies and techniques.

Cultural Anthropology[link]

Cultural anthropology is also called socio-cultural anthropology or social anthropology (especially in the United Kingdom). It is the study of culture, and is based mainly on ethnography. Ethnography can refer to both a methodology and a product of research, namely a monograph or book. Ethnography is a grounded, inductive method that heavily relies on participant-observation. Ethnology involves the systematic comparison of different cultures. The process of participant-observation can be especially helpful to understanding a culture from an emic point of view, which would otherwise be unattainable by simply reading from a book. In some European countries, all cultural anthropology is known as ethnology (a term coined and defined by Adam F. Kollár in 1783).^[5]

The study of kinship and social organization is a central focus of cultural anthropology, as kinship is a human universal. Cultural anthropology also covers economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, patterns of consumption and exchange, material culture, technology, infrastructure, gender relations, ethnicity, childrearing and socialization, religion, myth, symbols, values, etiquette, worldview, sports, music, nutrition, recreation, games, food, festivals, and language (which is also the object of study in linguistic anthropology).

Physical anthropology[link]

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.^[6]

Archaeological anthropology[link]

Archaeology is the study of human history and its artifacts. Archaeologists typically look at the material remains of human groups in order to find out how people lived. Pieces of pottery, tools, and other artifacts that are left behind give clues about the social and cultural lives of past societies ^[7]

Linguistic anthropology[link]

Linguistic anthropology (also called anthropological linguistics) seeks to understand the processes of human communications, verbal and non-verbal, variation in language across time and space, the social uses of language, and the relationship between language and culture. It is the branch of anthropology that brings linguistic methods to bear on anthropological problems, linking the analysis of linguistic forms and processes to the interpretation of sociocultural processes. Linguistic anthropologists often draw on related fields including sociolinguistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, semiotics, discourse analysis, and narrative analysis.^[8]

Commonalities between subfields[link]

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,^[9][10] it is difficult to characterize the entire field in a brief article, although attempts to write histories of the entire field have been made.^[11]

Because of the holistic nature of anthropological research, all branches of anthropology have widespread practical application in diverse fields. This is known as applied anthropology. Thus military expeditions employ anthropologists to discern strategic cultural footholds; marketing professionals employ anthropology to determine propitious placement of advertising; and humanitarian agencies depend on anthropological insights as means to fight poverty. Examples of applied anthropology are ubiquitous.

Focused in a positive light, Anthropology is one of the few places where humanities, social, and natural sciences are forced to confront one another. As such, anthropology has been central in the development of several new (late 20th century) interdisciplinary fields such as cognitive science,^[12] global studies, and various ethnic studies.

Basic trends[link]

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.^[13] 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. It is possible to view all human cultures as part of one large, evolving global culture. 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.^[14]

Biological anthropologists are interested in both human variation^[15] and in the possibility of human universals (behaviors, ideas or concepts shared by virtually all human cultures)^[16] 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.

At the same time, anthropologists urge, as part of their quest for scientific objectivity, cultural relativism, which has an influence on all the sub-fields of anthropology. This is the notion that particular cultures should not be judged by one culture's values or viewpoints, but that all cultures should be viewed as relative to each other. There should be no notions, in good anthropology, of one culture being better or worse than another culture.^[17]

Ethical commitments in anthropology include noticing and documenting genocide, infanticide, racism, mutilation including circumcision and subincision, and torture. Topics like racism, slavery or human sacrifice, therefore, attract anthropological attention and theories ranging from nutritional deficiencies^[18] to genes^[19] 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.^[20][21]

Along with dividing up their project by theoretical emphasis, anthropologists typically divide the world up into relevant time periods and geographic regions. Human time on Earth is divided up into relevant cultural traditions based on material, such as the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, of particular use in archaeology. Further cultural subdivisions according to tool types, such as Olduwan or Mousterian or Levalloisian help archaeologists and other anthropologists in understanding major trends in the human past. Anthropologists and geographers share approaches to Culture regions as well, since mapping cultures is central to both sciences. By making comparisons across cultural traditions (time-based) and cultural regions (space-based), anthropologists have developed various kinds of comparative method, a central part of their science.

Anthropological Organizations[link]

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.^[22] Membership is made up of anthropologists from around the globe.^[23]

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.

Hundreds of other organizations exist in the various sub-fields of anthropology, sometimes divided up by nation or region, and many anthropologists work with collaborators in other disciplines, such as geology, physics, zoology, paleontology, anatomy, music theory, art history, sociology and so on, belonging to professional societies in those disciplines as well.^[24]

History[link]

The first use of the term "anthropology" in English to refer to a natural science of humanity was apparently in 1593, the first of the "logies" to be coined.^[25] It took Immanuel Kant 25 years to write one of the first major treatises on anthropology, his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.^[26] Kant is not generally considered to be a modern anthropologist, however, as he never left his region of Germany nor did he study any cultures besides his own, and in fact, describes the need for anthropology as a corollary field to his own primary field of philosophy.^[27] He did, however, begin teaching an annual course in anthropology in 1772. Anthropology is thus primarily an Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment endeavor.

Cannibalism among "the savages" in Brazil, as described and pictured by André Thévet.

Historians of anthropology, like Marvin Harris,^[28] indicate two major frameworks within which empirical anthropology has arisen: interest in comparisons of people over space and interest in longterm human processes or humans as viewed through time. Harris dates both to Classical Greece and Classical Rome, specifically Herodotus, often called the "father of history" and the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote many of our only surviving contemporary accounts of several ancient Celtic and Germanic peoples. Herodotus first formulated some of the persisting problems of anthropology.^[29]

Medieval scholars may be considered forerunners of modern anthropology as well, insofar as they conducted or wrote detailed studies of the customs of peoples considered "different" from themselves in terms of geography. John of Plano Carpini reported of his stay among the Mongols. His report was unusual in its detailed depiction of a non-European culture^[30]

Marco Polo's systematic observations of nature, anthropology, and geography are another example of studying human variation across space.^[31] Polo's travels took him across such a diverse human landscape and his accounts of the peoples he met as he journeyed were so detailed that they earned for Polo the name "the father of modern anthropology."^[32]

Another candidate for one of the first scholars to carry out comparative ethnographic-type studies in person was the medieval Persian scholar Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī in the 11th century, who wrote about the peoples, customs, and religions of the Indian subcontinent. According to Akbar S. Ahmed, like modern anthropologists, he engaged in extensive participant observation with a given group of people, learnt their language and studied their primary texts, and presented his findings with objectivity and neutrality using cross-cultural comparisons.^[33] However, others argue that he can hardly be considered an anthropologist in the conventional sense.^[34] He wrote detailed comparative studies on the religions and cultures in the Middle East, Mediterranean and especially South Asia.^[35][36] Biruni's tradition of comparative cross-cultural study continued in the Muslim world through to Ibn Khaldun's work in the 14th century.^[33][37]

Most scholars^{[citation needed]} consider modern anthropology as an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment, a period when Europeans attempted systematically to study human behavior, the known varieties of which had been increasing since the 15th century as a result of the first European colonization wave. The traditions of jurisprudence, history, philology, and sociology then evolved into something more closely resembling the modern views of these disciplines and informed the development of the social sciences, of which anthropology was a part.

Developments in the systematic study of ancient civilizations through the disciplines of Classics and Egyptology informed both archaeology and eventually social anthropology, as did the study of East and South Asian languages and cultures. At the same time, the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment produced thinkers, such as Johann Gottfried Herder^[38] and later Wilhelm Dilthey, whose work formed the basis for the "culture concept," which is central to the discipline.^{[citation needed]}

Table of natural history, 1728 Cyclopaedia

Institutionally, anthropology emerged from the development of natural history (expounded by authors such as Buffon) that occurred during the European colonization of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Programs of ethnographic study originated in this era as the study of the "human primitives" overseen by colonial administrations.

There was a tendency in late 18th century Enlightenment thought to understand human society as natural phenomena that behaved according to certain principles and that could be observed empirically. In some ways, studying the language, culture, physiology, and artifacts of European colonies was not unlike studying the flora and fauna of those places.

Early anthropology was divided between proponents of unilinealism, who argued that all societies passed through a single evolutionary process, from the most primitive to the most advanced, and various forms of non-lineal theorists, who tended to subscribe to ideas such as diffusionism.^[39] Most 19th-century social theorists, including anthropologists, viewed non-European societies as windows onto the pre-industrial human past.

As academic disciplines began to differentiate over the course of the 19th century, anthropology grew increasingly distinct from the biological approach of natural history, on the one hand, and from purely historical or literary fields such as Classics, on the other. A common criticism has been that many social science scholars (such as economists, sociologists, and psychologists) in Western countries focus disproportionately on Western subjects, while anthropology focuses disproportionately on the "Other";^[40] this has changed over the last part of the 20th century as anthropologists increasingly also study Western subjects, particularly variation across class, region, or ethnicity within Western societies, and other social scientists increasingly take a global view of their fields.

20th century[link]

In the 20th century, academic disciplines have often been institutionally divided into three broad domains. The natural and biological sciences seek to derive general laws through reproducible and verifiable experiments. The humanities generally study local traditions, through their history, literature, music, and arts, with an emphasis on understanding particular individuals, events, or eras.

The social sciences have generally attempted to develop scientific methods to understand social phenomena in a generalizable way, though usually with methods distinct from those of the natural sciences. In particular, social sciences often develop statistical descriptions rather than the general laws derived in physics or chemistry, or they may explain individual cases through more general principles, as in many fields of psychology. Anthropology (like some fields of history) does not easily fit into one of these categories, and different branches of anthropology draw on one or more of these domains.^[41]