ARCL-1006EL Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Participant Observation, Primatology, Historical Particularism
16 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
ARCL 1006
Jan 10, 2018
The Nature of Anthropology
•What is the scope of Anthropology?
•Anthropo- human
•logos- the study of
•the thought that we can study everything that humans have ever done, across the entire
universe,
•interested in anthropology through both cultural and biological characteristics
•Culture examples: shared aspects of human groups, (food, dances, etc)
•Biological examples: genetics
•What is it that makes anthropology different from other disciplines
•HISTORICALLY distinguishing characteristics: breadth//studies were not limited to one
region, commitment to holistic approach (how human study and biology work together),
research methods
•TODAY’S distinguishing characteristics: holistic approach
•Participant observation
• associated w/ Malinowski
•idea that to understand culture, one must be in that culture, and be immersed in that
culture
•What is Holism?
•Approach to study that includes examination of many different aspects of the subject of
study
•example: extinction of Neanderthals: to use the holistic approach you need to look at a few
things:
•correlate locations and dates
•what was going on on the planet at that time// Adaptation- different physicality, adapted
to cold weather so maybe climate change caused it. Also could have changed material
distribution (eg, animals, food, etc)
•populations size- can we reconstruct population size? what if there simply weren't
enough to procreate, etc
•came into contact w modern humans- did that decrease population size? disease?
