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Important fieldwork anthropology
Sociocultural anthropology
Sociocultural anthropology
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Culture is an important concept in anthropology. Culture is defined as, "sets of learned behavior and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society. Human beings use culture to adapt to and transform the world in which they live." (LS:512). Culture has been used in anthropology to understand human difference, but within this understanding there have been benefits and drawbacks to the ideas of culture. Finally, the study of language and humans as symbol using creatures helps us have perspectives on different parts of the world. All anthropologists share a certain reliance on culture to have a starting point in understanding human experience as a whole. Anthropologists have used the idea of culture and fieldwork to understand human …show more content…
Fieldwork is a term that refers to the “anthropologist’s personal, long-term experience with a specific group of people and their way of life” (LS:5). Fieldword is important in anthropological studies. Why? This is due to many reasons. First, the main advantage of fieldwork is it 's ability to get a more in- depth study of a culture. But within these studies, anthropologists face many challenges. Anthropologists must be cautious not to change the normal state of the society they are studying because any significant change in the regular everyday actions of that culture are less valuable in explaining the culture itself and how they work as a society. Second, anthropologists must make sure who they 're speaking with are reliable sources, and represent the population as a whole. If the data is not reliable, the population is not represented correctly, and their data is not completely true. One of the last main challenges is processing the data that anthropologists collect. Their facts must be organized, and must be allowable to be interpreted by others of the culture. Although fieldwork may seem more challenging than beneficial, fieldword is one of the best paths for studying culture and obtaining
Anthropologists have reasons for entering a field of work just like any other person has reasons for Choosing science over music or medicine over business. The reason a person may enter a particular career can be from stumbling upon a field that they knew little. Once discovering it they have ambitions of being the best they can be. It could also stem from a desire as a child to know more about a specific subject. Reasons may be distinct or similar to another person's in the same field. I will compare various anthropologists to how they started in anthropology and how they are different from one another.
Field work is the hands on component to anthropology. The person will immerse themselves in the culture that they will study. These people must pay attention to every little thing that happens while there. It is important for the ethnographer to stay a little over a year in order to experience things they missed while they were in culture shock (page 42). They must adapt to the natives way of life and stop see the thing they do as something alien and see it as a part of their culture. Although the studier will be an alien in the culture they are in, they must try to live and immerse themselves in the way the locals live. Anthropologist Marjorie Shostak formed personal relationships with their cultural consultants. Shostak worked with the !Kung San in the Dobe region of southwest Africa, on the border between Botswana and South Africa (page 41). Field work must be done in order to really study the culture that is of
Participant observation is a method of collecting information and data about a culture and is carried out by the researcher immersing themselves in the culture they observing. The researcher becomes known in the community, getting to know and understand the culture in a more intimate and detailed way than would be possible from any other approach. This is done by observing and participating in the community’s daily activities. The method is so effective because the researcher is able to directly approach the people in the community in a natural context as opposed to taking the participant out of their environment. The aim of participant observation is to gain an understanding the subject’s life from their perspective, with the purpose of collecting more detailed information about a community’s habits, opinions, relationships and issues.
As a defining aspect of what it means to be human, culture is a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. It is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction and exist in specific human groups or cultures.
At Essex High School we have an array of different classes we can take. Anthropology should be added to the choices of classes students at Essex High School can take. Anthropology is a Social science and it would be added as a Social studies class. Anthropology teaches students about human culture. Students would get the opportunity about where they came from and how evolution has made them who they are. Anthropology is not an easy concept. It will challenge students thinking and make them think more in depth.
Embarking on a journey of anthropological fieldwork will undoubtedly include a plethora of setbacks. At its foundation, fieldwork requires developing rapport with the native people in order to gain access of genuine knowledge pertaining to the specific culture being studied. Subsequently, social communication between the researcher and the native people is a key component to the entire process; yet simultaneously it is a root of the many problems a researcher can encounter while in the field. It is no secret that the cultural background of the researcher can often highly contrast the culture he or she enters during fieldwork. This initial cultural adaptation one must undergo while doing anthropological fieldwork is what many in the realm describe as culture shock.
...ctive, 2nd ed. (1971). The unique capacity for symboling that distinguishes humans from primates is discussed by Leslie A. White, "The Symbol: The Origin and Basis of Human Behavior," in his Science of Culture, 2nd ed., pp. 22-39 (1969); Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (1944, reprinted 1974); and Terence Dixon and Martin Lucas, The Human Race (1982). The many conceptions of culture are discussed in A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (1952, reprinted 1978). See also Leslie A. White and Beth Dillingham, The Concept of Culture (1973); and Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (1973, reissued 1975). The history of theory and method in social and cultural anthropology is traced in Fred W. Voget, A History of Ethnology (1975).
One cannot generalize or predict all human behaviors, thought processes, morals, and customs. Because human nature is dominated by different types of cultures and societies in various parts of the world, this can often lead to misunderstanding which ultimately leads to the illusion of cultural superiority, and in most cases this can lead to genocide - the systematic murder or annihilation of a group of people or culture. Anthropology is the study of humans, our immediate ancestors and their cultural environments this study stems from the science of holism - the study of the human condition. Culture is crucial in determining the state of the human condition, as the cultures are traditions and customs that are learned throughout an individual
Clifford Geertz once said: “Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.” I recently spent a short amount of time at a busy 5-way traffic circle near my residence. While sitting in one spot for about 25 minutes, I observed many people doing many different things (mainly driving). Observing the various people made me think of what their particular cultures may have been, and from there, I began thinking of culture in and of itself. What is culture? Culture is defined as: Ideas and behaviors that are learned and transmitted. Nongenetic means of adaptation (Park, 2008). Culture plays a vital role in anthropology. After all, anthropology is the holistic, scientific study of humankind (Park, 2008). One cannot study humans as a whole without studying and understanding their cultures as well.
When an anthropologist takes under the task of doing fieldwork he or she is taking on an overwhelming amount of obstacles one must overcome in order to record accurate information regarding a specific civilization. He or she must overcome many obstacles such as language, race and culture in order to even start a study on a specific culture. In the films "Shock of the Other" and "Margaret Mead and Samoa" we, as the viewer get to see how these fieldworks are done from a perspective myself, as a student, have never gotten to see before. In both of these films quite "famous" anthropologists the first, Margaret Mead, an American journeyed to the South Pacific territory of Samoa in 1925 to do her fieldwork. The other anthropologist David Maybury-Lewis who was born in Hyderabad, Pakistan in 1929 and immigrated to the United States in 1960 was the primary anthropologist in the film "Shock of the Other" traveled to the Amazon River Basin in order to study the drastically primitive civilizations such as the MaschoPiro who basically remain hidden from the outside world.
The word culture is often used to emphasize the most unique aspects of a people's customs and beliefs. Thus, to refer to the culture of a people or group is to call attention to all the things that make that group different or distinctive from others. When anthropologists compare different cultures they do not mean that one culture is better or worse than another culture.
For this summary, I watched a video on YouTube called “Anthropologist at Work: Careers Making a Difference.” In the introduction the video asks in a basic sense, what do Anthropologist do? When I think about what an anthropologist does, I think of things like digging up tombs, uncovering bones, and looking at artifacts to understand the past of humans. According to Elizabeth K. Briody, an anthropologist at General Motors Corporation “in the most basic terms anthropology is the study of humans, humans in every place and time, past and present. (.40 sec)” The video then goes into more depth about what anthropologist look at like material remains when working. As the video moves on it talks about how a lot of anthropologist work in the educational
Cultural anthropology known as the comparative study of human societies and cultures and their development. Cultural anthropology is also known as the study of human cultures, their beliefs, practices, values, ideas, technologies, economies and other domains of social and cognitive organization. Cultural anthropology studies how human cultures are shaped or shape the world around them and it focus a lot on the differences between every person. Human societies has been culturally involved throughout generations because of human development and advanced. The goal of a cultural anthropology is to teach us about another culture by collecting data about how the world economy and political practices effect the new culture that is being studied. However, cultural anthropology has gave us a understanding of world affairs and world problems, the way to interpret the meaning of social actions by putting them in as much context as possible, and a deeper insight of humankind-at all times, in all places and of yourself as part of a culture.
Since humans have come together, there has been culture, and while we continue to live there will continue to be culture. Culture is a thing that we as humans all have in common, but our culture is also what keeps us apart. Anthropology is the study of humans, how we work, what are our rituals, the study of our past. The anthropological perspective is how one must look at culture or at another society to observe it without bias and without judgement. There are four important parts to observing through the anthropological perspective the first being the concept of culture, holistic perspective, comparative perspective, and culture relativism. Through the study of cultural anthropology one, will understand how societies as people are the same and how they are different. The same things that make societies different make them the same. It is also important to understand why and how societies work. The anthological perspective is an important part of viewing cultures.
According to Laland and Hoppitt (2003:151), culture is mainly about the socially learned and transmitted behaviours in a certain group; however, more and more social scientists find that culture is too complicated to give a perfect and reasonable definition (2003:151). Boesch and Tomasello (1998:591) point out that culture is suggested to be viewed as an evolutionary process rather than an actual thing. Ironically, it seems that working on humans’ own culture cannot satisfy them so that they tend to figure out if culture exists in other biological populations. This also could be regarded as a good sign that humans are continually exploring their knowledge about evolution in connection with other species especially some hominid species like