The Major Branches of Anthropology

Anthropology is the scientific study of humans and more humanistic tradition of American cultural
human behavior and societies in the past and anthropology. At this point, the discipline spread to
present. various parts of what was then the British Empire
and also was established as a distinctive strand of
The Major Branches of Anthropology
teaching and research in a handful of American
Cultural Anthropology - is that major division of universities. The years after World War II, though,
anthropology that explains culture in its many brought a partial breakdown of the British
aspects. It is anchored in the collection, analysis, and opposition to American cultural anthropology, as
explanation (or interpretation) of the primary data of younger scholars abandoned the tenets of
extended ethnographic field research. This discipline, comparative sociology set out by one of the
both in America and in Europe, has long cast a wide discipline’s founders, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown. During
net and includes various approaches. It has produced the same period, however, the term was increasingly
such collateral approaches as culture-and- used in Continental Europe: the French
personality studies, culture history, cultural ecology, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss accepted a chair
cultural materialism, ethnohistory, and historical in social anthropology in the Collège de France in
anthropology. These subdisciplines variously exploit 1959, and, when European anthropologists
methods from the sciences and the humanities. established a joint professional association in the
Cultural anthropology has become a family of late 1980s, it took the title European Association of
approaches oriented by the culture concept. Social Anthropologists (EASA) and called its journal
Social Anthropology.
In respect to culture and civilization, Tylor collapses
the distinction between the total social legacy of a Linguistic Anthropology - Linguistic anthropologists
human group, including every mundane matter from argue that human production of talk and text, made
pot making to toilet practices, and its most refined possible by the unique human capacity for language,
attainments, such as the fine arts, that has been at is a fundamental mechanism through which people
the heart of the debate over what culture is. On the create culture and social life. Contemporary scholars
second point, he emphasizes what has continued to in the discipline explore how this creation is
be the anchor of cultural anthropology in accomplished by using many methods, but they
ethnographic fieldwork and writing. At the same emphasize the analysis of audio or video recordings
time, the positioning and gender of the of “socially occurring” discourse—that is, talk and
ethnographer and the bias in ethnographic data text that would appear in a community whether or
have undergone increasingly close scrutiny. On the not the anthropologist was present. This method is
third point, by emphasizing what is socially learned preferred because differences in how different
rather than what is biologically transmitted, Tylor communities understand the meaning of speech
points up the enduring problem of distinguishing acts, such as “questioning,” may shape in
between biological and cultural influences, between unpredictable ways the results derived from
nature and nurture. investigator-imposed elicitation, such as
“interviewing.”
Social Anthropology - The term social anthropology
emerged in Britain in the early years of the 20th Biological Anthropology – carry our systematic
century and was used to describe a distinctive style studies of the non-cultural aspects of humans and
of anthropology—comparative, fieldwork-based, and near humans. Non cultural refers to all of those
with strong intellectual links to the sociological ideas biological characteristics that are genetically
of Émile Durkheim and the group of French scholars inherited in contrast to learned. Near human is a
associated with the journal L’Année sociologique. category that includes monkeys, apes, and other
Although it was at first defined in opposition to then- primates as well as our fossil ancestors. The primary
fashionable evolutionary and diffusionist schools of interest of most biological anthropologists today is
anthropology, by the mid-20th century social human evolution—they want to learn how our
anthropology was increasingly contrasted with the ancestors changed through time to become what we
are today. Biological anthropologist also are
interested in understanding the mechanism of
evolution and genetic inheritance as well as human
variation and adaptations to different environmental
stresses, such as those found at high altitude and in
environments that have temperature extremes.

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Anthropology is the scientific study of humans and more humanistic tradition of American cultural

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