Matthew Shelley

Critical Analysis #1

What is Anthropology? Simply put, it is the study of humanity. That seems given. But when

we ourselves, the observers are that which is being studied, the entire concept of science as we apply it

must acknowledge itself and stand accounted. Anthropology is the name for as disparate things as

words and bone, the study of gods and of chimps. It is the idea that we are knowable, and in that

knowing we can understand and soothe. Rousseau asked, “What wisdom can you find that is greater

than kindness?" It is a science unlike any other, yet can be just as rigid and clinical as any other. Its

experiments are not done in a lab, they are done in the world, and the experiment involves every

person, and every idea of race, skill, belief, profession, every story, nationality, and identity as it

behaves in its natural (or at least, current) environment.

The manner in which we all interact with one another, the complex social gestures and taboos

that define who we are culturally is one approach to studying humanity, cultural anthropology. Another

is to study the links between our ideas and concepts, and how these can be conveyed (and how they

can't) through language, linguistic anthropology. If one were to study what it is to be human by

extracting information from the objects formed long ago, an archaeologist. And if one were to seek

knowledge from the bones and bodies that assemble our physical manifestation, the biological

anthropologist.

It is the hope of those who participate in these fields of study that comprise the Sciences of

Anthropology that with greater understanding of each other, our differences and our similarities, might

come a greater realization of our role in this frail ecosystem, and how we have shaped this landscape

that has in turn shaped us.