UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPTS OF ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY and POLITICAL SCIENCE

ANTHROPOLOGY - It includes topics such as human origin, globalization, social change, and world history.
-It is the study of humankind in all times and all places.
-It is the study of humanity including our prehistoric origins and contemporary human diversity.

Goals Anthropology
 Discover what all people have in common – By studying commonalities (folklores, traditions, language, etc.) in all
humanity, we could understand more about the human’s nature.
 Produce new knowledge and new theories about humankind and human behavior – This new knowledge is then applied
in an attempt to alleviate human challenges.
 Discover what makes people different from one another in order to understand and preserve diversity – Anthropology
attempts to answer questions like, “What does it mean to be a Filipino and a citizen of the world?” It is not enough that
anthropologists find out the characteristics that make Filipinos unique, it is also important to emphasize the Filipino
traits that makes them “one” with the rest of the world.
 Look at one’s own culture more objectively like an outsider – It aims to make “the strange familiar and the familiar
strange.” Anthropology also challenges individuals to evaluate and criticize their own culture. This is important so that
people will be aware of the faults in their own culture and make necessary changes for its betterment.

Fields Anthropology
 Cultural Anthropology - Refers to the study of living people and their cultures including variation and change. It deals
with the description and analysis of the forms and styles and the social lives of past and present ages. Cultural
anthropologists also study art, religion, migration, marriage, and family.
 Linguistic Anthropology - Refers to the study of communication, mainly (but not exclusively) among humans. It includes
the study of communication’s origins, history, and contemporary variation.
 Archaeology - Refers to the study of past human cultures through their material remains. It is the study of past human
cultures through the recovery and analysis of artifacts.
 Biological Anthropology - Also known as “physical anthropology”, this refers to the study of humans as biological
organisms including their evolution and contemporary variation. It seeks to describe the distribution of hereditary
variations among contemporary populations and to sort out and measure the relative contributions made by heredity,
environment, and culture to human biology.

Anthropologist
1. Franz Boas - widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential anthropologists ever, Franz Boas was a
German American scientist, who is also known as the “Father of Modern Anthropology”.
-He was the first person to implement the scientific method into the study of human cultures and societies.
2. Alfred Koeber - he was an American cultural anthropologist.
- he received his Ph.D. under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate
in anthropology awarded by Columbia.
-He was also the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California,
Berkeley.
-He played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as Director
from 1909 through 1947.
3. Clifford Geertz - he was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on
the practice of symbolic anthropology, and who was considered "for three decades...the single most
influential cultural anthropologist in the United States.“
- He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
4. Margaret Mead - American anthropologist whose great fame owed as much to the force of her personality and her
outspokenness as it did to the quality of her scientific work.
- As an anthropologist, Mead was best known for her studies of the nonliterate peoples of Oceania,
especially with regard to various aspects of psychology and culture—the cultural conditioning of sexual
behaviour, natural character, and culture change.
5. Edward Burnett Taylor - he was an English anthropologist, the founder of cultural anthropology.
-Tylor's ideas typify 19th-century cultural evolutionism. In his works Primitive Culture (1871)
and Anthropology (1881), he defined the context of the scientific study of anthropology, based on the
evolutionary theories of Charles Lyell. He believed that there was a functional basis for the development
of society and religion, which he determined was universal. 
6. Bronislaw Malinowski - he is arguably the most influential anthropologist of the 20th century, certainly for British social
anthropology.
- He saw himself as effecting a revolution in anthropology by rejecting the evolutionary paradigm of his
predecessors and introducing functionalism, whereby institutions satisfied human biological needs, as
the way to understand other cultures

SOCIOLOGY - It is a systematic study of groups and societies that people build and how these affect their behavior.
- It focuses on various social connections, institutions, organizations, structures, and processes.
- It gathers social inputs which are composed of frequent forms and manners namely: attitude, viewpoints,
consolidated values, and norms of social institutions which form part of social array.
The scientific study of sociology enables us to:
 Obtain possible theories and principles about society as well as various aspects of social life;
 Critically study the nature of humanity, which also leads to examining our roles within the society;
 Appreciate that all things (in society) are interdependent with each other. An individual’s personal history is connected
to his/her environment’s history, which is also tied into the nation’s history;
 Broaden our familiarity on sociological facts, which are acquired through empirical process. Incidentally, it makes us
realize our prejudices on various social issues; and
 Expose our minds to the different perspectives on attaining the truth. For instance, some theorists (especially social
philosophers) argue that the truth is relative. This sociological viewpoint diminishes the theory that there is an absolute
truth. Furthermore, the determination whether an action/behavior is good or bad depends on one’s social norms.

Branches Sociology
 Social Organization - This includes the study of social institutions, social inequality, social mobility, religious groups, and
bureaucracy.
BUREAUCRACY - a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials
rather than by elected representatives.
- civil service, government, administration;
 Social Psychology - This area focuses on the study of human nature and its emphasis on social processes as they affect
individual or responses which are called “social stimuli”.
 Applied Sociology - This is concerned with the specific intent of yielding practical applications for human behavior and
organizations. The goal of Applied Sociology is to assist in resolving social problems through the use of sociological
research.
 Population Studies - This area includes size, growth, demographic characteristics, composition, migration, changes, and
quality vis-à-vis economic, political, and social systems.
 Human Ecology - It pertains to the study of the effects of various social organizations (religious organizations, political
institutions and etc.) to the population’s behavior.
 Sociological Theory And Research - It focuses on the discovery of theoretical tools, methods, and techniques to
scientifically explain a particular sociological issue.
 Social Change - It studies factors that cause social organization and social disorganization like calamity, drug abuse,
drastic and gradual social change, health and welfare problems, political instability, unemployment and
underemployment, child and women’s issue, etc.

Sociologists
1. Herbert Spencer - he was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical
liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.
- Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical
world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies.
2. Emile Durkheim - he was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and—with Karl
Marx and Max Weber—is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science.
3. Karl Marx - he was the famous Prussian political economist, journalist, and activist, is considered to be one of the
founding thinkers of sociology.
-He is widely known for his critiques of the social, economic, and political implications of industrial capitalism,
which he expressed in works including  The Manifesto of the Communist Party and Capital, Volumes 1 and
2, and which are known as a whole as "Marxism."
4. Max Weber - born in 1864 in Erfurt, Province of Saxony, in the Kingdom of Prussia (now Germany), Max Weber went on
to become one of the most important sociologists in history.
-One of the founding thinkers of sociology, died at the young age of 56.
-Though his life was short, his influence has been long and thrives today. His various works have been cited over
171,000 times!
5. Auguste Comte - he was a French philosopher born in Montpellier, France in 1798, just after the French Revolution.
-Comte's parents had supported the royal family during the revolution, but as Comte came of age, he began to
see the value of the revolution and the ideals that had led to it.
-Specifically, he became very interested in the way that society molded itself and the laws that it followed.
-Through his philosophical exploration of society, Comte would change the way the world viewed society,
philosophy, and even science.

POLITICAL SCIENCE - It is an academic discipline that deals with the study of government and political processes, institutions,
and behaviors.
- It is a study of the complex behavior of various political actors such as the government administration,
opposition, and subjects.
- It is the systematic study of political and government institutions and processes

TAKENOTE: The study of Politics has something to do with power – who wields it and how it is used. Therefore, it is important to
study politics to understand society and to help change it for the better. This means that political science is not just for
politicians or for aspiring lawyers instead, it is also a give and take relationship between the government (as a state apparatus)
and its people (as a subject).
POLITICS - It originated from the Greek word ‘polis’, which means ‘city’ or ‘state’.
- It is the art and science of governing city/state.
- It is the social process or strategy in any position of control which people gain, use, or lose power.
- Due to the negative connotations of politics, the term is now applied to many different social situations. For example,
politics is present when a teacher is bribed to include a certain student in the honor list or when an employee spreads
rumors against his/her officemate to get ahead in a promotion.
- Politics is often used synonymously with government, however, the two (2) are distinct from each another. The
government that takes shape in a country is a reflection of the country’s political philosophy. While government
typically refers to the established legislative and executive departments of a nation or state, politics is a broad term that
is related to the power sharing in any organization. In other words, politics is an idea while government is the concrete
realization of that idea.

Government - It is the agency to which the will of the state is formulated, expressed, and carried out.
- It is the organized agency in a state tasked to impose social control.
- It is a group of people that governs a community or unit. It sets and administers public policy and exercises executive,
political, and sovereign power through customs, institutions and laws within a state.
- The government exists for the benefit of the governed. It is there for our benefit not for the government officials to
benefit from us.
- It is not just governing the people or the citizens but also the territory and the sovereignty or independence of the
country. Collectively, the government, people, territory, and sovereignty are known as the elements of the State.
- People often interchangeably use the terms state and nation but the difference lies on how the latter refers to an ethnic
concept which means that people are bound together by common ethnical elements such as race, language, and
culture.
- On the other hand, a state is more of a political concept.
- It refers to a community of persons more or less numerous permanently occupying a definite portion of territory, having
a government of their own to which the great body of inhabitants render obedience and enjoying freedom from
external control.

Political Scientists
1. Plato – Lived about 200 years after Pythagoras
- He’s real name is Aristocles, but his wrestling coach dubbed him “Platon” on account of his robust figure
- Son of a wealthy Athens family
- Served in the Athens army during Peloponnesian War.
- Students of Socrates, by whom he was much influenced.
- Along with his mentor Socrates and his student Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of western
Philosophy and Science.
2. Aristotle – A long walk to the Golden Mean
- He is towering the figure in ancient Greek philosopher, making contributions to logic, metaphysics,
mathematics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance and theatre.
3. Niccolo Machiavelli – IT philosopher, diplomat, poet, musician and playwright
- Best known for the “Prince” – realist politics
- “The End Justify The Means”
- “It is better to be feared than to be loved”
- All this done to keep peace and stabilized power.
- First to publicly suggest immoral behaviour for government stability.
4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – he was a historical contemporary of Homes
- Like many of his fellow moderns Rousseau was diversely talented, making important contributions
in literature, music and philosophy.
- In philosophy his primary contributions are to political theory through the vehicles of Discourse on
Inequality and The Social Contract.
5. Baron de Montesquieu – he is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers
- Thought government worked best when the power of the ruler was limited.
6. Thomas Hobbes – he applied rational analysis to the study of government.
-attack the concept of divine right, yet supported a strong monarchy.
-believe that humans were basically driven by passions and needed to be kept in check by a powerful
ruler.
7. John Locke – his most important contribution to understanding psychology and the mind was the book.
- essay concerning Human Understanding begun in 1671.
- it addresses issues such as the nature of the self, the world, God and the grounds for our knowledge of
them.