1.

0 INTRODUCTION

Anthropology is the compound of two Greek words ‘anthropos’ and ‘logos’, which mean

human and study respectively. It is the study of human kind. It is an umbrella term for different

human studies. It is philosophical anthropology when it is concerned with human beings per se,

in so far as they are human. Physical anthropology is the study of the physico-somatic structure

of the human being, and its evolution from the structure it had many thousands of years ago.

Ethnography is the written descriptive accounts of the simple and small-scale societies that

anthropologists have studied. It is closely related to social anthropology in that it gives first hand

accounts of the cultural and social life of human communities regarded from whichever point of

view. Ethnology is the study of pre-literate or ethnic groups regarded from any point of view be

it social, cultural, political, economic, historic, etc. It is a science that classifies peoples in terms

of their racial and cultural characteristics and attempts to explain these by reference to their

history or pre-history. Social cultural anthropology is only concerned with the cultural and

social aspects of human life. Since the definition of culture is complex, this study is a very wide

field. Sir Edward Tylor described it as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,

art, morals, law, custom and ant other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of

society”.

Culture is one of the most complicated words of the English language to describe, but basically,

it refers to those activities, notions and forms of behaviour that persons have acquired as

members of a society. It is that aspect of human beings that is not biological, instinctive or

natural; but which is learned and acquired, and it may differ from one society to another. The

word originates from the Latin word ‘colere’, which means to cultivate. So cultural anthropology

is basically knowledge about cultivated humans. (Cultivated here means tended to and
developed, and not merely left to grow wild).

Thus understood, this study covers a very wide range, which includes all non biological activities

of human life. It has to be further broken down into the specialist categories of linguistics,

acculturation and personality studies, primitive art, etc. Social and cultural anthropology are

studied as one even though they may ask different questions because the reality that he/she

observes i.e. the people relating with one another is one not two. The two overlap for example

the social anthropologist cannot study social relations without regard to the beliefs and values

associated with them.

1.1 Anthropology and Social Science

Anthropology is a social science. Other social sciences are history, psychology,

sociology, and economics, among several. Social science is basically the empirical study of man

and society. Natural science is also an empirical study, though not of man per se but of nature in

general. Empirical study means the study that relies on the experience of our senses for

verification of truth. It is opposed to the rational study of philosophy and arithmetic, which

depend only on reasoning.

The social sciences are concerned with the study of man and society in one way or another, but

anthropology covers the whole of human society as its field of interest. It tries to understand the

connections between the various aspects of our existence. At the same time it tries to account for

the social and cultural variation in the world and to conceptualize and understand their

similarities. Anthropologists try to understand the connection within societies and the connection

between societies. Clifford Geertz, anthropologist, wrote that “if we want to discover what man

amounts to, we can only find it in what men are; and what men are is various. It is in

understanding this various-ness, its range, its nature, its basis and its implications, that we can
come to construct a concept of human nature”.1

Anthropology is similar with other social sciences as to its subject matter. All the social

sciences such as sociology, psychology, political sciences, economics, history, etc study, in one

way or another, the human society and its ways of lives. Anthropology greatly overlaps with

other disciplines that study human society. For example, anthropological field workers are likely

to collect information on a society's agriculture, leadership patterns, and beliefs about the

universe (physical world), music and art forms. They might Introduction to Anthropology 22 find

it useful to be acquainted with the works of economists, geographers, political scientists,

philosophers, mythologists, and artists or art historians. They may read the works of historians,

sociologists, novelists, economists, psychologists, and political scientists who also write about

the region. Anthropology thus cuts across many disciplines, encompassing many of the subjects

that other scholars consider their special province: law, religion, politics, literature, art, and so

on.

Anthropology differs from other social sciences and the humanities by its broad scope,

approach, unit of analysis and methods used. It studies mankind in its entirety. In its approach,

anthropology studies and analyzes human ways of life holistically, comparatively and

relativistically. Its unit of analysis is small scale society. That is, it is interested in a group of

people with more or less simple, homogenous life ways. In its method of research, it is unique in

that extended fieldwork among the studied community and developing intimate knowledge of the

life worlds of the community with participant observation.

1.2 Philosophical Anthropology

Man has never stopped questioning in the desire to advance knowledge about nature and

the universe at large. However, the most fundamental and complex question that has persisted
1
Geertz, Clifford J. The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books. University of Chicago Press, 1973.P 46
throughout the history of research has to do with man himself. Who is a man? What is his origin?

What is his destiny? What is the essence of being human? What is his place in the universe? All

other discoveries gain relevance based on human beings. Even the existence of God, from a

human perspective, interpretation is necessary without which we cannot talk about the existence

of the most powerful Being.

The question of man is always new, personal and very concrete. Therefore, the search begins

with the self, then the other beings follow. Philosophical anthropology makes an attempt to

respond to some of the key concerns about humanity. It begins from the rational perspective.

This is very important given that despite the existence of many sciences that deal with different

aspects of human beings (biology, psychology, ethnology etc.), philosophy takes the empirical

view to another level where rationality breaks down the empirical data into finer details for

comprehension. This is because, these other sciences do not venture in depth into the

fundamental search on man’s origin and destiny. The experimental methodologies used by many

sciences do not uncover the mysteries of pain, death and self-transcendence.

However, neither of the two sides namely; Philosophy and Science, can comprehensively

respond to questions about human beings on sole basis. There must be a mutual complementarity

that brings about the richness in knowledge. Scientists will find it limiting to only rely on

observation and experimentation as the only reliable methodologies. On the other hand,

philosophy cannot too cling on rationality without the aid of observation. The complexity of

human beings is too acute given his physical and psychic aspects.

Though man is a creature within this universe just like any other being, his capacities have

proved to be of greater importance to a level of being the sole cosmic concern. The two world

wars exposed the destructive ability of man (man as the cause of his own problem). More and
more sophisticated weaponry is on the rise. This sends a red signal on what man is capable of

doing. He was once dependent on the world for his survival. Unfortunately, the reciprocal is

taking shape where the world seems to be existing on the mercy of man given the magnitude of

destructive weapons in the hands of man. Thus, this philosophical study of man in the name of

philosophical anthropology, above responding to the above questions, it cannot avoid the ethical

or moral aspect of man. It is a study that should be in search of a remedy of the many problems

brought about by human progress.

With Rene Descartes, the study of man took a serious step never to be stopped until today. In the

meditations, he comes up with the idea that, to think is to be. Hence, “Cogito ergo sum” is later

coined. Today, man is studied in many disciplines such as psychology, sociology, cultural

anthropology etc.

1.3 Cultural Anthropology

This can also be called social anthropology or sociocultural anthropology. It is concerned

with the social and cultural dimensions of the living peoples. Cultural anthropologists conduct

studies of living peoples, most often by visiting and living among a particular people for an

extended period of time, usually a year or longer. They conduct fieldwork among the people they

study and describe the results of their investigations in the form of books and articles called

ethnographies. Cultural anthropology is also concerned with making generalizations about, and

seeking explanations for, similarities and differences among the world's people. Those who

conduct comparative studies to achieve these theoretical goals are called ethnologists. Thus, two

Introduction to Anthropology 14 important aspects of social/ cultural anthropology are

ethnography and ethnology. The former is more of empirical study or description of the culture

and ways of lives of a particular group of people, while the latter is more of a theoretical study of
the similarities and differences among the human groups of the world, past or present. There are

many other specialized fields of study in social or cultural anthropology. Some of these include:

anthropology of art, medical anthropology, urban/rural/economic anthropology, political

anthropology, development anthropology, anthropology of religion, population studies, legal

anthropology, etc.

All human societies have been curious about how their customs originated and what the

differences between their own culture and that of neighboring societies might mean. Thus, in a

sense they have all constructed their own anthropologies. But the interpretations put forward,

even when they were founded partly on accurate observation, most often remained on the level

of myth. Embryonic scientific thought began to appear in only a limited number of centers of

civilization: in the classical Mediterranean world, in China, in the medieval Arab world, and in

the modern Western world. Only in the West, however, did various ideas converge to bring about

the birth of scientific anthropology in the 19th century.

A characteristic common to all these centres of civilization was the control that they

exercised over vast areas and the opportunity that they enjoyed—through their soldiers,

merchants, pilgrims, and missionaries—to gather observations on a wide variety of populations.

Such a gathering of data was necessary in order even to begin to understand how men adapted to

their environments, how they used their various economic, social, and political institutions, and

how mankind evolved from simple to complex societies. Historians and philosophers among the

ancient Greeks, Arabs, and Chinese all asked such questions. To take only the example of

western Europe, many pertinent questions were posed by the French philosophers Jean

Bodin and Michel de Montaigne as early as the 16th century, by the English

philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in the 17th, and by the French philosophers

Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire in the 18th, to mention only those who are often placed

among the precursors of modern anthropology.

1.4 Anthropology of the Gurage People

The Gurage are an ethnic group living in the province of Gurage to the southwest of

Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The region is bordered on the north by the river Awash, on

the east by the Lake Zway, and on the southwest by the river Omo. The origin of the population

is still a matter of speculation. The original population of the present-day Gurage was probably a

Sidamo group of the south. The country was later occupied and settled by military colonies from

the north of Ethiopia, and still other segments of the population might have come from the region

of Harar. This situation is reflected in the religious, linguistic, and ethnic status of the Gurage.

There are three main versions of oral traditions about the origins of the Gurage. One

version, very popular and widely accepted, particularly in northern and western Gurage., refers

to the migration of Ethio-Semitic-speakers from northern Ethiopia led by the military leader

azmaó Sébhat . From Aymälläl these Gurage. ancestors expanded further south and south-west to

populate the northern and western parts of traditional Gurage land.

However, based on some linguistic and other evidence, this tradition has been questioned

in that the first migrants from the north must have migrated much earlier. It is suggested that a

wave of the first migrant Gurage ancestors must have been triggered by the exigencies of state

control and Orthodox Christian evangelization during the 5th and 6th cent., when they were

forced to leave northern locations. However, the legend of azmaó Sébhat has become a dominant

part of Gurage historical accounts and may indicate waves of Gurage migrations from the north,

including one led by the own azmaó Sébhat.

The second legend of origin holds that groups of speakers of East Gurage. languages
(today’s Sélti, Wäläne, Gädäbano and Zay) came from the east. The Wäläne in particular are

considered to be remnants of Ahmad b. Ibrahim al-Ëazi’s (Grañ) army. Others suggested that the

(Gän-) Sélti and the Azärnät-Bärbäre came initially from Harär and Bärbära, whilst still others

considered Arabia as the origin of these groups. Both stories of origin report that the current

population is constituted also by mixing with indigenous peoples (of perhaps ÷Cushitic cultural

background).

In general, Gurage society seems to have evolved from multi directional and multi-

destination migrations of Semitic-speaking peoples from northern and eastern Ethiopia to their

present areas, and also due to their interactions with local peoples of mainly Cushitic-speaking

cultural background. Some elements of the present Gurage might have both Semitic and Cushitic

backgrounds, having migrated at different times and from different areas (Tégray, Gondär, Šäwa,

etc., and Harär) independently and/or as parts of the military colonies established by the

medieval kingdoms of Christian Ethiopia as well as the forces of Grañ. As a result of these

interactions between the incoming northerners and local peoples, the Gurage not only

intermingled with and adopted some cultural elements of local groups, but also maintained their

own traditions, resulting in some Semitic-Cushitic demographic and cultural mixtures reflected

in Gurage practices of énsät cultivation, languages/dialects, religious belief-systems and kinship-

systems.

However, the Gurage have developed distinct cultural identities of their own as

manifested, among others, in village settlement patterns, architectural designs, language/dialects,

and culinary traditions such as kétfo, which is a Gurage specialty that has evolved into one of the

most popular national dishes (Food).

The conquest of Gurage by négus Ménilék of Šäwa (later ase ÷Ménilék II) is a historical
fate that the Gurage share with many in Ethiopia. Initially, the Gurage, save the Soddo sub-

group, who submitted to Ménilék in 1876 without any resistance, fiercely resisted Ménilék’s

expansion. They fought to defend their independence and lands for 14 years since 1874,

defeating Ménilék’s forces in several battles. The fiercest and most important was that of Aräkit

(in Gumär) in 1875, when the Gurages, led by agäz (the highest traditional military title among

the Gurage.) Darsamo Kero of Gumär, had their enemy lose more than two-thirds of his soldiers

suffering perhaps the most crushing defeat. The Gurage. were finally defeated in 1888 at the

battle of Gäbidu by Ménilék’s forces headed by ras Gobäna Daci. This resulted in new structural

developments, such as the ÷näftäñña – ÷gäbbar (landlord – tribute payer) relationships, with

which most Gurage lost their lands to the Amhara dominated näftäñña and became gäbbar on

their own lands. This had far-reaching implications for both the Gurage and Ethiopia as a whole,

for it sparked Gurage. urban migration.

1.5 Conclusion

In this chapter I have tried to discuss about definition and the scope of anthropology and

discussed the role of cultural anthropology within the discipline. Philosophical Anthropology

distinguishes itself from all other forms of inquiry into the nature of being human in two very

fundamental ways first Philosophical Anthropology situates humans naturalistically among other

forms of life, while simultaneously doing justice to the self-understanding of being human that

derives from interpretative, phenomenological and reflective modes of inquiry. It thus has origins

in both the natural sciences and humanities.

Second, For Philosophical Anthropology, what it means to be human is both practical and

theoretical. To take a stand on the nature of being human is to unavoidably enter into practical

and evaluative reflections about the fulfilment of human needs, potentials and well-being. It is
for this reason that our outlook will be a critical evaluation of key human aspects beginning from

the physical to the metaphysical levels.

The Gurages are composed of three distinct groups of people, from Eritrea, eastern Ethiopia and

southern Ethiopia, who migrated to Gurage land around the 13th century. These migrants assim-

ilated the indigenous population a process that appears to have continued, the Kistane Gurages

assimilated other groups such as Oromos. However, at present Gurages believe that their ethnic

boundary is fixed.