Understanding

Culture Society
and Politics
Module 1- Anthropology
Learning Competency:
Articulate observations on human cultural variation, social
differences, social change, and political identities
Learning Objectives:
Articulate observations on human cultural variation, social
differences, social change, and political identities
Identify the subjects of inquiry and goals of Anthropology
Explain anthropological perspective on culture.
ANTHROPOLOG
Y
“Anthropology is the study of human beings and their ancestors
through time in terms of physical characteristics, environmental and
social relations and culture.”
The American Anthropological Association describes anthropology as
a science seeking to “ uncover principles of behavior that apply to all
human communities.” To an anthropologist, diversity itself – seen in
body shapes and size, customs, clothing, speech, religion, and
worldview.
 “Anthropology is the comparative
study of cultural and social life. Its
most important method is
participant observation, which
consist in lengthy fieldwork in a
particular social setting.”
 ANTHROPOLOGY

• The discipline thus compare aspect of

different societies, and continuously
searches for interesting dimension for
comparison.
Furthermore, the discipline emphasizes thee
importance of ethnographic fieldwork, which is
a thorough close-up study of a particular social
and cultural environment, where the
anthropologist need to establish rapport with
the host societies before they can extract the
life stories of people
Anthropology has many features
in common with other social
sciences and humanities.
Indeed, a difficult question
consist in deciding whether it is
a science or one of the
humanities
 SUBFIELDS OF
ANTHROPOLOGY
PHYSICAL LINGUISTIC CUULTURAL
Promote to study of a
society’s culture through
their belief system,
practices, and possessions

APPLIED
Attempts to solve
contemporary problems
through the application of
theories and approache
ARCHEOLOGY
Examines the remains of
ancient and historical
human population to
promote an understanding
of how humans adopted to
their environment and
 PHYSICAL
biological development of
human and their
contemporary variation
 LINGUISTIC
examine the language of a
group of people and its
relation to their culture
 CULTURAL
Promote to study of a
society’s culture through
their belief system,
practices, and possessions
 APPLIED
Attempts to solve
contemporary problems
through the application of
theories and approaches
 ARCHEOLOGY
Examines the remains of ancient
and historical human population to
promote an understanding of how
humans adopted to their
environment and developed
 EVOLUTION

Biological and cultural

evolution are key
concepts in the study
of the origin of
modern humans.
 Biological evolution refer to the changes,
modification, and variation in the genetics and
inherited traits of biological populations from one
generation to another. While cultural evolution refer to
the changes or the development in culture from a
simple form to a more complex