CONTRIBUTIONS OF

ANTHROPOLOGY TO
THE PROBLEMS IN THE
MODERN SOCIETY
NIEVA A. FERNANDEZ MAED SOCSCI
 Anthropology is the
scientific study of humanity,
concerned with human
ANTHROPOLOGYbehavior, human biology,
cultures, societies, and
linguistics, in both the
present and past, including
past human species.
 a matter or situation
regarded as unwelcome
PROBLEMS or harmful and needing
to be dealt with and
overcome.
 When society is industrialized
it is considered to be modern
society or it can be defined
MODERN as people living together in
SOCIETY current time. It is based on
expansion of education,
technology, industry and
urban life.
CONTRIBUTIONS
• help us to understand how different societies organize
themselves politically and economically.

• increasingly shed light on how complex social systems

are created, established and maintained.

• It offers insight into the key political and social issues

affecting the world today.
 Contemporary social anthropology tackles an
enormous variety of topics, ranging from the social
implications of the new reproductive and
information technologies through the analysis of
the social meanings of consumer behaviour to the
study of violence, poverty and the means for
resolving conflicts and alleviating human suffering.
• Anthropological approaches are increasingly used in
the health sector to redesign the patient experience.

• Companies such as Google and Intel, for example,

use anthropologists to understand how people
interact with technology.
• focused on understanding the differences in
cultures by doing a lot of observation and asking
questions with sensitivity, and able to suspend
and or reconcile their own personal preferences
and biases. Often, they live within the societies
they study.
•can, however, inform sociology, social
psychology, and social-justice work in that it
has room for the many ways of being human
and thereby helping us into creative solutions
for social problems.
 Anthropologists are trained to observe what
people do, and why they do it. They are able
to look for patterns and symbols and seek to
understand what that means to that culture
and it’s importance to that society.
•Anthropology encompasses studying all
societies and cultures from many
different perspectives.
They are then able to make recommendations
that will likely gain consensus among global
societies and different groups of people who
have different values.
• anthropology provides the possibility to study
every aspect of human existence.

• it is the window into the unknown.

• anthropology provides the answer to our
questions about ourselves, our past, present and
future.

• anthropology helps to connect everyone from

around the globe.
“Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in
the Culture of Poverty, Oscar Lewis (1959)”

• Through ANTHROPOLOGY/ists findings and interpretations, we

are able to understand that:
• The “culture of poverty” school of thought ascribed personal
characteristics to the cause of poverty in which poor people
have a distinct set of behaviors that deviate from the social
norm.

• These behaviors are unique to the lower classes and are

passed down from generation to generation, thus
perpetuating the culture of poverty.
 According to the scholars who supported this
theory, these undesirable behaviors can only be
changed by modifying individual behaviors.
OTHER VIEWS:
• the behaviors exhibited by the poor are adaptations to their
impoverished environments that emerge from failures in the
social, political, and economic structures of society.

• the behaviors of poor people are the result of social class

and that their behaviors are adaptations to the environment
in which they live, not a set of distinct values and attitudes.
QUESTIONS:
• How does anthropology help society?
• What are the major contributions of anthropology?
• What is the relevance of anthropology in resolving
problems?