Ministry of Science and Higher Education

Social Anthropology (Anth 1012)

A Freshman Common Course
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology
Arba Minch University, 2014 E.C.
 Unit One
Introducing Anthropology and its
Subject Matter
 What is Anthropology – A Mirror for Humanity?
 Q. What do you know about anthropology?
 Q. How do you define anthropology?
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1.1 What is Anthropology?

The term- ‘Anthropology’ is; compound of two Greek words,

‘Anthropos’ and ‘Logos’, -meaning, ‘Mankind’ and ‘Study/Knowledge’
respectively.
 Etymological Definition:- Anthropology is the study of
humankind, otherwise known as Homo sapiens, the wise
primate both in its cultural and biological aspects of existence.

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CONT
Anthropology is the scientific study of human,
nature,

human society,

Behavior and

interactions with each other environment

It deals with bio cultural characteristics of humanity

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 In more specific terms, ‘Anthropology’ as Science-

CONT

Examines why & how people are both similar and different at the same
time in terms of
 The characteristics that human beings share as members of one
species & as human
 The diverse ways that people live in different environments
Investigates the strategies for living adapted (learned & shared) by
people as member of a social group -situated in different environment.
 Analyze the products of human societies: both material & non-
material creations.
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CONT
The major goals of anthropology’s investigation of humanity
are:
• To understand the uniqueness and diversity of human
behaviour and human societies around the world; ( comparative
study)
•To discover the fundamental similarities that link humanity
throughout time; &
•To encompass an infinite number of questions about all aspects
of human existence.
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CONT
• As a matter of simplicity and brevity, anthropology primarily offers two kinds of
insight:

• First, the discipline produces knowledge- about the actual biological and cultural
variations in the world;

• Second, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives-that helps to

bring human life into focus.

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CONT

Anthropology is the study of people —their origins, their

development, and contemporary variations, wherever and
whenever they have been found.
To sum, it is a broad scientific discipline dedicated to the
comparative study of the human species and its immediate
ancestors.

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1.2 A Brief Historical Background of

Anthropology
Like the other social sciences and humanities,
anthropology is a fairly recent discipline.
Anthropology, considered as the science of
humanity, originated in the region we commonly,
but inaccurately call ‘the West’; notably in four
‘Western’ countries: France, Great Britain, the
USA and, Germany (Ingold, 2003).
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CONT
• Anthropology has its roots in the works and
ideas of the great ancient and medieval Greek,
Roman, and Hebrew philosophers & social
thinkers - who were interested in the nature,
origin and destiny of man. variation and cultural
diversity, and the morality and ethics of human
relationships (Herodotus (5thc BC), Sophists ibn
Khaldun Michel de Montaigne (16thc), Thomas
Hobbes (17thc) and Giambattista Vico (18thc)),
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CONT

• By the late 1870s, anthropology was beginning to

emerge as a profession.
• Generally speaking, anthropology as an
academic discipline was born, during the 19 th c,
in the intellectual atmosphere of
Enlightenment.
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CONT

During its formative years (1870s & 1880s),

anthropology became a profession primarily in
museums.
Anthropologists of the early 1900s emphasized the study
of social and cultural differences among groups.
Here the social and cultural features of many
non-western societies were studied in detail and
documented -this approach is called ethnography.
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By the mid-1900, however, anthropologists

attempted to discover universal human patterns
and the common bio-psychological traits that
bind all human beings -this approach is called
ethnology.
Ethnology aims at the comparative
understanding and analysis of different
ethnic groups across time and space.

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CON

• Important intellectual developments outside

anthropology in the second half of the 19th century and
during the 20th century anthropology shape by
founding fathers of anthropology Franz Boas (1858-
1942) in the USA; A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955),
and Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), in the UK;
and Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) in France (Barnard,
2004).
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ANTHROPOLOGY IN ETHIOPIA
• In Ethiopia, professional anthropologists have been
studying culture and society on a more intensive level
only since the late 1950s. Almost inevitably, the initial
emphasis was on ethnography, the description of
specific customs, cultures and ways of life.
Anthropology was offered as a course in social sciences
College in early 1950s in Haile Selassie I university,
Addis Ababa

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CONT

First anthropology department opened in 1962

• Professional anthropologists of foreign origin have been
studying culture and societies in ethiopia from 1900
• Field-based anthropologists of Ethiopian origin
appeared in the late 1950s

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1.4 SCOPE AND SUBJECT MATTER OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Scope
The scope and subject matter of anthropology is very vast and broad; as
there is no time and space left as far as man exist.
• Temporal dimension of anthropology is broad, covering the past and
present. Variation in Time (diachronic research)
• In terms of the spatial dimension, anthropology studies from Arctic to
Desert, from Megapolis to hunting gathering areas. Variation in Space
(synchronic research)
• The discipline covers all aspects of human ways of life experiences and
existence, as humans live in a social group. [biological as well as the
cultural, the economic and social, the aesthetic and political ]
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CONT

• It touches all aspect of human conditions―relation

between human beings and natural environment
and relation between man and man.
• Anthropology accounts for the social and cultural
variation in the world.

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CONT
Subject Matter of Anthropology

• Conceptualizing and understanding similarities between social

systems and human relationships
• anthropology studies humanity with its all aspects of existence,
and in its all means of differences (diversity) and similarities
(commonality)
• Anthropologists investigate connections within societies and
connections between societies.
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CONT

• The areas covered by anthropology is diverse and enormous.

• Understanding of the biological and cultural origins and
evolutionary development of the species
• Concerned with all humans, both past and present, as well as
their behavior patterns, thought systems, and material
possessions.

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CONT

Anthropology combines four major sub-disciplines:

1.Archaeology ,
2.Linguistics anthropology
3.Socio-cultural anthropology
4. Physical anthropology, that bridge the sciences
and the humanities
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CONT

Anthropology attempts to answer major questions of

human nature and existence. For example:
 What makes us human?
 What is the essence of human existence?
 When, where and how did the human species
originated?
 Why we evolved into what we are today?
 What are we now and where are we going?
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1.5 UNIQUE FEATURES OF

ANTHROPOLOGY
• These are characteristics that distinguish anthropology from other
disciplines.
• It is broad in Scope
• Interested in all human beings, whether contemporary or past,
''primitive'' or '' civilized‘’
• Also interested in various aspects of humans, including their
phenotypic characteristics, family lives, marriages, political systems,
economic lives, technology, belief, health care systems, personality
types, and languages.
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CONT
• It is unique approches
• Holistic in Nature- tendency to look into a phenomena from
different angles
• Considers culture, history, language and biology essential to a complete
understanding of society.
• Tendency to see and understand human beings as organisms that make
use of biology and culture to adaptation.
• Relative- the discipline appraciate the tendency to avoid negative
evaluation of other cultures
• It discourages value judgment, i.e., declaring that this belief or practice
is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
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CONT
• Comparative perspective―helps to understand differences and
similarities across time and place.
• Focus on Emic Perispective―a way of primarily looking at
people's ideas
• It considers insiders' views as a primary focus of any
anthropological inquiry.
• Anthropological studies give attention to how people perceive
themselves and understand their world; how a particular group of
people explain about their action, or give meaning to their behaviour
or cultural practices.
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CONT

• Extensive Fieldwork―related to research approach

• Anthropology heavily relies on ethnographic fieldwork, a sort
of qualitative research design.
• Ethnographic fieldwork draws data from extended fieldwork,
participant observation, in-depth and key informant interviews
and focus-group discussion
• Ethnographic fieldwork requires a period of one year and
above among the study population and a closer observation and
understanding to produce a representative knowledge.
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CONT

• Ethnographic fieldwork is a process that requires

ethnographers to live with and learn the language and
cultures of the people whom they study.
• Primary focus on the local social processes
• Paying due attention to local or micro-social processes
certainly help better understand big changes in societies.
• A detailed account of an event or phenomenon discovers
multiple realities in a community.
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1.6 MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY

• 1. Anthropology is a discipline confined to the study of

"primitive" societies.
• Due to the influence of classical works that focused on
distant and isolated, so called "primitive", small scale
societies.
• Since 1970s, anthropologists began to study their own
socities, including socities in the industrailized west.
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CONT

• 2. Anthropologists only study the rural people and

rural areas.
• As a matter of fact, most of the studies conducted during
the formative years focused on rural areas.
• But in recent years, anthropologists began to study of
people in the urban areas and a sub-discipline called urban
anthropology emerged to study people in cities and urban
areas
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CONT
• 3. Anthropology studies/analysizes the biological evolution of the
proto -humans like that of Lucy/Dinkeneshe.
• This is only a particular branch of anthropology, Physical
anthropology , focuses on the human evolution.
• It studies both biological and socio-cultural aspects of human being and
examines contemporary human physical and biological similarities and
diversities.
• 4. Purpose of anthropology is to keep primitivism against
development; and preserve communities far from development and
obsolete cultural practices in museums.
• Rather, anthropologists’ strive to produce valid knowldge that could be
used in transformation of the lives of these people.
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1.7 ANTHROPOLOGY AND OTHER DISCIPLINES

• Anthropology shares similar interest with other disciplines in the

social sciences such as sociology, psychology, political sciences,
economics, history, etc.
• But it differs from these disciplines in terms of:
• Wide scope,
• Unique research approach,
• Theoretical focus,
• Degree of representation of the local peoples view,
• Unit of analysis and
• Methods used.
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CONT
• Holistic and Relative in nature― Holistic because it studies human
being in its entirity
• Relative because it sees other culture
• Comparative it studies other culture―presents various aspects of the
human life that they are interconnected and interrelated to one another.
• The perspective is also fundamentally empirical, naturalistic and
ideographic [particularising] than nomothetic [universalising] one.

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CONT

• It is unique in the method of research

• it requires extended fieldwork among the studied
community
• Requires to employ ethnographic data collection
techniques Such a, participant observation, Key
informant interview and focus group discussions
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1.8 THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ANTHROPOLOGY

• First, the anthropological perspective help people develop the

understanding that a culture is just one of the many ways of
life in the world.
• It represents one of the many ways that people enhance
adaptation to a particular set of environmental conditions.
As a mirror of human life, studying others, we can better
understand ourselves.

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CONT

• Second, anthropology gives us an insight into different ways

and modes of life of human society (social and cultural
diversity), which helps to understand the logic and
justification behind group behavior and cultural practices.
• Knowledge about the rest of the world is particularly
important today because the world has become increasingly
interconnected.
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CONT
• So, today it is important that we not only know something
about other peoples of the world, but also grasp how our
everyday decisions are influencing them in a multitude of ways
and how others’ decisions are also influencing ours.
• Through the distinctive methodology of long-term, intensive,
participant-observation research, cultural anthropology offers
a unique perspective on how local cultural groups are engaging
in process of globalization.
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CONT
• More than any other disciplines, anthropology promotes sensitivity to
cutural diversity and variability
• Equips one to reduce stereotypes and prejudices on other cultures and
peoples
• It helps us fight against ethnocentrism, the belief that one's own culture
and one's own way of life is superior to others cultural, social and
material life.
• Anthropological knowledge is also used as a tool to formulate
appropriate development policies and their implementation.
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CONT

• Anthropologists are better equipped with the knowledge, skills

and methods of identifying the needs and interests of local
people for the betterment and change of their lived experiences.
• It recognizes the advantages of consulting local people to
design a culturally appropriate and socially sensitive change,
and protect local people from harmful policies and projects that
threaten them.
• In general, anthropology is able to suggest sound solutions to
all human things.
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CONT

• For example, it is often applied in areas of

Environmental Change, Health and Nutrition,
Globalization, Social Justice and Human Rights,
cultural resource management (CRM) and Cultural
Dimensions of Civil and Religious Conflicts.

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Thank You Very Much!