Rift valley University continuing and weekend program short not Social Anthropology.

Anth-101 Unit
One
Introduction to Anthropology and its Subject Matter.
1.1 Definition, Scope and Subject Matter of Anthropology
1.1.1 Concepts in Anthropology.
The term, anthropology derived from two Greek words ‘anthropos’ w/c is to mean ‘human being/mankind’
and ‘logos’, which to mean ‘reason/study/science’. Thus, anthropology means ‘reason about humans’ or‘the
study or science of humankind’.
Anthropologically, man has biological and cultural characteristics w/c is inseparable elements as Culture
influences human physical structures & vise-versa. Literally, anthropology is the study of humans raising a
wide variety of questions about the human condition.
What distinguishes anthropology from all other disciplines?
Anthropology is the scince that study abut peoples origins, dev’t, and contemporary variations, wherever
and whenever theyhave been found. It dedicated in comparative study of humans as a group, from its
appearance to present stage of development. Thus in specific terms, anthropology is a science which:

 Investigates the strategies for living that are learned and shared by human social groups;
 Examines the characteristics that human beings share as one species(homo sapiens) and the diverse
ways of live in different env’ts;
 Analyses the products of social groups

-material objects (material cultures)

-non-material creations (religion/beliefs, values, institutions, practices, etc).
Anthropology is an intellectually challenging subject, that works on understanding of culture, society and
humanity through detailed studies

 raising philosophical questions, and responds to by exploring human lives under different conditions.
 explain how and why people are both similar and different in analysing/comparing biological and
cultural past with contemporary societies.

The ultimate goal of anthropology is:-

 Developing integrated picture of all aspects of our existence
 what makes us human?
 Why do some people tend to be tall and lanky,while others short and stocky?
 Why do some groups practice agriculture, while others hunt for a living?
The primary insight of anthropologyis to propose & offers :_
 1st. knowledge about the actual biological and cultural variations inthe world.
 2nd.methods and theoreties enabling practitioner to explore, compare, understand and solve
these varied expressions of the human condition.
1.1.2 The Historical Development of Anthropology
Anthropology is a recent discipline w/c shaped during the 20thcentury, though it has important in other
discipline of earlier times.In the scintific discpline the history of anthropology traced back to the European
Enlightenment of the 18thcentury while some group claiming about as did not arise as a scince untill 1850’s
but others traced bacck to the 1st world war.
anthropology, considered as the science of humanity w/c originated in the Western’ region notably in
France, Great Britain, the USA and, until 2nd World War, Germany (Erikson, 2001). The curent academic
anthropology rooted within the works and ideas of ancient & Medieval Greek, Roman, and Hebrew
philosophers and social thinkers. i.e anthropology traced to the history of western culture.
During its formative years, it became a profession of museums studying human kinds in Europe, North
America and South America of simple society technologically &called them as traditional non- industrial
society.
Anthropologists of the early 1900s emphasized the study of social and cultural differences among human
groups in detail & the approach is called ethnography. But in the mid-1900, universal human patterns and
the common bio-psychological traits discovered & the approach is called ethnology w/c aims at comparative
understanding of different ethnic groups across time and space.
1.1.3 Scope and subject matter of anthropology.
The breadth and depth of anthropology is vast, no time and space left as man exists. It studies the past, the
present and even the future and from Arctic to Desert, from Mega-polis to hunting gathering area as
temporal & spacital dimensions respectively.
Anthropology covers all aspects of human ways of life experiences and existence, the r/n s/p b/n human
beings and natural env’t in a social group and man and man.
Thus , anthropology accounts for the social and cultural variation in the world and conceptualize
understanding of similarities between social systems and human r/n s/p.
Ingeneral anthropology manifests humanity as its object of research studying their all life aspects &
means of differences (diversity) and similarities(commonality); investigate the interrelationships b/n
different aspects of human existance asks large questions to draws its most important insights from small
places.
Anthropologists strive for an understanding of human biological and cultural origins and evolutionary
development of the species. /The past and present,/ i.e the concerns is all humans behavior patterns,
thought systems, and material possessions to describe, what it means to be human
1.2 Sub-fields of anthropology
No time, space and characteristics left to study human beings so wide as an ocean that requires dividing and
understanding in-depth. Anthropology oftenly categorized into four major subfields:
1.Physical/Biological Anthropology, 2.Archeology,
3.Linguistic Anthropology & 4.Socio-Cultural Anthropology.
1.2.1 Physical/Biological Anthropology
-Physical anthropology study how culture and environment influence the two areas of biological evolution
and contemporary variations. - Mostly related with natural sciences.
Human biology explains some aspects of behavior, society, and culture like marriage patterns, sexual
division of labor, gender ideology etc. The features of culture in turn have biological effects like the
standards of attractiveness, food preferences, and human sexuality. Biological variations such as
morphology/structure, color, and size are reflections of changes in living organism w/c is the result of the
cumulative processes invisibly occurring in every fraction of second in human life
The major sources of biological variations are derived from the interrelated effects of natural selection,
geographical isolation, genetic mutations w/c is categorized from human evolution and genetics by
specialites of :-
1. Paleo anthropology /analysis of fossil/
2. Primatology study anatomy & social behavior human ancestors
3. Human genetics investigate how and why the physical traits of human
populations vary
1.2.1 Archaeological Anthropology
-studies ways of lives of past peoples excavating and analyzing material culture/physical remains (artifacts,
features and eco-facts) they left behind. Artifacts i.e Tools, ornaments, arrow heads, coins, and fragments
of pottery, features . i.e house foundations, ancient buildings, fire places, steles, and post holes and eco-facts
i.e how peopleused natural resources
Prehistoric Archaeology and Historical Archaeology are subfields of Archaeology w/c investigates human
prehistory 6,000 and first stone tools 2.5 million yrs while Historic archaeology study human groups i
invented language & began to write .
Ethiopian have very glorious past & belonged to those countries which have old civilization.
1.2.3 Linguistic Anthropology
*A.L studies human language as cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice in its social and
cultural context, across space and time.
*L A, studies contemporary human languages & the past by dividing into four distinct branches / areas of
research: Structural or DescriptiveLinguistics, Historical Linguistics, Ethno-Linguistics, and Socio-
linguistics.
Structural /Descriptive Linguistics: studies the structure of linguistic patterns. Every culture has a
distinctive language with its own logical structure and set of rules for putting words and sounds together for
the purpose of communication.
Ethno-linguistics (cultural linguistics): examines the r/n s/p b/n language and culture. Eg.snow for Inuit,
cows to Pastoral , automobiles in U.S’s cultur. i.e Culture are reflected in the vocabulary.
Historical linguistics: - deals on emergence of language in general and how specific languages diverge over
time via comparison & classifications of dift languages to differentiate the historical links b/n them.
Socio-linguistics: -investigates linguistic variation within a given language. No language is ahomogeneous
system in which everyone speaks just like everyone else.
One reason forvariation is geography in dialects and accents also bilingualism of ethnic groups.
Linguistic anthropology generally focuses on the evolution of languages b/c key tools in study culture.
1.2.4 Socio-Cultural Anthropology
*Is the largest sub-fields of anthropology deals with human society and culture in w/c it describes,
analyzes, interprets, and explains social, cultural and material life of contemporary human societies.
It studies the social , symbolic or nonmaterial and material lives of living peoples under:-1.Ethnography
(based on field work) and 2. Ethnology (based on cross-cultural comparison).
Ethnography provides acomprehensive account of a particular community, society, or culture describing
its features in much detail as possible including local behavior, beliefs, customs, social life, economic
activities, politics, and religion through gathering data.
Ethnology is the comparative study of contemporary cultures and societies & it examines, interprets,
analyzes compares using the results of ethnographic data to compare and contrast.
=seek to understand why people today and in the recent past differ in terms of ideas and behavior patterns
and what all cultures in the world have in common with one another.
= to test hypotheses, and to build theory of how social and cultural systems work.
To properly address questions related to culture and societies Socio-cultural anthropology sub-divided into
many other specialized fields like Art,Medical,Urban ,Economic, Politica,Development, Religion e.t.c
1.3 Unique (Basic) Features of Anthropology
The distinguishing characteristics of Anthropology i identifies it from other discipline are its unique
scope, approach, focus and method of study.
*Anthropology has a broad scope i.e interested in all human beings, in many different aspects of humans;
No dimension of human kind is outside the anthropologist's attention.
*The 2nd important feature is its approach,its study is holistic, relativistic, and focused one. Holistic refers
in looking any phenomena at different vantage points.
Concept of relativity is highly appreciated in anthological studies and explain a certain belief, practice of a
group of people in its own context. It does not make value judgment i.e. declaring that this belief or
practice is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Another important perspective is a way of looking at people's ideas. How
peoles understand themselves.
*Another important unique feature is its research approach w/c is highly dependent on qualitative research
to understand the meaning behind any human activity. Extended fieldwork, participant observation, in-depth
and key informant interviews and focus-group discussion are qualitative research instruments to explore
information change and continuities in human societies.
*Focusing more on the local than the big social processes has been another exclusive approach/feautre in
the discipline. Attention to local or micro-social processes certainly help us to understand better big changes
in societies.
1.4 Misconceptions about anthropology
Due to lack of appropriate awareness different misconceptions are held about anthropology is related to the
area of its study which is limited to the study of "primitive" societies. Indeed during early periods focused
on isolated, small scale societies. However, nowadays study most advanced and most complex societies as
well.
The other misconception is taken as only study the rural people and rural areas.though in early time but now
interested in the study of urban people and urban areas.
Also wrongly misconceived that anthropology is the study of fossil evidences/lucy/. But interested to
question of the origin of modern human beings But not sudy evolution rather biological and cultural
diversity.
The other misconception of antropology is from angles of purpose to support communities‘ capacity to
empower dev’t processes. While criticsed as it preserve communities far from development and obsolete
cultural practices in museums.
1.5 The Relationship between Anthropology and Other Disciplines
Anthropology greatly overlaps with social sciences that study human society. However, it differs from
other social sciences and the humanities by its broad scope, unique approach, unit of analysis and methods
used. In its scope, anthropology studies humankind in its entirety. In its approach, anthropology studies
and analyzes human ways of life holistically, comparatively and in a relativistic manner.
1.6 The Contributions of anthropology
Philosophicaly since we are human beings, we have to know our civilization. Anthropology has established
itself to examining all aspects of humanity on the globe.
anthropologists draw on theories and data from a number of other disciplines in the humanities, the social
sciences, and the physical sciences.By doing:-
 comparative study of cultures,
 helps us better understand ourselves /ways of life
 Insight into different ways & modes of life of human society (s and c diversity), which helps to
understand the logic and justification behind group behavior and cultural practices.
 show how the local people themselves talk about their life experiences in a time of rapid
globalization
 Anthropology is also used as a tool for development Paying attention to local conditions.
 Anthropologists are better equipped with the knowledge, skills and methods of identifying the
needs and interests of local people.

 In general, anthropology is able to suggest sound solutions to all things human. Eg. On 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.