UNIT ONE

Introducing Anthropology and its Subject Matter

1.1 Definition, Scope and Subject Matter of Anthropology

1.1.1 Concepts in Anthropology

To begin with the etymology of the term, the term anthropology is a compound of two
Greek words, ‘anthropos’ and ‘logos’, which can be translated as ‘human being/mankind’
and ‘reason/study/science’, respectively. So, anthropology means ‘reason about humans’ or
‘the study or science of humankind or humanity’. Moreover, man has two important
characteristics: biological and cultural: It is very important to understand that the biological
and the cultural characteristics are inseparable elements. Culture influences human physical
structures and the vise-versa.

Hence, if we take it literally, it is the study of humans. In one sense, this is an accurate
description to the extent that anthropology raises a wide variety of questions about the
human condition. Yet this literal definition is not particularly illuminating; because a number
of other academic disciplines including sociology, biology, psychology, political science,
economics, and history also study human beings. What is it that distinguishes
anthropology from all of these other disciplines? Anthropology is the study of people their
origins, their development, and contemporary variations, wherever and whenever they
have been found. It is a broad scientific discipline dedicated to the comparative study of
humans as a group, from its first appearance on earth to its present stage of development.
Of all the disciplines that study humans, anthropology is by far the broadest in scope.

In more specific terms, anthropology is a science which:

 Investigates the strategies for living that are learned and shared by people as members
of human social groups;

 Examines the characteristics that human beings share as members of one species
(homo sapiens) and the diverse ways that people live in different environments;
  Analyses the products of social groups -material objects (material cultures) and
non-material creations (religion/beliefs, social values, institutions, practices, etc).

Anthropology is an intellectually challenging, theoretically ambitious subject, which tries to

achieve an understanding of culture, society and humanity through detailed studies of
community life, supplemented by comparison. At the deepest level, it raises philosophical
questions, which it tries to respond to by exploring human lives under different conditions.
It seeks to explain how and why people are both similar and different through examination
of our biological and cultural past and comparative study of contemporary human societies.
Its ultimate goal is to develop an integrated picture of humankind—a goal that encompasses
an almost infinite number of questions about all aspects of our existence. We ask, for
example, what makes us human? Why do some groups of people tend to be tall and lanky,
while others tend to be short and stocky? Why do some groups of people practice
agriculture, while others hunt for a living?

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 enabling the
practitioner to explore, compare, understand and solve these varied expressions of the
human condition.

1.1.2 The Historical Development of Anthropology

Like the other social sciences, anthropology is a fairly recent discipline. It was given its
present shape during the twentieth century, but it has important forerunners in the
historiography, geography, travel writing, philosophy and jurisprudence of earlier times.
There are, in any case, many ways of writing the history of anthropology, just as, in any
given society, there may exist competing versions of national history or origin myths,
promoted by groups or individuals with diverging interests. History is not primarily a
product of the past itself, but is rather shaped by the concerns of the present. As these
concerns change, past events and persons shift between foreground and background, and
will be understood and evaluated in new ways.
If we restrict ourselves to anthropology as a scientific discipline, some would trace its roots
back to the European Enlightenment, during the eighteenth century; others would claim
that anthropology did not arise as a science until the 1850s, yet others would argue that
anthropological research in its present-day sense only commenced after the First World
War. Nor can we avoid such ambiguities.

It is beyond doubt, however, that anthropology, considered as the science of humanity,

originated in the region we commonly but inaccurately call ‘the West’, notably in three or
four ‘Western’ countries: France, Great Britain, the USA and, until the Second World War,
Germany(Erikson, 2001). Historically speaking, this is a European discipline, and its
practitioners, like those of all European sciences, occasionally like to trace its roots back to
the ancient Greeks.

The present academic anthropology has its roots in the works and ideas of the great ancient
and Medieval Greek, Roman, and Hebrew philosophers and social thinkers. These people
were interested in the nature, origin and destiny of man, and the morality and ethics of
human relationships. While the roots of anthropology can be generally traced through the
history of western culture as far back as ancient Greek social philosophical thinking, the
discipline did not emerge as distinct field of study until the mid-nineteenth century.

Generally speaking, anthropology as an academic discipline was born during the 19th
century, out of the intellectual atmosphere of Enlightenment, which is the eighteenth
century social philosophical movement that emphasized human progress and the poser of
reason, and based on Darwinian Theory of Evolution. By the late 1870s, anthropology was
beginning to emerge as a profession. A major impetus for its growth was the expansion of
western colonial powers and their consequent desire to better understand the peoples
living under colonial domination.

During its formative years, anthropology became a profession primarily in museums. In this
regard, in the 1870s and 1880s many museums devoted to the study of humankind were
found in Europe, North America and South America.
Early anthropologists mainly studied small communities in technologically simple societies.
Such societies are often called by various names, such as, “traditional”, “non-industrialized
and/or simple societies”. Anthropologists of the early 1900s emphasized the study of social
and cultural differences among human groups. Here, many of the indigenous peoples of
non-western world and their social and cultural features were studied in detail and documented.
This approach is called ethnography. 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.

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.

1.1.3 Scope and subject matter of anthropology

The breadth and depth of anthropology is immense. There no time and space left as far as
man exists. In other words, the temporal dimension covers the past, the present and even
the future. In terms of the spatial dimension, anthropology studies from Arctic to Desert,
from Megapolis to hunting gathering areas. The discipline covers all aspects of human ways
of life experiences and existence, as humans live in a social group.

It touches all aspect of human conditions as far as there is a relation between human beings
and natural environment and man and man. Anthropology not only tries to account for the
social and cultural variation in the world, but a crucial part of the anthropological project
also consists in conceptualizing and understanding similarities between social systems and
human relationships. As one of the foremost anthropologists of the twentieth century,
Claude Lévi-Strauss, has expressed it: ‘Anthropology has humanity as its object of research,
but unlike the other human sciences, it tries to grasp its object through its most diverse
manifestations’ (1983, p. 49). In other words, anthropology studies humanity with its all aspects
of existence, and in its all means of differences (diversity) and similarities
(commonality). Where every human being lives, there is always anthropology.
The discipline is also accounting for the interrelationships between different aspects of
human existence, and usually anthropologists investigate these interrelationships taking as
their point of departure a detailed study of local life in a particular society or a delineated
social environment. One may therefore say that anthropology asks large questions, while at
the same time it draws its most important insights from small places. Although
anthropologists have wide-ranging and frequently highly specialized interests, they all share
a common concern in trying to understand both connections within societies and
connections between societies.

Such focus areas of investigation and the stated aims of the discipline convey that, the areas
covered by anthropology is diverse and enormous. Anthropologists strive for an
understanding of the biological and cultural origins and evolutionary development of the
species. They are concerned with all humans, both past and present, as well as their
behavior patterns, thought systems, and material possessions. In short, anthropology aims
to describe, in the broadest sense, what it means to be human (Peacock, 1986).

1.2 Sub-fields of anthropology

There is no time, space and characteristics left to study human beings. It is as wide as an ocean.
Accordingly, it is required to divide and understand in-depth. Accordingly, anthropology has
often categorized into four major subfields: Physical/Biological Anthropology, Archeology,
Linguistic Anthropology and Socio-Cultural Anthropology. Let us explain turn by turn.

1.2.1 Physical/Biological Anthropology

Physical anthropology is the branch of anthropology most closely related to the natural
sciences, particularly biology; that is why it is often called biological anthropology. Unlike
comparative biologists, physical anthropologists study how culture and environment have
influenced these two areas of biological evolution and contemporary variations. Human
biology affects or even 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. Since change occurs in the universe, it also applies in human
beings.

Human biological variations are the result of the cumulative processes of invisible changes
occurring in every fraction of second in human life. These changes have been accumulated
and passed through genes. Genes are characteristics that carry biological traits of an
organism, including human beings. The major sources of biological variations are derived
from the interrelated effects of natural selection, geographical isolation, and genetic mutations.
Physical anthropology is essentially concerned with two broad areas of investigation: human
evolution and genetics. Human evolution is the study of the gradual processes of simple forms
into more differentiated structures in hominid. It is interested in reconstructing the
evolutionary record of the human species using fossils/bones. Human evolution is further
divided into three specialties: Paleo-anthropology and Primatology. Paleo-anthropology
(paleo meaning “old”) is the study of human biological evolution through the analysis of
fossil remains from prehistoric times to determine the missing link that connect modern
human with its biological ancestors. Primatology studies about primates or recent human
ancestors to explain human evolution. Primatologists study the anatomy and social behavior
of such non-human primate species as gorillas and chimpanzees in an effort to gain clues
about our own evolution as a species.

Human genetics concerns to investigate how and why the physical traits of contemporary
human populations vary throughout the world. It focuses to examine the genetic materials
of an organism such as DNA and RNA. In addition, genetic studies are crucial in
understanding –how evolution works and plays important role in identifying the genetic
source of some hereditary disease like sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis.

1.2.1 Archaeological Anthropology

Archaeological anthropology or simply archaeology studies the ways of lives of past peoples
by excavating and analyzing the material culture/physical remains (artifacts, features and
eco-facts) they left behind. Artifacts are material remains made and used by the past
peoples and that can be removed from the site and taken to the laboratory for further
analysis. Tools, ornaments, arrowheads, coins, and fragments of pottery are examples of
artifacts. Features are like artifacts, are made or modified by past people, but they cannot be
readily carried away from the site. Archaeological features include such things as house
foundations, ancient buildings, fireplaces, steles, and postholes. Eco-facts are non-artifactual,
organic and environmental remains such as soil, animal bones, and plant remains that were not
made or altered by humans; but were used by them. Eco-facts
provide archaeologists with important data concerning the environment and how people
used natural resources in the past.

Archaeology has also its own subfields or areas of specialties. The most important ones are -
Prehistoric Archaeology and Historical Archaeology. Prehistoric archaeology investigates
human prehistory and prehistoric cultures. It focuses on entire period between 6,000 years
ago and the time of the first stone tools (the first artifacts), around 2.5 million years ago, is
called prehistory. Historic archaeologists help to reconstruct the cultures of people who
used writing and about whom historical documents have been written. Historic archaeology
takes advantage of the fact that about 6,000 years ago, some human groups invented
language and began to write down things that can tell about the past.

We Ethiopian have very glorious past. Area logical findings in North, south, east and western
part of the country have shown our county belonged to those countries which have old
civilization.

1.2.3 Linguistic Anthropology

Indeed, linguistic anthropology or anthropological linguistics studies human language as a

cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice in its social and cultural context, across
space and time. Language is basically a system of information transmission and reception.
Humans communicate messages by sound (speech), by gesture (body language), and in
other visual ways such as writing. Analogous to genes that carries and transmits genetic
materials to offspring; languages hand down cultural traits from one generation to another.
In fact, some would argue that language is the most distinctive feature of being human.
Although animals could develop certain behaviors through conditioning that mimic to
humans, they do not have a capacity to pass on their own offspring. This is the boundary
between human beings and other animals including higher primates.
Linguistic anthropology, which studies contemporary human languages as well as those of
the past, is divided into four distinct branches or areas of research: Structural or Descriptive
Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Ethno-Linguistics, and Socio-linguistics.

Structural /Descriptive Linguistics: -studies the structure of linguistic patterns. It examines

sound systems, grammatical systems, and the meanings attached to words in specific
languages to understand the structure and set of rules of given language. 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 communicating. In its simplest form, the task of the
descriptive linguist is to compile dictionaries and grammar books for previously unwritten
languages. For structuralist linguist or structural linguistic anthropologist, even if there are
thousands of human languages, at least structurally all of them are similar making it possible
for everyone of us to grasp and learn languages other than our so called ‘mother tongue’.

Ethno-linguistics (cultural linguistics): examines the relationship between language and

culture. In any language, certain cultural aspects that are emphasized (such as types of snow
among the Inuit, cows among the pastoral Maasai, or automobiles in U.S. culture) are
reflected in the vocabulary. Moreover, cultural linguists explore how different linguistic
categories can affect how people categorize their experiences, how they think, and how
they perceive the world around them.

Historical linguistics: - deals with the emergence of language in general and how specific
languages have diverged over time. It focuses on the comparison and classifications of
different languages to differentiate the historical links between them.

Socio-linguistics: -investigates linguistic variation within a given language. No language is a

homogeneous system in which everyone speaks just like everyone else. One reason for
variation is geography, as in regional dialects and accents. Linguistic variation also is
expressed in the bilingualism of ethnic groups.

Linguistic anthropology generally focuses on the evolution of languages. It tries to

understand languages variation in their structures, units, and grammatical formations. It
gives special attention to the study of unwritten languages. Language is a key to explore a
culture.
1.2.4 Socio-Cultural Anthropology

It is also often called social anthropology or cultural anthropology. Socio-cultural

anthropology is the largest sub-fields of anthropology. It deals with human society and
culture. Society is the group of people who have similar ways of life, but culture is a way of
life of a group of people. Society and culture are two sides of the same coin. Socio-cultural
anthropology describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social, cultural and material life of
contemporary human societies. It studies the social (human relations), symbolic or
nonmaterial (religious, language, and any other symbols) and material (all man-made
objects) lives of living peoples.

Socio-cultural anthropologists engage in two aspects of study: Ethnography (based on field

work) and Ethnology (based on cross-cultural comparison). Ethnography provides a
comprehensive account of a particular community, society, or culture. It describes the
features of specific cultures in as much detail as possible including local behavior, beliefs,
customs, social life, economic activities, politics, and religion. These detailed descriptions
(ethnographies) are the result of extensive field studies (usually a year or two, in duration)
in which the anthropologist observes, talks to, and lives with the people he or she is
studying. During ethnographic fieldwork, the anthropologist (ethnographer) gathers data that he
or she organizes, describes, analyzes, and interprets to build and present that
account, which may be in the form of a book, article, or film.

Ethnology is the comparative study of contemporary cultures and societies, wherever they
may be found. It examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares the results of ethnography
the data gathered in different societies. It uses such data to compare and contrast and to
make generalizations about society and culture. In other words, Ethnologists seek to
understand both 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.
Looking beyond the particular to the more general, ethnologists attempt to identify and
explain cultural differences and similarities, to test hypotheses, and to build theory to
enhance our understanding of how social and cultural systems work. Indeed, the primary
objective of ethnology is to uncover general cultural principles, the “rules” that govern
human behavior.
 Ethnography Ethnology
Uses data collected by a series of
Requires field work to collect data
researchers
Often descriptive Usually synthetic
Group/community specific Comparative/cross-cultural

Socio-cultural anthropology uses ethnographical and ethnological approaches to answer all

sort of questions related to culture and human societies. To properly address emerging
questions related to culture and societies, it has been sub-divided into many other
specialized fields as: Anthropology of Art, Medical Anthropology, Urban Anthropology,
Economic Anthropology, Political Anthropology, Development Anthropology, Anthropology
of Religion, Demographic Anthropology, Ecological Anthropology, Psychological
Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, etc. All of them are considered to be the applied areas of
anthropology.

1.3 Unique (Basic) Features of Anthropology

There are several distinguishing characteristics that identify anthropology from other discipline.
Anthropology is unique in its scope, approach, focus and method of study. Anthropology has
a broad scope. It is interested in all human beings, whether contemporary or past,
''primitive'' or '' civilized'' and that they are interested in many different aspects of humans,
including their phenotypic characteristics, family lives, marriages, political systems,
economic lives, technology, belief, health care systems, personality types, and languages.
No place or time is too remote to escape the anthropologist's notice. No dimension of
human kind, from genes to art styles, is outside the anthropologist's attention. Indeed,
Anthropology is the broad study of human kind, around the world and throughout time.
The second important feature is its approach. In its approach anthropology is holistic,
relativistic, and focused one. Holistic in a sense that looks any phenomena from different vantage
points. Accordingly, anthropology considers culture, history, language and biology
essential to a complete understanding of society. Anthropology seeks to understand human
beings as whole organisms who adapt to their environments through a complex interaction
of biology and culture. The concept of relativity is highly appreciated in anthological studies.
Anthropology tries to study and explain a certain belief, practice or institution 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’. Anthropology's comparative perspective helps to understand
differences and similarities across time and place. Another important perspective is a way of
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 behavior or cultural practices. This is what
anthropologists call emic perspective. It helps to understand the logic and justification
behind group behavior and cultural practices.

Another important unique feature is its research approach. Anthropology 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. Ethnographic fieldwork is an important strategy is
normally required to spend a year or more with research subjects and document realities
occurring across time. For most anthropologists, fieldwork is a process requiring them to
‘tune-in; hangout; and hang-on’ to the societies and cultures whom they are interested to
study.
Focusing more on the local than the big social processes has been another exclusive
approach in the discipline. Paying great attention to local or micro-social processes certainly
help us to better understand big changes in societies. A detailed account of an event or
phenomenon discovers multiple realities in a community.

1.4 Misconceptions about anthropology

Due to lack of appropriate awareness about the nature, scope and subject matter of the
discipline, different misconceptions are held about anthropology.

One misconception about anthropology is related to the area of its study. It is said that
anthropology is limited to the study of "primitive" societies. Indeed, most of the works done
by anthropologists during early periods focused on isolated, so called "primitive", small scale
societies. However, anthropologists nowadays study most advanced and most complex
societies as well.

Another misconception is that anthropologists only study the rural people and rural areas.
As a matter of fact, most of the studies conducted during the formative years (when it
undergone a process of development to be developed as a separate fields of study) of the
discipline focused on rural areas. But now, anthropologists are also interested in the study
of urban people and urban areas. There is a distinct sub-discipline devoted to the study of
urban societies called -Urban Anthropology-which focuses on urban areas and in complex
cities.
It is also wrongly misconceived that anthropology is the study/analysis of fossil evidences of
the proto-humans like that of Lucy/Dinkeneshe. It is true that anthropology is interested in
the question of the origin of modern human beings. However, this doesn’t mean that
anthropology is all about the study of human evolution. It studies both the biological and
the cultural aspects of humans and examines the existing human physical and biological
variations and cultural diversity.

It is also misconceived that the purpose of anthropology is to study in order to keep and
preserve communities far from development and obsolete cultural practices in museums.
Rather, anthropologists’ duties are to support those communities' capacity to empower
themselves in development processes. They assist peoples' initiatives instead of imposed policies
and ideas coming from outside and play active roles in bringing about positive
change and development in their own lives.

1.5 The Relationship between Anthropology and Other Disciplines

Anthropology is similar with other social sciences such as sociology, psychology, political
sciences, economics, history, etc. Anthropology greatly overlaps with these disciplines that
study human society. However, anthropology differs from other social sciences and the
humanities by its broad scope, unique approach, perspective, 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. In its perspective, according to Richard Wilk, anthropology approaches
and locates dimensions of people’s individual and communal lived experiences, their
thoughts and their feelings in terms of how these dimensions are interconnected and
interrelated to one another, yet not necessarily constrained or very orderly, whole. The
perspective is also fundamentally empirical, naturalistic and ideographic [particularizing]
than nomothetic [universalizing] one. In its method of research, it is unique in that it
undertakes extended fieldwork among the studied community and develops intimate
knowledge of the life and social worlds of its study group/society through employing those
ethnographic data collection techniques such as participant observation, Key informant
interview and focus group discussions.

1.6 The Contributions of anthropology

The philosophical underpinning is that since we are human beings, we have to know our
civilization. Anthropology has established for itself the task of examining all aspects of
humanity for all periods of time and for all parts of the globe. Because of the enormity of
this task, anthropologists must draw on theories and data from a number of other
disciplines in the humanities, the social sciences, and the physical sciences. Accordingly, its
contributions are immense. By studying anthropology, we get the following benefits, among
others.
First, the anthropological perspective, with its emphasis on the comparative study of
cultures, should lead us to the conclusion that our culture is just one way of life among
many found in the world and that it represents one way (among many possible ways) to
adapt to a particular set of environmental conditions. Through the process of contrasting
and comparing, we gain a fuller understanding of other cultures and our own.
Anthropology also helps us better understand ourselves or our own ways of life. As a mirror
of human life, by studying others, we can better understand ourselves. Hence, it gives
opportunity to understand and to be critical about the ways of lives of our own community.
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. 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 its distinctive methodology of long-term, intensive, participant-observation

research, cultural anthropology offers a unique perspective on how local cultural groups are
engaging with the process of globalization. Although many pundits discuss the
consequences of globalization by talking to only government and business leaders, cultural
anthropologists are more likely to see what is actually occurring on the ground and how the
local people themselves talk about their life experiences in a time of rapid globalization.
Because of its relativistic approach, anthropology helps us to be more sensitive to and
appreciative of cultural diversity and variability. It helps us to avoid some of the
misunderstandings that commonly arise when individuals of different cultural traditions
come into contact. Anthropology helps us fight against prejudice and discriminations. 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. This arises from ignorance about
other ethnic groups and their ways of lives.

Anthropology is also used as a tool for development. Paying attention to local conditions is
crucial to solve community problems. The application of anthropological knowledge and
research results have become important element to ensure people’s rights in development
and able to sustain projects' life. 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 things human. 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