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Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions. Anthropologists have pointed out that through culture people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, so people living in different environments will often have different cultures. Much of anthropological theory has originated in an appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local (particular cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of connections between people in distinct places/circumstances). Cultural anthropology has a rich methodology, including participant observation (often called fieldwork because it requires the anthropologist spending an extended period of time at the research locat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans. Archaeological anthropology, often termed as 'anthropology of the past', studies human activity through investigation of physical evidence. It is considered a branch of anthropology in North America and Asia, while in Europe archaeology is viewed as a discipline in its own right or grouped under other related disciplines, such as history and palaeontology. Etymology The abstract noun '' anthropology'' is first attested in refe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural Evolution
Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change. It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation and other forms of social transmission". Cultural evolution is the change of this information over time. Cultural evolution, historically also known as sociocultural evolution, was originally developed in the 19th century by anthropologists stemming from Charles Darwin's research on evolution. Today, cultural evolution has become the basis for a growing field of scientific research in the social sciences, including anthropology, economics, psychology and organizational studies. Previously, it was believed that social change resulted from biological adaptations, but anthropologists now commonly accept that social changes arise in consequence of a combination of social, evolutionary and biological influences. There have been a number of di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hunter-gatherers
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, honey, or anything safe to eat, and/or by hunting game (pursuing and/or trapping and killing wild animals, including catching fish), roughly as most animal omnivores do. Hunter-gatherer societies stand in contrast to the more sedentary agricultural societies, which rely mainly on cultivating crops and raising domesticated animals for food production, although the boundaries between the two ways of living are not completely distinct. Hunting and gathering was humanity's original and most enduring successful competitive adaptation in the natural world, occupying at least 90 percent of human history. Following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers who did not change were displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structuralism
In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, structuralism is: Blackburn, Simon, ed. 2008. "Structuralism." In '' Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy'' (2nd rev. ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. . p. 353. e belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure.Structuralism in Europe developed in the early 20th century, mainly in France and the Russian Empire, in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subseque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes and phenomenological method. Subject matter can range from micro-level analyses of society (i.e. of individual interaction and agency) to macro-level analyses (i.e. of social systems and social structure). Traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, gender, and deviance. As all spheres of human activity are affected by the interplay between social structure and ind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim ( or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with both Karl Marx and Max Weber. Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies can maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity, an era in which traditional social and religious ties are much less universal, and in which new social institutions have come into being. Durkheim's conception of the scientific study of society laid the groundwork for modern sociology, and he used such scientific tools as statistics, surveys, and historical observation in his analysis of suicides in Catholic and Protestant groups. His first major sociological work was (1893; ''The Division of Labour in Society''), followed in 1895 by ('' The Rules of Sociological Method''), the same year in which Durkheim set up the first European ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982, was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973 and was a member of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He received numerous honors from universities and institutions throughout the world. Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere. These observations culminated in his famous book ''Tristes Tropiques'' (1955) that established his position as one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his ideas reached into many fields in the humanities, including philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as "t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated using the norms and values of another. It was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "civilization is not something absolute, but...is relative, and... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes". However, Boas did not coin the term. The first use of the term recorded in the '' Oxford English Dictionary'' was by philosopher and social theorist Alain Locke in 1924 to describe Robert Lowie's "extreme cultural relativism", found in the latter's 1917 book ''Culture and Ethnology''. The term became common among anthropologists after Boas' death in 1942, to exp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value; these fields comprise the branch of philosophy called axiology. Ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime. As a field of intellectual inquiry, moral philosophy is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory. Three major areas of study within ethics recognized today are: # Meta-ethics, concerning the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions, and how their truth values (if any) can be determined; # Normative ethics, concerning the practical means of determining a moral course of action; # Applied ethics, concerning what a person is obligated (or per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronald Daus
Ronald Daus (12 May 1943, Hannover) is a German university Professor of Romance philology and cultural studies at the Free University of Berlin involved in multi- disciplinary studies. Daus researches in the field of study "Neue Romania" (New Romania) for over 40 years, with the focus on the contacts between European and extra-European cultures. He was a visiting professor in Mexico City for two years, at Colegio de Mexico, and for one year in Singapore, at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, in Manila, at the University of the Philippines, and also in Tahiti, at the Université du Pacifique. Many research trips and lecture tours brought him to Europe, Russia, Latin America, Middle America, United States, Canada, Asia, Africa, Australia and Oceania. He is a member of the ''Research Group New Romania'', who investigate the «products resulting from the contacts of the Romanic cultures that expanded across the seas for colonialism, featuring, together with other nations, n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethnography
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior. Ethnography in simple terms is a type of qualitative research where a person puts themselves in a specific community or organization in attempt to learn about their cultures from a first person point-of-view. As a form of inquiry, ethnography relies heavily on participant observation—on the researcher participating in the setting or with the people being studied, at least in some marginal role, and seeking to document, in detail, patterns of social interaction and the perspectives of participants, and to understand these ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julian Steward
Julian Haynes Steward (January 31, 1902 – February 6, 1972) was an American anthropologist known best for his role in developing "the concept and method" of cultural ecology, as well as a scientific theory of culture change. Early life and education Steward was born in Washington, D.C., where he lived on Monroe Street, NW, and later, Macomb Street in Cleveland Park. At age 16, Steward left an unhappy childhood in Washington, D.C. to attend boarding school in Deep Springs Valley, California, in the Great Basin. Steward's experience at the newly established Deep Springs Preparatory School (which later became Deep Springs College), high in the White Mountains had a significant influence on his academic and career interests. Steward’s “direct engagement” with the land (specifically, subsistence through irrigation and ranching) and the Northern Paiute Amerindians that lived there became a “catalyst” for his theory and method of cultural ecology. (Kerns 1999; Murphy 197 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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