Anthropology

Abstract

Anthropology as a discipline is concerned with human diversity. In its most inclusive conception, this is what brings together the four fields of sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, biological (or physical) anthropology, and linguistics. With its formative period in the historical era when Europeans and people of European descent were exploring other parts of the world, and establishing their dominance over them, and when evolutionary thought was strong, it also came to focus its attention especially on what was, from the western point of view, distant in time or space—early humans or hominoids, and non-European peoples. Understandings of the discipline have changed over time, however, and they are not now entirely unitary across the world. The ‘four-field approach’ is now mostly North American. The article deals largely with sociocultural anthropology. It discusses varying understandings of what is the core of the anthropological perspective: the central position of the culture concept, field work and ethnography as key methodology, the role of ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’ perspectives, and notions of comparison. Dimensions of specialization are identified: regional (e.g., Africanists), institutional fields (e.g., economic anthropologists), or types of society (e.g., specialists on peasant societies). With regard to the practical uses of anthropology, the areas of development, health, education, minority affairs, and organizations are mentioned as current examples. Finally emergent trends are noted. The nature/culture divide is being rethought, science is itself increasingly seen as a cultural phenomenon, and an increasing interconnectedness of the world makes it necessary to reconsider concepts, units of study, and methods. While at times anthropology has seemed rather inwardly-turning academic, there is a growing interest in a public anthropology, and in anthropology as cultural critique. There would seem to be a place in the public life of the present era for a cosmopolitan imagination which both recognizes diversity and seeks for the ground rules of a viable and humane world society. For such a cosmopolitan imagination, anthropology could continue to offer materials and tools.