Anthropology

Anthropology is the science that studies humanity: human physical structure, the evolution of human species, cultures, languages, and the ways societies organize their lives. The term comes from two Greek words: anthropos (human) and logos (science or discourse).

What distinguishes anthropology from other social sciences is its broad scope across time and space. The discipline connects evidence from ancient human history through bones and stone tools with the study of living societies today. It also relies on comparison: each culture is examined according to its own internal logic and worldview, not by external standards.

Major subdivisions

Typically, especially in American academic practice, anthropology is divided into four branches. Cultural or social anthropology studies customs, religion, kinship, and economics of societies. Biological (or physical) anthropology examines human evolution, genetics, and health. Archaeology works with material traces left by earlier peoples. Linguistic anthropology studies how language structures thought and social relations.

Research methods

The most common method is ethnography: a researcher lives for an extended period in the society being studied, speaks its language, and participates in daily life. This approach is called participant observation. The result is a detailed written account describing how a society operates. The archaeological and biological branches employ physical measurement, laboratory analysis, and techniques such as radiocarbon dating.

History and debates

The discipline took academic form in the 19th and 20th centuries, during which it was closely linked to colonial administration: European powers needed information about the societies they governed. Later generations examined the history of the discipline itself, asking who writes, who is written about, and who owns the knowledge. 20th-century anthropologists, including those who advocated cultural relativism (the principle that cultures should be understood on their own terms), rejected the racial hierarchies that earlier work had assumed.

Today anthropology addresses contemporary issues: migration, urbanization, technology, climate change, and public health. There is also applied anthropology, in which anthropological knowledge is used to plan development initiatives and shape public services.