Armchair Anthropology : The Historical Context Of Anthropology

Ruth Benedict, Alfred Kroeber and Hortense Powdermaker all discovered anthropology through a college lecture. Benedict had become a high school English teacher, social worker, writer and poet (Mead, 7). After attending a lecture by Alexander Goldenweiser and Elsie Clews Parsons, Benedict knew that this career would keep her interested and she would enjoy it (7). Alfred Kroeber majored in English, like Benedict, but after hearing Franz Boas in a seminar on American Indian Languages he switched to studying anthropology (Steward, 4). Hortense Powdermaker was not happy with her desk­job after graduating from college so she went back for more schooling (Hortense, 293). She took a course in social anthropology and knew that was the career for her (293). All three of these anthropologists started in careers not related to anthropology but for unknown reasons had attended a lecture focusing on anthropology. The effects of attending one lecture

Caleb L. Fry and Lauren T. Rios Department of Anthropology Lake Tahoe Community College One College Drive South Lake Tahoe, California 96150 USA Faculty Advisor: Daryl G. Frazetti Abstract

Anthropology is holistic. Humans are social beings more than anything, but with underlying psychological, biological and cultural connotations. The field of anthropology encompasses everything and anything having to do with humankind throughout history. Anthropology attempts to answer the tough questions about the human condition. What influences our actions? How has our species changed? Why do we look down on other cultures or societies? The questions are endless. It is the anthropologists’ job to try and answer them with unbiased subjectivity in order to come analytical conclusions about us as humans. (Kottak 14). To understand humans and the complexity of our cultures anthropology uses knowledge not only from the social and biological sciences, but also the physical sciences and humanities. In order to cover such a wide base of human history and interaction, anthropology itself has been split up into four different subsets that allow us to delve deeper into the understanding of the human condition. What is common throughout all the subsets is the application of knowledge in an effort to solve human problems. Throughout history though, the problems we have faced as humans have not always been the same. In fact they often change from generation to generation. For anthropology to keep up with these changes it’s had to

Boas’ rejection of data that was not collected in the field is well-documented and presents a nature that was very specific in its analysis of the subject. His determination to go out into the field and collect the data for the project ushered in a new respectability to the field in that he was not merely regurgitating data that had been collected for another study but rather he was analyzing a specific set of information that was pertinent to the study at hand. He introduced the concept of empirical observation. This initial use of fieldwork set Boas ahead of the rest of the anthropologists. He was not content to take old data and make it suit his theories.

In society today, the discipline of anthropology has made a tremendous shift from the practices it employed years ago. Anthropologists of today have a very different focus from their predecessors, who would focus on relating problems of distant peoples to the Western world. In more modern times, their goal has become much more local, in focusing on human problems and issues within the societies they live.

Sociology and Anthropology rely upon investigational and research techniques. While some of these may be similar they also differ. Each discipline has its own philosophical justification for their method but any and all approaches to study the society’s culture require some degree of fieldwork.

In Patrick Tierney’s article “The Fierce Anthropologist,” he discussed the faults that are, or may be, present in Napoleon Chagnon’s anthropological research of the Yanamamo, or “The Fierce People,” as Chagnon has referred to them in his best-selling book on the people.

The author’s purpose in writing this article was not to show the “Nacirema” as an example of how extreme human behavior can become, but how an outside perspective can affect your perception of an alien culture. If one were to look at the “Nacirema’s” cultural behaviors regarding physical appearance and health without any insight or knowledge of the specific beliefs or values of that culture, they might seem bizarre and even incomprehensible. By showing behaviors and “rituals” performed by this unknown tribe, Miner allowed others to see that the way studies were representing distinctive cultures was narrowminded and defective. Without the proper comprehension of the basis of any society, huge cultural misunderstandings could occur. Of

a. Herbicide: a substance that is toxic to plants and is used to destroy unwanted vegetation.

Anthropology is a word derived from the Greek words anthropos and logia. The word anthropos means human, and the word logia, in basic terms, means the study of. Therefore an anthropologist is a person who studies humans. Anthropologists study humans to gain and spread knowledge for the greater good of humanity, so we as a people can understand one another. To study anthropology as an anthropologist involves extensive research. Furthermore, to gather any credible research a person must follow a set guideline, especially when using and gathering research from another person. This guideline is in place to protect one's personal freedom because many cases involving human research have been unethical, unmoral, and unjust.

1. Why is the idea of disappearing natives a myth? Use a specific quote from the text to support this.

On the other hand applied anthropology (anthropology research) does very much consist of one putting their new found knowledge to use. These anthropologists go into a new region with pencil and paper at hand in order to jot down their observations. They wish to acquire new undiscovered traditions or history of a region so that they may formulate a summary. As Vine Deloria Jr. in Custer Died For Your Sins said, “ The summaries are condensed for two reasons. Some condensations are sent to government agencies as reports justifying the previous summer’s research. Others

When considering the theory of anthropology and how it developed, a person would think about anthropologists during the early 20th-century such as Franz Boas and Margret Mead, who during their times contributed to the development into what we know as modern anthropology. However, the foundation of anthropological theory—natural human curiosity— was laid prior to the contributions. These foundations can be traced back to the times of ancient Greek philosophy with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Even though these philosophers were not anthropologists, they had laid the foundation of what would become the field of anthropology by recording their natural curiosity of what it means to be human and how does our world operate. This natural curiosity

Bronislaw Malinowski is arguably the most influential anthropologist of the 20th century, certainly for British social anthropology. Malinowski saw himself as effecting a revolution in anthropology by rejecting the evolutionary paradigm of his predecessors and introducing functionalism, whereby institutions satisfied human biological need, as the way to understand other cultures. I argue that his lasting legacy, however, is methodological rather than theoretical. Although not the first to conduct fieldwork, his lengthy stay among the Trobriand islanders during World War 1 enabled him to study their culture and cover a wide range of topics, from economics to sexuality. He contributed to ethnography and fieldwork by living with the people he studied, getting to know them personally, participating in their activities, and conducting his research in the field has since become known as ‘participant observation’.

Boas’ reliance on empirical data to formulate theories underscores Kuhn’s central idea that paradigms are only changed through examination of new data. As data on cultures preceding Boas was slim at best, it is not hard to see how Boas could acquire data contrary to the existing viewpoint. This data collection itself was a new theory, the new invention required. Kuhnian thought states that preparadigmatic schools emphasize the collection of the facts, as Boas was emphasizing. Crisis within the paradigm is witnessed by the competition between the schools of thought. Emerging from this crisis is Boasian anthropology, with its reliance on empirical data as the basis for study. This data collection is subdivided into the four subfields Boas saw as a requirement for this new field. The four-field approach emerges as the dominant force in anthropology. With this approach the community changes its view of the field, and produces new methods and goals. These methods and goals have been used as a professional consensus in anthropology since the Boasian transformation.