Anth

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ANTHROPOLOGY 114 Social Organization Dr. Patricia
Taber
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What is Anthropology?

• From Greek anthropos (human) and logia (study)
• Study of Humankind
• Who we are, how we came to be that way
• Social, cultural, and biological beings

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Four Subfields

• Archaeology
• Historical
• Prehistoric
• Resource management
• Physical Anthropology
• Paleoanthropology
• Evolutionary psychology
• Primatology
• Human variation
• Forensic
• Linguistics
• Historical
• Descriptive
• Ethnolinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Social/Cultural Anthropology (Ethnology)

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Anthropology
The study of all human beings, everywhere,
throughout time
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Five Hallmarks of Anthropology

• Cultural relativism
• Subjective understanding (emic vs. etic)
• Holism
• Fieldwork
• Comparison

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• Cultural relativism
• Suspension of value judgment
• Opposite of ethnocentrism
• Subjective understanding
• How people view their own behavior their
  explanation, logic
• Emic (inside, natives point of view)
• Etic (outside, ethnographers view)
• Interpretive (Geertz) Behavior stems from way
  people perceive and classify the world (uses
  emic analysis)
• Materialist (Harris) Material conditions, e.g.,
  the environment determine thoughts and
  behaviors (uses etic analysis)

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• Holism
• Both biological and sociocultural aspects of
  humans (nature and nurture, genes and
  environment)
• Covers panorama of homo sapiens in time and
  space
• Interrelated parts in context of the whole
• Fieldwork Long-term residence with a small
  group of people
• Comparison Universals, Differences

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Social Organization

• Orderly interdependence of human life in society
• Status - Publicly recognized social position
• Ascribed
• Achieved
• Role rights obligations, expected behavior
  for status
• Social structure
• Regularized social interaction
• Arrangement of status positions groups relative
  to each other
• Network of social relationships
• Institutions
• Clusters of social statuses and groups with
  common focus
• Norms, rules, patterns
• Social organization
• Interlocking role relationships
• Arrangement of activities
• System of roles