ATH 175 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Participant Observation, Adaptationism, Forensic Anthropology
17 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Anthropology is the scientific study of what it means to be human. Studies human cultures through their material remains. Contemporary life material culture of the recent past: biological. Study of how humans differ physically from other animals. Paleoanthropology human evolution based on fossil record. Forensic anthropology crime scenes, battle fields, etc: linguistic. How humans use language and other symbols to communicate. Sociolinguistics relationships among language and social: cultural context. The anthropological perspective (reach: relativistic, empirical, adaptational, comparative, holistic. Ethnocentrism: using the practices of one"s own culture to evaluate the practices of other cultures how other"s practices measure up . Requires anthropologists to interpret specific cultural practices and values in the context of people who live them. See how the world looks from other viewpoints and step back to analyze it. Methodological relativism: all social action is data of the same type. Theoretical relativism: assumption that all human social practices make sense in their own contexts.
