The Subject and Subdisciplines of Anthropology

The subject of the science of Anthropology is evolution, history, and the present state of the human species, its cultural diversity, and social and economic organization. Research methods in anthropology range from scientific to humanistic and philosophical. Anthropology is usually (especially in the United States) divided into several subdisciplines. The four major subdisciplines of anthropology are socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, physical (biological) anthropology, and linguistic anthropology.

Archaeology is focused on uncovering human remains and artifacts made by humans. Depending on one’s perspective about valid evidence for the first humans, the time-depth of archaeology goes back to the beginnings of early humans with the earliest evidence of human-made tools. Archaeology encompasses two time periods: prehistoric archaeology, which covers the period from approximately two million years ago to the period of historical written data, and historical archaeology, which covers everything that happened after prehistory.

Biological or physical anthropology studies human biology, both its development through evolution and contemporary variation. Linguistic anthropology studies various forms of communication, with a focus on languages. Linguistic anthropology studies the origins of language, the historical relationships between languages, and languages that are only spoken.

Socio-cultural anthropology is the study of societies and their cultures. The fifth subfield of anthropology is applied or practical anthropology, and it focuses on applying anthropological knowledge to improve socio-economical situation - alleviate poverty, substance abuse, and diseases. Applied anthropology is also used to preserve endangered cultures and sustain cultural diversity. The “social soundness analysis” was developed in the 1970s by cultural anthropologists who worked for USAID, and it was used to assess whether some developmental project could be implemented in the designated cultural environment. Philosophical anthropology presents an overlap of philosophy and anthropology and it researches epistemology, ontology, and teleology of human species and human experience.

                              History of Anthropology

Some of the early precursors of anthropology are authors who, in premodern times, wrote about other societies and cultures they encountered on their travels. Some of the most influential of those authors are Herodotus (fifth century BCE), Hecataeus of Miletus (ca. 550– 490 BCE) Marco Polo (c. 1254–c. 1324), and Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406).  

The next phase of descriptive anthropology came in the 16th- and 17th-century with the European expansion all over the World, particularly from Catholic missionaries who documented the cultures of newly discovered places. The first flourishing of theoretical precursors of anthropology came during the late 17th- and 18th centuries with the Enlightenment and philosophers like Charles Montesquieu, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, John Locke, and Adam Ferguson. Of those authors, Johann Gottfried von Herder had the most important role in the establishment of scientific anthropology. Herder developed what he called Volkskunde (science of the traditions and cultural practices of the Germanic peoples) and Völkerkunde (geographical ethnology). He also advocated for plurality and relativity in understanding different cultures, and introduced the opposition between Kultur (Culture) and Zivilisation (Civilization).

The first anthropological writings, that were truly scientific, were inspired by Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species (1859). A group of authors, sometimes called ‘‘armchair anthropologists’’ applied evolutionary thinking to many aspects of the biological, cultural, and social development of the human species. Most notable of this early exponents of evolutionary anthropology were Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward Tylor, James Frazer, Herbert Spencer, Henry Sumner Maine, Johann Jakob Bachofen, Bastian Adolf, Friedrich Max Müller, John Ferguson McLennan, Friedrich Engels, and William Robertson Smith. See the article Evolutionism. 

At the same time as the aforementioned armchair anthropologist, many scientists did ethnographic studies using the method of participant observation. Some of them are: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Ely Parker, Alfred L. W. Howitt, Pyotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin, George Hunt, Sir William Baldwin Spencer, Alfred Cort Haddon, William Halse R. Rivers, and Charles Gabriel Seligman.

The diffusionist school emerged in Germany and its theoretical tenet is that the diffusion of cultural elements is the basis for the development of civilizations. The most notable diffusionists from Germany and Austria are: Ratzel, Friedrich, Leo Frobenius, Fritz Graebner, Wilhelm Schmidt, Wilhelm Koppers, and Joachim Schebesta. The most important British exponents of diffusionism are Robert Marett, Arthur Maurice Hocart, and Sir Grafton Elliot Smith.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, anthropology emerged as an autonomous academic discipline with the founding of various anthropological journals, professional organizations, international conferences, and ethnographic museums in the United States and Western Europe. The academic professionalization of Anthropology speed up at the end of 20th century. In the United States, Franz Boas ushered in the institutionalization of anthropology. He rejected evolutionism and at the start of the 20th century introduced his approach known as “historical particularism.” Some of the most important disciples of Boas were: Robert Lowie, Edward Sapir, Alfred Kroeber, Paul Radin, Clark Wissler, Elsie Clews Parsons, Hutton Webster, Alexander Alexandrovich Goldenweiser, Robert Harry Lowie, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and Leslie Spier.

At the start of the 20th century, anthropology in France came under the influence of Émile Durkheim and his Durkhemian approach - Marcel Mauss, Robert Hertz, Arnold Van Gennep, Célestin Bouglé, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Henri Hubert, and Marcel Granet.

Between the two World Wars three new anthropological schools emerged:

- structural functionalism in the UK ( Bronislaw Malinowski, A. R.  Radcliffe-Brown, E. E. Evans-Prichard, and Raymund Firth),

- the culture and personality school in the United States (Georgy Bateson, Ruth Benedict, Clyde Kluckhohn, Margaret Mead, Edward Sapir, Abram Kardiner, Ralph Linton, Alfred Irving Hallowell, Cora Du Bois, and Morris Edward Opler),

- The substantivist school (Karl Polanyi, and Conrad Arensberg).

After the Second World War, several new anthropological schools emerged. the Manchester School became predominant in the UK (Max Gluckman, Victor Turner). In the US, at the same time, evolutionary thinking had its great revival in the form of neo-evolutionism. Leslie White created his theory of universal evolution, while Julian Steward created the approach he named cultural ecology. Other notable exponents of neo-evolutions are: Eleanor Leacock, Elman Service, Marshall Sahlins, Roy Rappaport, and Andrew Vayda. In France, Claude Lévi-Strauss introduced his structuralism. Structuralism had its followers in the UK with authors like Edmund Leach, Joseph Needham, and Mary Douglas.

In the 1960s four new anthropological schools were introduced. Frederik Barth and Frederick G. Bailey developed transactionalism; Marvin Harris created cultural materialism; symbolic/interpretive anthropology was developed by Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Renato Rosaldo, and Sherry Ortner; the approach of political economy was introduced by Eric Wolf, Jean Comaroff, and Joan Comaroff.

Starting in the 1970s, feminist anthropology (Sherry Ortner, Gayle Rubin, Louise Lamphere, Marilyn Strathernand) and queer anthropology (Esther Newton, Gayle Rubin) arose as independent anthropological approaches. At the same time, post-structuralist (Pierre Bourdieu), post-modernist (James Clifford) and post-colonial (Arjun Appardurai) approaches started to gain popularity. 

Books:

Abu-Lughod, L. Veiled Sentiments. Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (1986); 

Appadurai, A. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996);

Barth, F. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Culture Difference   (1969); 

Barnard, A. & Spencer, J. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology (1996);

Benedict, R. Patterns of Culture (1934);

Bateson, G. Naven. A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View (1936);

Bloch, M.E.F. How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy (1998);

Boas, F. The Mind of Primitive Man (1911);

Clifford, J., Marcus, G.E., eds. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (1986);

Douglas, M. Purity and Danger (1966); 

Dumont, L. Homo Hierarchicus. Essai sur le système des castes (1966);

Durkheim. Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912);

Engels: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (2010, in German 1884);

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937);

Galpin: The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community (1915);

Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures (1973);

Gellner: Plough, Sword and the Book: The Structure of Human History (1988);

Girard, R. La violence et le sacré (1972);

Gluckman, M. The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) (1955);

Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture  (1974); 

     -     Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures (1977);

     -     Cultural Materialism (1979);

Kuper, A. Anthropology and anthropologists (1983);

Lenski. Ecological-Evolutionary Theory (2006);

Lévi-Strauss, C. The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969);

     -      Tristes tropiques (1955);

Malinowski, B. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922);

Mauss, M. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (2018, in French 1925);

Mead, M. Coming of Age in Samoa (1928); 

Morgan, L.H. Ancient Society (1877);

Redfield. The Primitive World and its Transformations (1953);

Sahlins, M. Stone Age Economics (1972);

Scheper-Hughes, N. Death without Weeping. The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (1992);

Stocking, G. W. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (1982);

   -   Victorian Anthropology (1991);

    After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888-1951 (1996);

Stocking, G. W. & Handler, R. (Eds.) History of Anthropology, 10 vols. (1983-2003);

Tylor, E.B. Primitive Culture (1871); 

Wittfogel. The Hydraulic Civilizations (1956);

Wolf, E.R. Europe and the People without History (1982);

     -     Peasants (1966).