Sociocultural anthropologists often find that the best way to learn about diverse peoples and cultures is to spend time living among them. Anthropologists want to listen to all voices and viewpoints in order to understand how societies vary and what they have in common. Even within one country or society, people may disagree about how they should speak, dress, eat, or treat others.
They want to know what people think is important and the rules they make about how they should interact with one another. Sociocultural anthropologists explore how people in different places live and understand the world around them. Through this work, biological anthropologists have shown that, while humans do vary in their biology and behavior, they are more similar to one another than different. They are interested in explaining the similarities and differences that are found among humans across the world. They are also interested in how biology and culture work together to shape our lives. To do this, they study humans (living and dead), other primates such as monkeys and apes, and human ancestors (fossils). Biological Anthropologyīiological anthropologists seek to understand how humans adapt to different environments, what causes disease and early death, and how humans evolved from other animals. Like other areas of anthropology, archaeologists are concerned with explaining differences and similarities in human societies across space and time. The time range for archaeological research begins with the earliest human ancestors millions of years ago and extends all the way up to the present day. Archaeologists collect the remains of plants, animals, and soils from the places where people have lived in order to understand how people used and changed their natural environments.
They also analyze human bones and teeth to gain information on a people’s diet and the diseases they suffered. They carefully remove from the ground such things as pottery and tools, and they map the locations of houses, trash pits, and burials in order to learn about the daily lives of a people. ArchaeologyĪrchaeologists study human culture by analyzing the objects people have made. For example, each subfield applies theories, employs systematic research methodologies, formulates and tests hypotheses, and develops extensive sets of data. However, the subfields also have a number of similarities. Each of the subfields teaches distinctive skills. The Four SubfieldsĪmerican anthropology is generally divided into four subfields. When trying to understand these complex issues, they keep in mind what they know about biology, culture, types of communication, and how humans lived in the past. Many anthropologists work in their own societies looking at economics, health, education, law, and policy (to name just a few topics). Anthropologists sometimes use these comparisons to understand their own society. They look at the different ways people dress and communicate in different societies. Anthropologists also try to understand how people interact in social relationships (for example with families and friends). World hunger is not a problem of production but social barriers to distribution, and that Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize for showing this was the case for all of the 20th century’s famines. So anthropologists look at how different groups of people get food, prepare it, and share it. For example, everyone needs to eat, but people eat different foods and get food in different ways. Even though nearly all humans need the same things to survive, like food, water, and companionship, the ways people meet these needs can be very different.
Anthropologists also compare humans with other animals (most often, other primates like monkeys and chimpanzees) to see what we have in common with them and what makes us unique. They consider what makes up our biological bodies and genetics, as well as our bones, diet, and health. They consider the past, through archaeology, to see how human groups lived hundreds or thousands of years ago and what was important to them. Anthropologists take a broad approach to understanding the many different aspects of the human experience, which we call holism. Anthropology is the study of what makes us human.
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