1: An Overview of Anthropology

In many ways, this text aims to essentially be an exploration of each part of this definition.

Alfred L. Kroeber, an anthropologist from the early 20th century (1900s), famously stated that "Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities." We will begin by expanding on this quote and taking a closer look at what we mean when we say "humanities" and at what "science" is.

You can probably guess that 'humanities' has something to do with 'humans' (spoilers: human experiences), so there's little surprise anthropology fits in there given the definition above.

Science is a bit trickier. You can probably name a few 'sciences' based on your past schooling—biology, physics, chemistry, and geology to name a few. But what do these disciplines have in common? As we learn more about what anthropology does, we will begin to be able to determine where it might fit amongst 'humanities' and 'science.'

In the section "What is Anthropology?" we will look at 'science' and provide a general overview of the sorts of things anthropology studies and how. We'll introduce the concept of 'culture,' talk a bit about what that means, and look at why it is so important to anthropology. We'll have a discussion where we try to define culture and one debating whether we think anthropology is a science.

The next section, "An Overview of the Four Fields" will be just that. We'll take a look at the focuses of the biological, social/cultural, archaeological, and linguistic subfields. Along with this, we'll learn about the concept of 'holism' which describes the interconnectedness of each of these subfields as well as culture itself.

If you've had any biology courses, you are likely at least vaguely familiar with the concept of evolution. Your familiarity with the theory may be complicated by debates over it in contemporary media and elsewhere. We'll tackle evolution early on as human evolution is naturally foundational to our study of humans. Biological anthropology centers on evolution with a particular emphasis on the evolution of humans and our near relatives (other primates). Of particular interest is the way our species (and others) have evolved to have "culture." This is, of course, a huge topic. And this is where social or cultural anthropology come on the scene. It is an oversimplification to say so, but cultural anthropologists focus primarily on the aspects of culture which make current societies and other groups 'tick.' We will explore some key aspects of how they approach culture by looking at topics like myth, ritual, exchange, kinship, and identity. From there, it does not take long to recognize that these cultural features come to produce things and effects in the physical world. The interpretation of such 'material culture' and the contexts that produce(d) it is the goal of archaeology. And finally, we humans produce language which lives somewhere between these 'cultural' and 'physical' realms. This falls under the purview of linguistic anthropology which works a bit like archaeology where the 'artefacts' are language.

You can probably already see how each of these four fields overlap with one another in important ways—and how they each point to the definition at the top of this page! In the following chapters, we will continue to investigate these overlaps and this central goal the field they all call home: anthropology.