The Anthropological Perspective

• Some say that the project of anthropology is falling apart because many perceive that there is no longer any uniquely anthropological to study and that there is an increasing trend towards hyper-specialization.
• Is there still something that we can call anthropological perspective?
• Anthropology is interested with the question – what does it mean to be human?
• We can approach the problem from philosophical perspective. We can also approach from an empirical perspective. 
• Using either one of these approaches does not contradict the other.
• In order to realize different types of knowledge, different methodologies are required.
• Other disciplines such as Psychology, History and Sociology does not seek to answer the question from a broad perspective.
• Anthropology has 2 dimensions of interest. The first is synchronic variation which seeks to answer how different the people are now.  And, the second is temporal variation which seeks to answer the question, how different the people are through time.

Branches of Anthropology

• There are four distinct branches of anthropology. There are those who consider that there are five branches of anthropology.

Physical Anthropology

• Physical (or biological ) anthropology is concerned with biological diversity, including the origins and evolution of the genus Homo.
• They visit the different places in Africa looking for early humans who lived millions of years ago.
• They are interested in finding out how humans adapt to different environments and the physical and genetic changes that take place as a result.
• They may also be interested in forensic anthropology by studying crimes resulting in physical trauma.
• Primatology is considered under this field. It is the study of non-human primates, such as monkeys and apes.  

Socio-Cultural Anthropology

• Concerned with modern diversity of social and cultural forms. Originally, the central project of socio-cultural anthropology was the study of non-European peoples. 
• Recently, it is now focused on the concept of culture as an essential theme.
• It studies how people of different cultures act when they come together.

Anthropological Archaeology

• Concerned with analysis of human societies and cultures via material culture
• Interested with pre-history (before there was any written record) and those societies that had writing.
• Deals with documentation of the past using material culture, the things that people made and their garbage.
• Seek to document ways of life that existed only in the past and how modern societies came to be.
• How and why did people go from living in small groups surviving by hunting game and collecting wild plants to living in cities and subsisting by agriculture and animal husbandry.
• This transition is called cultural evolution.

Linguistic Anthropology

• Concerned with language and speech.
• The core of this filed use to focus on the study of non-European language.
• Recently, it focused on the concept of culture ad cultural differences in speech, and on other forms of symbolic communication.
• All humans are programed to communicate symbolically. Our capacity for speech has evolved over millions of years.

Medical Anthropology

• Relatively new branch. It is called the fifth branch of anthropology.
• There are two ways of doing it. First is called medical practice which is the study of the physical difference among different ethnic or racial groups and the medical consequences of those differences. 
• The second type focuses on the medical consequences of culture and cultural behavior.