social anthropology

social anthropology

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ABOUT THE SOCIAL SCIENCE ANTHROPOLOGY
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'''Anthropology''' ({{IPA|/ˌænθɹəˈpɒlədʒi/}}, from [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] {{lang|grc|ἄνθρωπος}}, ''anthrōpos'', "human"; -λογία, ''[[-logy|-logia]]'') is the study of [[Homo (genus)|humanity]].  Anthropology has origins in the [[natural sciences]], and the  [[humanities]].<ref>Wolf, Eric (1994) ''Perilous Ideas: Race, Culture, People.'' ''[[Current Anthropology]]'' 35: 1-7. p.227</ref>  [[Ethnography]] is both one of its primary methods and the text that is written as a result of the practice of anthropology and its elements.

Since the work of [[Franz Boas]] and [[Bronisław Malinowski]] in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anthropology has been distinguished from other social science disciplines by its emphasis on in-depth examination of context, [[cross-cultural studies|cross-cultural comparisons]] (socio-cultural anthropology is by nature a comparative discipline), and the importance it places on long-term, experiential immersion in the area of research, often known as [[Participant observation|participant-observation]]. Cultural anthropology in particular has emphasized [[Cultural relativism|cultural relativity]] and the use of findings to frame cultural critiques. This has been particularly prominent in the United States, from Boas's arguments against 19th-century racial ideology, through [[Margaret Mead]]'s advocacy for gender equality and sexual liberation, to current criticisms of [[post-colonialism|post-colonial]] oppression and promotion of [[multiculturalism]].

==Historical and institutional context==
{{main|History of anthropology}}
The anthropologist [[Eric Wolf]] once described anthropology as "the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the [[sciences]]."<ref>Wolf, Eric R.(1964) Anthropology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall</ref> Contemporary anthropologists claim a number of earlier thinkers as their forebears, and the discipline has several sources; [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]], for example, claimed [[Montaigne]] and [[Rousseau]] as important influences.

Ancient and medieval writers and scholars may be considered forerunners of anthropology, insofar as they conducted or wrote detailed studies of the customs of different peoples, including the [[Ancient Greece|Greek]] writer [[Herodotus]], often called the "father of history" and the [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] historian [[Tacitus]], who wrote many of our only surviving contemporary accounts of several ancient [[Celts|Celtic]] and [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]] peoples. Herodotus first formulated some of the persisting problems of anthropology. [[John of Plano Carpini]]'s report of his staying among the [[Mongols]] was unusual in its detailed depiction of a non-European culture.<ref>[http://www.timothyjpmason.com/WebPages/Publications/Source_pages/AnthroHist.htm Resources for a History of Anthropology]</ref> [[Marco Polo]]'s systematic
observations of nature, anthropology, and geography were ahead of his time.<ref>[http://www.tk421.net/essays/polo.html Marco Polo's Asia ]</ref> Such a diverse and detailed account of the lands that he journeyed earned Polo the name "the father of modern anthropology."<ref>[http://www.aaanet.org/sections/gad/history/011rowe.pdf The Renaissance Foundations of Anthropology]</ref>  Another candidate for one of the first scholars to carry out comparative ethnographic-type studies in person was the medieval [[Persian people|Persian]] scholar [[Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī]] in the 11th century, who wrote about the peoples, customs, and religions of the [[Indian subcontinent]]. Like modern anthropologists, he engaged in extensive [[participant observation]] with a given group of people, learnt their language and studied their primary texts, and presented his findings with [[objectivity]] and [[neutrality]] using [[Cross-cultural studies|cross-cultural comparisons]].<ref name=Ahmed>Akbar S. Ahmed (1984). "Al-Beruni: The First Anthropologist", ''RAIN'' '''60''', p. 9-10.</ref> He wrote detailed comparative studies on the religions and cultures in the [[Middle East]], [[Mediterranean Basin|Mediterranean]] and especially [[South Asia]].<ref>J. T. Walbridge (1998). "Explaining Away the Greek Gods in Islam", ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' '''59''' (3), p. 389-403.</ref><ref>Richard Tapper (1995). "Islamic Anthropology" and the "Anthropology of Islam", ''Anthropological Quarterly'' '''68''' (3), Anthropological Analysis and Islamic Texts, p. 185-193.</ref> Biruni's tradition of comparative cross-cultural study continued in the [[Muslim world]] through to [[Ibn Khaldun]]'s work in the 14th century.<ref name=Ahmed/><ref>[http://www.colorq.org/Articles/article.aspx?d=2002&x=arabviews West Asian views on black Africans during the medieval era]</ref>

Most scholars consider modern anthropology as an outgrowth of the [[Age of Enlightenment]], a period when Europeans attempted systematically to study human behavior, the known varieties of which had been increasing since the 15th century as a result of the [[first European colonization wave (15th century–19th century)|first European colonization wave]]. The traditions of [[jurisprudence]], [[history]], [[philology]], and [[sociology]] then evolved into something more closely resembling the modern views of these disciplines and informed the development of the [[social sciences]], of which anthropology was a part. Developments in systematic study of ancient civilizations through the disciplines of [[Classics]] and [[Egyptology]] informed both archaeology and eventually social anthropology, as did the study of East and South Asian languages and cultures. At the same time, the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] reaction to the Enlightenment produced thinkers, such as [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] and later [[Wilhelm Dilthey]], whose work formed the basis for the "culture concept," which is central to the discipline.
[[Image:Table of Natural History, Cyclopaedia, Volume 2.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Table of natural history, 1728 ''[[Cyclopaedia]]'']]

Institutionally, anthropology emerged from the development of [[natural history]] (expounded by authors such as [[Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon|Buffon]]) that occurred during the European colonization of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.  Programs of ethnographic study originated in this era as the study of the "human primitives" overseen by colonial administrations.  There was a tendency in late 18th century Enlightenment thought to understand human society as natural phenomena that behaved in accordance with certain principles and that could be observed empirically. In some ways, studying the language, culture, physiology, and artifacts of European colonies was not unlike studying the flora and fauna of those places.  

Early anthropology was divided between proponents of [[unilineal evolution|unilinealism]], who argued that all societies passed through a single evolutionary process, from the most primitive to the most advanced, and various forms of non-lineal theorists, who tended to subscribe to ideas such as [[diffusionism]].<ref>Stocking, George W. (1968) Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the history of anthropology. London: The Free Press.</ref> Most 19th-century social theorists, including anthropologists, viewed non-European societies as windows onto the pre-industrial human past. As academic disciplines began to differentiate over the course of the 19th century, anthropology grew increasingly distinct from the biological approach of natural history, on the one hand, and from purely historical or literary fields such as Classics, on the other. A common criticism has been that many social science scholars (such as economists, sociologists, and psychologists) in Western countries focus disproportionately on Western subjects, while anthropology focuses disproportionately on the "Other"<ref>Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (1986) Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.</ref>; this has changed over the last part of the 20th century as anthropologists increasingly also study Western subjects, particularly variation across class, region, or ethnicity within Western societies, and other social scientists increasingly take a global view of their fields.

In the twentieth century, academic disciplines have often been institutionally divided into three broad domains. The natural and biological ''[[sciences]]'' seek to derive general laws through reproducible and verifiable experiments. The ''[[humanities]]'' generally study  local traditions, through their [[history]], [[literature]], [[music]], and [[art]]s, with an emphasis on understanding particular individuals, events, or eras. The ''[[social sciences]]'' have generally attempted to develop scientific methods to understand social phenomena in a generalizable way, though usually with methods distinct from those of the natural sciences. In particular, social sciences often develop statistical descriptions rather than the general laws derived in physics or chemistry, or they may explain individual cases through more general principles, as in many fields of psychology. Anthropology (like some fields of history) does not easily fit into one of these categories, and different branches of anthropology draw on one or more of these domains.<ref>Wallerstein, Immanuel. (2003) "Anthropology, sociology, and other dubious disciplines." ''Current Anthropology'' 44:453-466.
</ref>

Anthropology as it emerged among the colonial powers (mentioned above) has generally taken a different path than that in the countries of southern and central Europe ([[Italy]], [[Greece]], and the successors to the [[Austro-Hungarian]] and [[Ottoman empire]]s). In the former, the encounter with multiple, distinct cultures, often very different in organization and language from those of Europe, has led to a continuing emphasis on [[cross-cultural comparison]] and a receptiveness to certain kinds of cultural relativism.<ref>On varieties of cultural relativism in anthropology, see Spiro, Melford E. (1987) "Some Reflections on Cultural Determinism and Relativism with Special Reference to Emotion and Reason," in ''Culture and Human Nature: theoretical papers of Melford E. Spiro''. Edited by B. Kilborne and L. L. Langness, pp. 32-58. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.</ref> In the successor states of continental Europe, on the other hand, anthropologists often joined with folklorists and linguists in the nationalist/nation-building enterprise. Ethnologists in these countries tended to focus on differentiating among local ethnolinguistic groups, documenting local folk culture, and representing the prehistory of the nation through museums and other forms of public education.<ref>Gellner, Ernest. (1998) ''Language and solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski, and the Habsburg dilemma''. New York: Cambridge University Press.</ref> In this scheme, Russia occupied a middle position. On the one hand, it had a large Asian region of highly distinct, pre-industrial, often non-literate peoples, similar to the situation in the Americas; on the other hand, Russia also participated to some degree in the nationalist discourses of Central and Eastern Europe. After the Revolution of 1917, anthropology in the USSR and later the Soviet Bloc countries were highly shaped by the need to conform to Marxist theories of social evolution.<ref>Gellner, Ernest, ed. (1980) ''Soviet and Western anthropology''. New York: Columbia University Press.</ref>

==Anthropology by country==
===Anthropology in Britain===
[[Image:Edward Burnett Tylor.jpg|thumb|right|E. B. Tylor, 19th-century British anthropologist.]]
[[Edward Burnett Tylor|E. B. Tylor]] ( 2 October 1832 – 2 January 1917) and [[James Frazer|James George Frazer]] ( 1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941) are generally considered the antecedents to modern [[social anthropology]] in Britain. Though Tylor undertook a field trip to [[Mexico]], both he and Frazer derived most of the material for their comparative studies through extensive reading not fieldwork: Classics (literature and history of Greece and Rome), the work of the early European folklorists, and reports from missionaries, travelers, and contemporaneous ethnologists. Tylor advocated strongly for unilinealism and a form of "uniformity of mankind".<ref>[http://www.aaanet.org/gad/history/044stocking.pdf Stocking, George Jr. (1963) "Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of Invention," ''American Anthropologist'', 65:783-799, 1963]</ref> Tylor in particular laid the groundwork for theories of [[cultural diffusionism]], stating that there are three ways that different groups can have similar cultural forms or technologies: "independent invention, inheritance from ancestors in a distant region, transmission from one race [sic] to another."<ref>Tylor, E. B. (1865) ''Researches into the early history of mankind the development of civilization.'' London: John Murray.</ref> Tylor formulated one of the early and influential anthropological conceptions of [[culture]] as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."<ref>Tylor, E. B. (1871) ''Primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom''. 2 vols. London, John Murray.</ref> However, as Stocking notes, Tylor mainly concerned himself with describing and mapping the distribution of particular elements of culture, rather than with the larger function, and generally seemed to assume a Victorian idea of progress rather than the idea of non-directional, multilineal cultural development proposed by later anthropologists. Tylor also theorized about the origins of religious feelings in human beings, proposing a theory of [[animism]] as the earliest stage, and noting that "religion" has many components, of which he believed the most important to be belief in supernatural beings (as opposed to moral systems, cosmology, etc.). Frazer, a Scottish scholar with a broad knowledge of Classics, also concerned himself with religion, myth, and magic. His comparative studies, most influentially in the numerous editions of ''[[The Golden Bough]]'', analyzed similarities in religious belief and symbolism worldwide.

Neither Tylor nor Frazer, however, were particularly interested in [[fieldwork]], nor were they interested in examining how the cultural elements and institutions fit together. Toward the turn of the twentieth century, a number of anthropologists became dissatisfied with this categorization of cultural elements; historical reconstructions also came to seem increasingly speculative. Under the influence of several younger scholars, a new approach came to predominate among British anthropologists, concerned with analyzing how societies held together in the present ([[wikt:synchronic|synchronic]] analysis, rather than [[wikt:diachronic|diachronic]] or historical analysis), and emphasizing long-term (one to several years) immersion fieldwork. [[Cambridge University]] financed a multidisciplinary expedition to the [[Torres Strait Islands]] in 1898, organized by Alfred Court Haddon and including a physician-anthropologist, [[W. H. R. Rivers]], as well as a linguist, a botanist, other specialists. The findings of the expedition set new standards for ethnographic description.

A decade and a half later, Polish-born anthropology student [[Bronisław Malinowski]] (1884-1942) was beginning what he expected to be a brief period of [[fieldwork]] in the old model, collecting lists of cultural items, when the outbreak of the First World War stranded him in [[New Guinea]]. As a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resident on a British colonial possession, he was effectively confined to New Guinea for several years.<ref> Malinowski, Bronisław (1967) ''A diary in the strict sense of the term''. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World [1967]</ref> He made use of the time by undertaking far more intensive fieldwork than had been done by ''British'' anthropologists, and his classic ethnography, ''[[Argonauts of the Western Pacific]]'' (1922) advocated an approach to [[fieldwork]] that became standard in the field: getting "the native's point of view" through [[participant observation]]. Theoretically, he advocated a [[Functionalism (sociology)|functionalist]] interpretation, which examined how social institutions functioned to meet individual needs.

British social anthropology had an expansive moment in the [[Interwar period]], with key contributors as [[Bronisław Malinowski]] and [[Meyer Fortes]]<ref>[[Jack Goody]] (1995) ''[http://www3.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521450489 The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918-1970]'' review: [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496(199702)24%3A1%3C211%3ATEMTRO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I]</ref>

[[A. R. Radcliffe-Brown]] also published a seminal work in 1922. He had carried out his initial fieldwork in the [[Andaman Islands]] in the old style of historical reconstruction.  However, after reading the work of French sociologists [[Émile Durkheim]] and [[Marcel Mauss]], Radcliffe-Brown published an account of his research (entitled simply ''The Andaman Islanders'') that paid close attention to the meaning and purpose of rituals and myths. Over time, he developed an approach known as [[structural functionalism|structural-functionalism]], which focused on how institutions in societies worked to balance out or create an equilibrium in the social system to keep it functioning harmoniously. (This contrasted with Malinowski's functionalism, and was quite different from the later French [[Structuralism#Structuralism in anthropology and sociology|structuralism]], which examined the conceptual structures in language and symbolism.)

Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown's influence stemmed from the fact that they, like Boas, actively trained students and aggressively built up institutions that furthered their programmatic ambitions. This was particularly the case with Radcliffe-Brown, who spread his agenda for "Social Anthropology" by teaching at universities across the [[Commonwealth of Nations|British Commonwealth]]. From the late 1930s until the postwar period appeared a string of monographs and edited volumes that cemented the paradigm of British Social Anthropology (BSA). Famous ethnographies include ''The Nuer,'' by [[Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard]], and ''The Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi,'' by [[Meyer Fortes]]; well-known edited volumes include ''African Systems of Kinship and Marriage'' and ''African Political Systems.''

[[Max Gluckman]], together with many of his colleagues at the [[Rhodes-Livingstone Institute]] and students at [[Manchester University]], collectively known as the [[Manchester School (anthropology)|Manchester School]], took BSA in new directions through their introduction of explicitly Marxist-informed theory, their emphasis on conflicts and conflict resolution, and their attention to the ways in which individuals negotiate and make use of the social structural possibilities.

In Britain, anthropology had a great intellectual impact, it "contributed to the erosion of [[Christianity]], the growth of [[cultural relativism]], an awareness of the survival of the primitive in modern life, and the replacement of [[wikt:diachronic|diachronic]] modes of analysis with [[wikt:synchronic|synchronic]], all of which are central to modern culture."<ref>Thomas William Heyck [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28199712%29102%3A5%3C1486%3AATBSA1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7] The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 5 (Dec., 1997), pp. 1486-1488 doi:10.2307/2171126</ref>

Later in the 1960s and 1970s, [[Edmund Leach]] and his students [[Mary Douglas]] and [[Nur Yalman]], among others, introduced French structuralism in the style of [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]]; while British anthropology has continued to emphasize social organization and economics over purely symbolic or literary topics, differences among British, French, and American sociocultural anthropologies have diminished with increasing dialogue and borrowing of both theory and methods. Today, social anthropology in Britain engages internationally with many other social theories and has branched in many directions.

In countries of the British Commonwealth, social anthropology has often been institutionally separate from [[physical anthropology]] and [[primatology]], which may be connected with departments of biology or zoology; and from archaeology, which may be connected with departments of [[Classics]], [[Egyptology]], and the like. In other countries (and in some, particularly smaller, British and North American universities), anthropologists have also found themselves institutionally linked with scholars of [[folklore]], [[Museology|museum studies]], [[human geography]], [[sociology]], [[social relations]], [[ethnic studies]], [[cultural studies]], and [[social work]].

===Anthropology in the United States===
====1800s to 1940s====
From its beginnings in the early 19th century through the early 20th century, anthropology in the United States was influenced by the presence of [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] societies.

[[Image:FranzBoas.jpg|thumb|right|Franz Boas, one of the pioneers of modern anthropology, often called the "Father of American Anthropology"]]
[[Cultural anthropology]] in the United States was influenced greatly by the ready availability of Native American societies as ethnographic subjects.  The field was pioneered by staff of the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs]] and the Smithsonian Institution's [[Bureau of American Ethnology]], men such as [[John Wesley Powell]] and [[Frank Hamilton Cushing]].  [[Lewis Henry Morgan]] (1818-1881), a lawyer from [[Rochester, New York]], became an advocate for and ethnological scholar of the [[Iroquois]].  His comparative analyses of religion, government, material culture, and especially kinship patterns proved to be influential contributions to the field of anthropology.  Like other scholars  of his day (such as [[Edward Tylor]]), Morgan argued that human societies could be classified into categories of cultural evolution on a scale of progression that ranged from ''savagery'', to ''barbarism'', to ''civilization''.  Generally, Morgan used technology (such as bowmaking or pottery) as an indicator of position on this scale.<ref>This would  be influential on the ideas of [[Karl Marx]], who dedicated [[Das Kapital]] to Morgan.</ref>

====Boasian anthropology====
[[Franz Boas]] established academic anthropology in the United States in opposition to this sort of evolutionary perspective. Boasian anthropology was politically active and suspicious of research dictated by the U.S. government and wealthy patrons. It was rigorously empirical and skeptical of overgeneralizations and attempts to establish universal laws. Boas studied immigrant children to demonstrate that biological race was not immutable, and that human conduct and behavior resulted from nurture, rather than nature.

Influenced by the German tradition, Boas argued that the world was full of distinct ''cultures,'' rather than societies whose evolution could be measured by how much or how little "civilization" they had. He believed that each culture has to be studied in its particularity, and argued that cross-cultural generalizations, like those made in the [[natural science]]s, were not possible. In doing so, he fought discrimination against immigrants, African Americans, and Native North Americans.<ref>Stocking, George W. (1968) ''Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the history of anthropology''. London: The Free Press.</ref> Many American anthropologists adopted his agenda for social reform, and theories of race continue to be popular targets for anthropologists today. The so-called "Four Field Approach" has its origins in Boasian Anthropology, dividing the discipline in the four crucial and interrelated fields of sociocultural, biological, linguistic, and prehistoric anthropology (i.e., archaeology). Anthropology in the U.S. continues to be deeply influenced by the Boasian tradition, especially its emphasis on culture.
[[Image:Ruth Benedict.jpg|thumb|Ruth Benedict in 1937]]

Boas used his positions at [[Columbia University]] and the [[American Museum of Natural History]] to train and develop multiple generations of students. His first generation of students included [[Alfred Kroeber]], [[Robert Lowie]], [[Edward Sapir]] and [[Ruth Benedict]], who each produced richly detailed studies of indigenous North American cultures. They provided a wealth of details used to attack the theory of a single evolutionary process. Kroeber and Sapir's focus on Native American languages helped establish [[linguistics]] as a truly general science and free it from its historical focus on [[Indo-European languages]].

The publication of [[Alfred Kroeber]]'s textbook, ''Anthropology,'' marked a turning point in American anthropology. After three decades of amassing material, Boasians felt a growing urge to generalize. This was most obvious in the 'Culture and Personality' studies carried out by younger Boasians such as [[Margaret Mead]] and [[Ruth Benedict]]. Influenced by psychoanalytic psychologists such as [[Sigmund Freud]] and [[Carl Jung]], these authors sought to understand the way that individual personalities were shaped by the wider cultural and social forces in which they grew up. Though such works as ''Coming of Age in Samoa'' and ''The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'' remain popular with the American public, Mead and Benedict never had the impact on the discipline of anthropology that some expected. Boas had planned for Ruth Benedict to succeed him as chair of Columbia's anthropology department, but she was sidelined by [[Ralph Linton]], and Mead was limited to her offices at the [[American Museum of Natural History|AMNH]].

===Anthropology in Canada===
Canadian anthropology began, as in other parts of the Colonial world, as ethnological data in the records of travellers and missionaries. In Canada, [[Jesuit]] [[Missionary|missionaries]] such as Fathers LeClercq, Le Jeune and Sagard, in the 1600s, provide the oldest ethnographic records of native tribes in what was then the Domain of Canada.

True anthropology began with a [[Government agency|Government department]]: the [[Geological Survey of Canada]], and [[George Mercer Dawson]] (director in 1895). Dawson's support for anthropology created impetus for the profession in Canada. This was expanded upon by Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, who established a Division of Anthropology within the Geological Survey in 1910. Anthropologists were recruited from England and the USA, setting the foundation for the unique Canadian style of anthropology. Scholars include the linguist and Boasian [[Edward Sapir]].

===Anthropology in France===
[[Image:Emile Durkheim.jpg|thumb|Émile Durkheim]]
Anthropology in France has a less clear genealogy than the British and American traditions, in part because many French writers influential in anthropology have been trained or held faculty positions in sociology, philosophy, or other fields rather than in anthropology. Most commentators consider [[Marcel Mauss]] (1872-1950), nephew of the influential sociologist [[Émile Durkheim]] to be the founder of the French anthropological tradition. Mauss belonged to Durkheim's [[Année Sociologique]] group; and while Durkheim and others examined the state of modern societies, Mauss and his collaborators (such as [[Henri Hubert]] and [[Robert Hertz]]) drew on ethnography and philology to analyze societies which were not as 'differentiated' as European nation states. Two works by Mauss in particular proved to have enduring relevance: ''[[The Gift (book)|Essay on the Gift]]'' a seminal analysis of [[trade|exchange]] and [[reciprocity (cultural anthropology)|reciprocity]], and his Huxley lecture on the notion of the person, the first comparative study of notions of person and selfhood cross-culturally.<ref>Mauss, Marcel (1938) "A category of the human mind: the notion of person; the notion of self.," in M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes, eds. ''The Category of the Person: anthropology, philosophy, history''. Pp. 1-25. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Originally given as “Une categorie de l’Esprit Humain: La Notion de Personne, Celle de ‘Moi’,” for the Huxley Memorial Lecture and appeared in the ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'', 68.</ref>

Throughout the interwar years, French interest in anthropology often dovetailed with wider cultural movements such as [[surrealism]] and [[primitivism (art movement)|primitivism]] which drew on ethnography for inspiration. [[Marcel Griaule]] and [[Michel Leiris]] are examples of people who combined anthropology with the French avant-garde. During this time most of what is known as ''ethnologie'' was restricted to museums, such as the [[Musée de l'Homme]] founded by [[Paul Rivet]], and anthropology had a close relationship with studies of [[folklore]].

Above all, however, it was [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] who helped institutionalize anthropology in France. In addition to the enormous influence his [[structuralism]] exerted across multiple disciplines, Lévi-Strauss established ties with American and British anthropologists. At the same time he established centers and laboratories within France to provide an institutional context within anthropology while training influential students such as [[Maurice Godelier]] and [[Françoise Héritier]] who would prove influential in the world of French anthropology. Much of the distinct character of France's anthropology today is a result of the fact that most anthropology is carried out in nationally funded research laboratories ([[Centre national de la recherche scientifique|CNRS]]) rather than academic departments in universities.

Other influential writers in the 1970s include [[Pierre Clastres]], who explains in his books on the [[Guayaki]] tribe in [[Paraguay]] that "primitive societies" actively oppose the institution of the [[state]]. Therefore, these stateless societies are not less evolved than societies with states, but took the active choice of conjuring the institution of [[authority]] as a separate function from society. The [[Leadership|leader]] is only a spokesperson for the group when it has to deal with other groups ("international relations") but has no inside authority, and may be violently removed if he attempts to abuse this position.

The most important French social theorist since Foucault and Lévi-Strauss is [[Pierre Bourdieu]], who trained formally in philosophy and sociology and eventually held the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France. Like Mauss and others before him, however, he worked on topics both in sociology and anthropology. His fieldwork among the Kabyles of Algeria places him solidly in anthropology, while his analysis of the function and reproduction of fashion and cultural capital in European societies places him as solidly in sociology.

===Other countries===
Anthropology in [[Greece]] and [[Portugal]] is much influenced by British anthropology.{{Fact|date=February 2008}} In [[Greece]], there was since the 19th century a science of the [[folklore]] called ''laographia'' (laography), in the form of "a science of the interior", although theoretically weak; but the connotation of the field deeply changed after World War II, when a wave of Anglo-American anthropologists introduced a science "of the outside".<ref>Geneviève Zoïa, « L'anthropologie en Grèce », Terrain, Numéro 14—L'incroyable et ses preuves (mars 1990) , [En ligne], mis en ligne le 7 octobre 2005. URL: http://terrain.revues.org/document3641.html. Consulté le 15 juin 2007. {{fr icon}}</ref> In [[Italy]], the development of [[ethnology]] and related studies did not receive as much attention as other branches of learning.<ref>Grottanelli, Vinigi ''[http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0011-3204(197712)18%3A4%3C593%3AEACAII%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z Ethnology and/or Cultural Anthropology in Italy: Traditions and Developments (and Comments and Reply)]''. Other authors: Giorgio Ausenda, Bernardo Bernardi, Ugo Bianchi, Y. Michal Bodemann, Jack Goody, Allison Jablonko, David I. Kertzer, Vittorio Lanternari, Antonio Marazzi, Roy A. Miller, Jr., Laura Laurencich Minelli, David M. Moss, Leonard W. Moss, H. R. H. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, Diana Pinto, Pietro Scotti, Tullio Tentori. ''[[Current Anthropology]]'', Vol. 18, No. 4 (Dec., 1977), pp. 593-614</ref>
[[Praveen Attri]] indian socioligist emphasised for a wide reserch of indian anthropology.

[[Germany]] and [[Norway]] are the countries that showed the most division and conflict between scholars focusing on domestic socio-cultural issues and scholars focusing on "other" societies.{{Fact|date=February 2008}}

==Anthropology after World War II: Increasing dialog in Anglophone anthropology==
Before [[World War II|WWII]] British 'social anthropology' and American 'cultural anthropology' were still distinct traditions. After the war, enough British and American anthropologists borrowed ideas and methodological approaches from each other that some began to speak of them collectively as 'sociocultural' anthropology.

In the 1950s and mid-1960s anthropology tended increasingly to model itself after the [[natural science]]s. Some anthropologists, such as [[Lloyd Fallers]] and [[Clifford Geertz]], focused on processes of modernization by which newly independent states could develop. Others, such as [[Julian Steward]] and [[Leslie White]], focused on how societies evolve and fit their ecological niche—an approach popularized by [[Marvin Harris]]. [[Economic anthropology]] as influenced by [[Karl Polanyi]] and practiced by [[Marshall Sahlins]] and [[George Dalton]] challenged standard neoclassical [[economics]] to take account of cultural and social factors, and also employed Marxian analysis into anthropological study. In England, British Social Anthropology's paradigm began to fragment as [[Max Gluckman]] and [[Peter Worsley]] experimented with Marxism and authors such as [[Rodney Needham]] and [[Edmund Leach]] incorporated Lévi-Strauss's structuralism into their work.

Structuralism also influenced a number of developments in 1960s and 1970s, including [[Psychological anthropology#Cognitive Anthropology|cognitive anthropology]] and componential analysis. Authors such as [[David Schneider (anthropologist)|David Schneider]], [[Clifford Geertz]], and [[Marshall Sahlins]] developed a more fleshed-out concept of culture as a web of meaning or signification, which proved very popular within and beyond the discipline. In keeping with the times, much of anthropology became politicized through the [[Algerian War of Independence]] and opposition to the [[Vietnam War]];<ref>Fanon, Frantz. (1963) The Wretched of the Earth, transl. Constance Farrington. New York, Grove Weidenfeld.</ref> [[Marxism]] became a more and more popular theoretical approach in the discipline.<ref>Nugent, Stephen ''[http://www.ingentaconnect.com/search/article?title=anthropology&title_type=tka&year_from=1998&year_to=2007&database=1&pageSize=20&index=4 Some reflections on anthropological structural Marxism]'' The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Volume 13, Number 2, June 2007, pp. 419-431(13)</ref> By the 1970s the authors of volumes such as ''Reinventing Anthropology'' worried about anthropology's relevance.

Since the 1980s issues of power, such as those examined in [[Eric Wolf]]'s ''[[Europe and the People Without History]]'', have been central to the discipline. In the 80s books like ''Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter'' pondered anthropology's ties to colonial inequality, while the immense popularity of theorists such as [[Antonio Gramsci]] and [[Michel Foucault]] moved issues of power and [[hegemony]] into the spotlight. Gender and sexuality became popular topics, as did the relationship between history and anthropology, influenced by [[Marshall Sahlins]] (again), who drew on [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]] and [[Fernand Braudel]] to examine the relationship between social structure and individual agency. Also influential in these issues were [[Nietzsche]], [[Heidegger]], the critical theory of the [[Frankfurt School]], [[Derrida]] and [[Lacan]].<ref name="Lewis">Lewis, Herbert S. (1998) ''[http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294(199809)2%3A100%3A3%3C716%3ATMOAAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and its Consequences]'' ''[[American Anthropologist]]'' 100:" 716-731</ref>

In the late 1980s and 1990s authors such as [[George Marcus]] and [[James Clifford]] pondered ethnographic authority, particularly how and why anthropological knowledge was possible and authoritative. They were reflecting trends in research and discourse initiated by Feminists in the academy, although they excused themselves from commenting specifically on those pioneering critics.<ref>Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (1986) ''Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography''. Berkeley: University of California Press.</ref> Nevertheless, key aspects of feminist theorizing and methods became ''de rigueur'' as part of the 'post-modern moment' in anthropology: Ethnographies became more reflexive, explicitly addressing the author's methodology, cultural, gender and racial positioning, and their influence on his or her ethnographic analysis. This was part of a more general trend of [[postmodernism]] that was popular contemporaneously.<ref>Gellner, Ernest (1992) Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion. London/New York: Routledge. Pp: 26-50</ref> Currently anthropologists pay attention to a wide variety of issues pertaining to the contemporary world, including [[globalization]], [[medicine]] and [[biotechnology]], [[rights of indigenous peoples|indigenous rights]], [[virtual communities]], and the anthropology of [[industrial society|industrialized societies]].
<br /><!-- Comment -->

==Approaches to anthropology==
===The "four field" approach===
Principally in the United States,<ref>Sydel Silverman ''[http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0011-3204(199202)33%3A1%3C1%3AI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X Introduction]'' ''[[Current Anthropology]]'', Vol. 33, No. 1, Supplement: Inquiry and Debate in the Human Sciences: Contributions from Current Anthropology, 1960-1990 (Feb., 1992), pp. 1-6</ref> anthropology is often defined as being "[[holism|holistic]]" and based on a "four-field" approach. There is an ongoing dispute as to whether this makes sense theoretically or pragmatically in the structure of American academic institutions. Supporters<ref>Shore, Bradd (1999) ''Strange Fate of Holism.'' ''Anthropology News'' 40(9): 4-5.</ref> consider anthropology holistic in two senses: it is concerned with all human beings across times and places, and with all dimensions of humanity (evolutionary, biophysical, sociopolitical, economic, cultural, linguistic, psychological, etc.); also many academic programs following this approach take a "four-field" approach to anthropology that encompasses [[physical anthropology]], [[archaeology]], [[linguistics]], and [[cultural anthropology]] or [[social anthropology]]. The definition of anthropology as [[holism|holistic]] and the "four-field" approach are disputed by some leading anthropologists,<ref name="Sacred_bundle">{{cite book |last=[http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/%7Edsegal/ Segal]  |first=Daniel A. |coauthors= [http://www.stanford.edu/dept/anthroCASA/people/faculty/yanagisako.html Sylvia J. Yanagisako] (eds.), James Clifford, Ian Hodder, Rena Lederman, Michael Silverstein |title=Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Reflections on the Disciplining of Anthropology |publisher=Duke University Press |year= 2005 |url=http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=11016434335&Bmain.Btitle_option=1&Bmain.Btitle=Unwrapping+the+Sacred+Bundle}} introduction: [http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/%7Edsegal/theory/yanasegal.pdf] reviews: [http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/jlat.2006.11.1.235] [http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/an.2006.47.1.8.2?journalCode=an] [http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00372_39.x] [http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/anthropological_quarterly/v078/78.4song.pdf] </ref><ref>Robert Borofsky ''[http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.2002.104.2.463 The Four Subfields: Anthropologists as Mythmakers]'' ''[[American Anthropologist]]'' June 2002, Vol. 104, No. 2, pp. 463-480 doi:10.1525/aa.2002.104.2.463</ref><ref>Robin Fox (1991) ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=bXAaXWTR5EMC Encounter With Anthropology]'' ISBN 0887388701 pp.14-16</ref> that consider those as artifacts from 19th century [[sociocultural evolution|social evolutionary]] thought that inappropriately impose scientific [[positivism]] upon [[cultural anthropology]] in particular.<ref name="Sacred_bundle" /> The pressure for the "integration" of socio-cultural anthropology (inherently associated with the [[humanities]]), with "biological-physical anthropology" (inherently associated with the [[natural sciences]]), has been criticized as an inappropriate imposition of [[positivism]] (the belief that the only proper knowledge is that derived from the [[scientific method]]) upon [[cultural anthropology]].<ref name="Sacred_bundle" /> This criticism argument has been raised towards the development of [[sociobiology]] in the late 1960s (by cultural anthropologists such as [[Marshall Sahlins]]), and towards the "four field holism" of American Anthropology.<ref name="Sacred_bundle" /> While originating in the US, both the four field approach and debates concerning it have been exported internationally under American academic influence.<ref>Smart, Josephine (2006) "In Search of Anthropology in China: A Discipline Caught in a Web of Nation Building, Socialist Capitalism, and Globalization.," in Gustavo Lins Ribeiro and Arturo Escobar, eds. ''World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations in Systems of Power''.  Pp. 69-85. Oxford: Berg Publishers.</ref> (''for more details see the section on the relations with the natural sciences and the Humanities'')

The four fields are:

*[[Biological anthropology|'''Biological''']] or '''physical anthropology''' seeks to understand the physical human being through the study of human [[evolution]] and [[adaptation|adaptability]], [[population genetics]], and [[primatology]].  Subfields or related fields include [[paleoanthropology]] (study of evolutionary history of the human species), [[anthropometrics]], [[forensic anthropology]], [[osteology]], and [[nutritional anthropology]]. On the basis of [[Tinbergen's four questions]] a framework of reference or "periodic table" of all fields of anthropological research (including humanities) can be established.
*'''Socio-cultural anthropology''' is the investigation, often through long term, intensive field studies (including participant-observation methods), of the culture and social organization of a particular people: language, economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, patterns of consumption and exchange, [[kinship]] and family structure, gender relations, childrearing and socialization, religion, mythology, symbolism, etc. (U.S. universities more often use the term [[cultural anthropology]]; British universities have tended to call the corresponding field [[social anthropology]], and for much of the 20th century emphasized the analysis of social organization more than cultural symbolism.) In some European countries, socio-cultural anthropology is known as [[ethnology]] (a term coined and defined by [[Adam František Kollár|Adam F. Kollár]] in 1783<ref>Han F. Vermeulen, "The German Invention of ''Völkerkunde:'' Ethnological Discourse in Europe and Asia, 1740-1798." In: Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore, eds. ''The German Invention of Race.'' 2006.</ref> that is also used in English-speaking countries to denote the comparative aspect of socio-cultural anthropology.) Subfields and related fields include [[psychological anthropology]], [[folklore]], [[anthropology of religion]], [[ethnic studies]], [[cultural studies]], [[anthropology of media]] and [[anthropology of cyberspace|cyberspace]], and study of the [[diffusion (anthropology)|diffusion]] of social practices and cultural forms.
*[[Linguistic anthropology|'''Linguistic anthropology''']] seeks to understand the processes of human communications, verbal and non-verbal, variation in [[language]] across time and space, the social uses of language, and the relationship between language and culture.  It is the branch of anthropology that brings linguistic methods to bear on anthropological problems, linking the analysis of linguistic forms and processes to the interpretation of sociocultural processes. Linguistic anthropologists often draw on related fields including [[anthropological linguistics]], [[sociolinguistics]], [[pragmatics]], [[cognitive linguistics]], [[semiotics]], [[discourse analysis]], and [[narrative]] analysis.<ref>Salzmann, Zdeněk. (1993) ''Language, culture, and society: an introduction to linguistic anthropology''. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.</ref>
*[[Archaeology|'''Archaeology''']] studies the contemporary distribution and form of [[Artifact (archaeology)|artifacts]] (materials modified by past human activities), with the intent of understanding distribution and movement of ancient populations, development of human social organization, and relationships among contemporary populations; it also contributes significantly to the work of population geneticists, historical linguists, and many historians. Archaeology involves a wide variety of field techniques (remote sensing, survey, geophysical studies, coring, excavation) and laboratory procedures (compositional analyses, dating studies ([[radiocarbon]], [[Optical dating|optically stimulated luminescence dating]]), measures of formal variability, examination of wear patterns, residue analyses, etc.). Archaeologists predominantly study materials produced by prehistoric groups but also includes modern, historical and ethnographic populations. Archaeology is usually regarded as a separate (but related) field outside North America, although closely related to the anthropological field of [[material culture]], which deals with physical objects created or used within a living or past group as a means of understanding its cultural values.

A number of subfields or modes of anthropology cut across these divisions. For example, [[medical anthropology]] is often considered a subfield of socio-cultural anthropology; however, many anthropologists who study medical topics also look at biological variation in populations or the interaction of culture and biology. They may also use linguistic analysis to understand communication around health and illness, or archaeological techniques to understand health and illness in historical or prehistorical populations. Similarly, [[forensic anthropology|forensic anthropologists]] may use both techniques from both physical anthropology and archaeology, and may also practice as medical anthropologists. Environmental or [[ecological anthropology]], a growing subfield concerned with the relationships between humans and their environment, is another example that brings cultural and biological—and at times, archaeological—approaches together, as it can deal with a broad range of topics from [[environmentalism|environmentalist movements]] to [[wildlife conservation|wildlife]] or [[habitat conservation]] to traditional ecological knowledge and practices. [[Biocultural anthropology]] is a broad term used to describe syntheses of cultural and biological perspectives. [[Applied anthropology]] is perhaps better considered an emphasis than a subfield in the same sense as the standard four; applied anthropologists may work for government agencies, nongovernmental agencies, or private industry, using techniques from any of the subfields to address matters such as policy implementation, impact assessments, education, marketing research, or product development.

More recently, anthropology programs at several prominent U.S. universities have begun dividing the field into two: one emphasizing the [[humanities]], [[critical theory]], and interpretive or semiotic approaches; the other emphasizing [[evolutionary theory]], quantitative methods, and explicit theory testing (over idiographic description),<ref>[http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-38.dir/38a05101.htm Shea, Christopher and Scott Heller (29 May 1998) "Stanford Anthropology Department Will Split." ''Chronicle of Higher Education'']</ref> though there have also been institutional pressures to rejoin at least one high-profile split department.<ref>[http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/february14/anthsci-021407.html Trei, Lisa (14 Feb 2007) "Anthropology departments instructed to form combined unit." ''Stanford Daily News'']</ref> At some universities, biological anthropology and archaeology programs have also moved from departments of anthropology to departments of biology or other related fields. This has occasioned much discussion within the [[American Anthropological Association]], and it remains to be seen whether some form of the four-field organization will persist in North American universities.

As might be inferred from the above list of subfields, anthropology is a methodologically diverse discipline, incorporating both [[qualitative methods]] and [[quantitative methods]]. [[Ethnographies]]—intensive [[case studies]] based on field research—have historically had a central place in the literature of sociocultural and linguistic anthropology, but are increasingly supplemented by [[Multimethodology|mixed-methods approaches]]. Currently, technological advancements are spurring methodological innovation across anthropology's subfields.  [[Radiocarbon dating]], [[population genetics]], [[GPS]], and digital video- and audio-recording are just a few of the many technologies spurring new developments in anthropological research.

==Controversies about the history of anthropology==
Anthropologists, like other researchers (esp. historians and scientists engaged in field research), have over time assisted state policies and projects, especially colonialism. <ref name = "pbuteh">Asad, Talal, ed. (1973) Anthropology & the Colonial Encounter. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.</ref><ref>van Breman, Jan, and Akitoshi Shimizu (1999) ''Anthropology and Colonialism in Asia and Oceania''. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.</ref>

Some commentators have contended:

*That the discipline grew out of colonialism, perhaps was in league with it, and derived some of its key notions from it, consciously or not.   (See, for example, Gough, Pels and Salemink, but cf. Lewis 2004).<ref name=Gellner>Gellner, Ernest (1992) ''Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion''. London/New York: Routledge. Pp: 26-29.</ref>
*That anthropologists typically have more power than the people they study and hence their knowledge-making is a form of theft in which the anthropologist gains something for him or herself at the expense of informants.
*That ethnographic work was often ahistorical, writing about people as if they were "out of time" in an "ethnographic present" ([[Johannes Fabian]], ''Time and Its Other'').

=== Anthropology and the military ===
Anthropologists’ involvement with the U.S. government, in particular, has caused bitter controversy within the discipline. Franz Boas publicly objected to US participation in [[World War I]], and after the war he published a brief expose and condemnation of the participation of several American archeologists in espionage in Mexico under their cover as scientists. But by the 1940s, many of Boas' anthropologist contemporaries were active in the allied war effort against the "Axis" (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan). Many served in the armed forces but others worked in intelligence (for example, [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS) and the [[Office of War Information]]). At the same time, [[David H. Price]]'s work on American anthropology during the Cold War provides detailed accounts of the pursuit and dismissal of several anthropologists from their jobs for communist sympathies.

Attempts to accuse anthropologists of complicity with the CIA and government intelligence activities during the Vietnam War years have turned up surprisingly little (although anthropologist Hugo Nutini was active in the stillborn [[Project Camelot]]).<ref>Horowitz, Lewis ed.(1967) The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot.</ref> Many anthropologists (students and teachers) were active in the antiwar movement and a great many resolutions condemning the war in all its aspects were passed overwhelmingly at the annual meetings of the [[American Anthropological Association]] (AAA). In the decades since the Vietnam war the tone of cultural and social anthropology, at least, has been increasingly politicized, with the dominant liberal tone of earlier generations replaced with one more radical, a mix of, and varying degrees of, Marxist, feminist, anarchist, post-colonial, post-modern, Saidian, Foucauldian, identity-based, and more.<ref>D'Andrade, Roy (1995) "Moral Models in Anthropology." ''Current Anthropology'' 36: 399-408.</ref>

Professional anthropological bodies often object to the use of anthropology for the benefit of the [[state]]. Their codes of ethics or statements may proscribe anthropologists from giving secret briefings. The [[Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth]] (ASA ) has called certain scholarships ethically dangerous. The AAA's current 'Statement of Professional Responsibility' clearly states that "in relation with their own government and with host governments … no secret research, no secret reports or debriefings of any kind should be agreed to or given."

However, anthropologists, along with other social scientists, are once again being used in warfare as part of the [http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0907/p01s08-wosc.htm US Army's strategy in Afghanistan]. The [[Christian Science Monitor]] reports that "Counterinsurgency efforts focus on better grasping and meeting local needs" in [[War in Afghanistan (2001–present)|Afghanistan]], under the [[Rubric (academic)|rubric]] of [http://www.army.mil/professionalwriting/volumes/volume4/december_2006/12_06_2.html ''Human Terrain Team'' (HTT)].

==Major discussions about anthropology==
===Focus on "other cultures"===<!-- title wikilinked from  [[Urban anthropology]] -->
Some authors argue that anthropology originated and developed as the study of "other cultures", both in terms of time (past societies) and space (non-European/non-[[Western world|Western]] societies). For example, the classic of [[urban anthropology]], [[Ulf Hannerz]] in the introduction to his seminal ''Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology'' mentions that the "[[Third World]]" had habitually received most of attention; anthropologists who traditionally specialized in "other cultures" looked for them far away and started to look "across the tracks" only in late 1960s.<ref>[[Ulf Hannerz]] (1980) "Exploring the City: Inquiries Toward an Urban Anthropology", ISBN 0231083769, p. 1</ref> Now there exist many works focusing on peoples and topics very close to the author's "home".<ref name="Lewis" /> It is also argued that other fields of study, like [[History]] and [[Sociology]], on the contrary focus disproportionately on the West.<ref>[[Jack Goody]] (2007) ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=jo1UVi48KywC The Theft of History]'' Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521870690</ref>

In France, the study of existing contemporary society has been traditionally left to [[sociologist]]s, but this is increasingly changing,<ref>*Marc Abélès, ''[http://www.jstor.org/view/08867356/ap020057/02a00050/3?frame=noframe How the Anthropology of France Has Changed Anthropology in France: Assessing New Directions in the Field] ''[[Cultural Anthropology]]'' 1999 p. 407</ref> starting in the 1970s from scholars like [[Isac Chiva]] and journals like ''[[Terrain (journal)|Terrain]]'' ("fieldwork"), and developing with the center founded by [[Marc Augé]] (''[[École des hautes études en sciences sociales|Le Centre d'anthropologie des mondes contemporains]]'', the Anthropological Research Center of Contemporary Societies). The same approach of focusing on "modern world" topics by ''Terrain'', was also present in the British [[Manchester School (anthropology)|Manchester School]] of the 1950s.{{Fact|date=February 2008}}

It has been reported{{who}} that there has been an "institutional and academic [[apartheid]]" between the two sorts of anthropology, the one focusing on the "Other" and the one focusing on the "Self" contemporary society; an apartheid ranging from a "no contact" status to even open conflict. The countries where this was greater were Germany and Norway, but it was also significant in the 1980s France.

==References==
{{reflist|2}}
<div class="references-small"></div>

==Bibliography==
===Fieldnotes and memoirs of anthropologists===
*Barley, Nigel (1983) ''The innocent anthropologist: notes from a mud hut''. London: British Museum Publications.
*Geertz, Clifford (1995) ''After the fact: two countries, four decades, one anthropologist''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
*Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1967) ''Tristes tropiques''. Translated from the French by John Russell. New York: Atheneum.
*Malinowski, Bronisław (1967) ''A diary in the strict sense of the term''. Translated by Norbert Guterman. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World.
*Rabinow, Paul. (1977) ''Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco''.

===History of anthropology===
*Asad, Talal, ed. (1973) ''Anthropology & the Colonial Encounter''. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
*Barth, Fredrik, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin,  ''One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American anthropology''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
*D'Andrade, R. "The Sad Story of Anthropology: 1950-1999." In E. L. Cerroni-Long, ed. ''Anthropological Theory in North America''.  Westport: Berin & Garvey 1999. [http://www.anthro.ucsd.edu/~rdandrad/Sadstory download]
*Darnell, Regna. (2001) ''Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology''. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
*Deeb, Benjamin. (2007) ''Anthropology and Social Problems: A Manual of Change''.
*Harris, Marvin. (2001[1968]) ''The rise of anthropological theory: a history of theories of culture''. AltaMira Press. Walnut Creek, CA.
*Kehoe, Alice B. (1998)  ''The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology''.
*Lewis, Herbert S. (1998) "The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and its Consequences." ''American Anthropologist'', 100: 716-731.
*Lewis, Herbert S. (2004) "Imagining Anthropology's History." ''Reviews in Anthropology'', v. 33.
*Lewis, Herbert S. (2005) "Anthropology, the Cold War, and Intellectual History. In R. Darnell & F.W. Gleach, eds. ''Histories of Anthropology Annual'', Vol. I.
*Pels, Peter & Oscar Salemink, eds. (2000) ''Colonial Subjects: Essays on the Practical History of Anthropology''.
*Price, David. (2004) ''Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists''.
*Stocking, George, Jr. (1968) ''Race, Culture and Evolution''. New York: Free Press.
*Trencher, Susan. (2000) ''Mirrored Images: American Anthropology and American Culture, 1960-1980''.

===Textbooks and key theoretical works===
*Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (1986) ''Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography''. Berkeley: University of California Press.
*Geertz, Clifford (1973) ''The Interpretation of Cultures''. New York: Basic Books.
*Harris, Marvin (1997) ''Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology (7th Edition)''. Boston: Allyn & Bacon
*Salzmann, Zdeněk. (1993) ''Language, culture, and society: an introduction to linguistic anthropology''. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
*Shweder, Richard A., and Robert A. LeVine, eds. (1984) ''Culture Theory: essays on mind, self, and emotion''. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

==See also==
*[[Theological anthropology]], which is not part of anthropology but a subfield of theology

===Organizations===
*[http://www.aaanet.org/ American Anthropological Association Homepage] Home page of largest professional organization of anthropologists
*[http://www.physanth.org/ American Association of Physical Anthropologists]
*[http://www.easaonline.org/ European Association of Social Anthropologists]
*[http://www.movinganthropology.org/ International Association of Anthropology Students]
*[http://www.practicinganthropology.org/ National Association for the Practice of Anthropology]
*[http://www.therai.org.uk/ The Royal Anthropological Institute Homepage]—The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI)
*[http://www.sfaa.net/ The Society for Applied Anthropology]

===Resources===
*[http://www.movinganthropology.de/index.php?option=com_bookmarks&Itemid=40/ Anthropology departments around the world]
*[http://anthro.amnh.org/ Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History] Online collections database with detailed description and digital images for over 160,000 ethnographic artifacts.
*[http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/ National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution] Collects and preserves historical and contemporary anthropological materials that document the world's cultures and the history of anthropology
*[http://www.anthrobase.com/Dic/eng/ Online Dictionary of Anthropology]
*[http://www.aio.anthropology.org.uk The Anthropological Index Online] Online biblographic database.

===Anthropology in Britain===
[[Image:Edward Burnett Tylor.jpg|thumb|right|E. B. Tylor, 19th-century British anthropologist.]]
[[Edward Burnett Tylor|E. B. Tylor]] ( 2 October 1832 – 2 January 1917) and [[James Frazer|James George Frazer]] ( 1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941) are generally considered the antecedents to modern [[social anthropology]] in Britain. Though Tylor undertook a field trip to [[Mexico]], both he and Frazer derived most of the material for their comparative studies through extensive reading not fieldwork: Classics (literature and history of Greece and Rome), the work of the early European folklorists, and reports from missionaries, travelers, and contemporaneous ethnologists. Tylor advocated strongly for unilinealism and a form of "uniformity of mankind".<ref>[http://www.aaanet.org/gad/history/044stocking.pdf Stocking, George Jr. (1963) "Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of Invention," ''American Anthropologist'', 65:783-799, 1963]</ref> Tylor in particular laid the groundwork for theories of [[cultural diffusionism]], stating that there are three ways that different groups can have similar cultural forms or technologies: "independent invention, inheritance from ancestors in a distant region, transmission from one race [sic] to another."<ref>Tylor, E. B. (1865) ''Researches into the early history of mankind the development of civilization.'' London: John Murray.</ref> Tylor formulated one of the early and influential anthropological conceptions of [[culture]] as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."<ref>Tylor, E. B. (1871) ''Primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom''. 2 vols. London, John Murray.</ref> However, as Stocking notes, Tylor mainly concerned himself with describing and mapping the distribution of particular elements of culture, rather than with the larger function, and generally seemed to assume a Victorian idea of progress rather than the idea of non-directional, multilineal cultural development proposed by later anthropologists. Tylor also theorized about the origins of religious feelings in human beings, proposing a theory of [[animism]] as the earliest stage, and noting that "religion" has many components, of which he believed the most important to be belief in supernatural beings (as opposed to moral systems, cosmology, etc.). Frazer, a Scottish scholar with a broad knowledge of Classics, also concerned himself with religion, myth, and magic. His comparative studies, most influentially in the numerous editions of ''[[The Golden Bough]]'', analyzed similarities in religious belief and symbolism worldwide.

Neither Tylor nor Frazer, however, were particularly interested in [[fieldwork]], nor were they interested in examining how the cultural elements and institutions fit together. Toward the turn of the twentieth century, a number of anthropologists became dissatisfied with this categorization of cultural elements; historical reconstructions also came to seem increasingly speculative. Under the influence of several younger scholars, a new approach came to predominate among British anthropologists, concerned with analyzing how societies held together in the present ([[wikt:synchronic|synchronic]] analysis, rather than [[wikt:diachronic|diachronic]] or historical analysis), and emphasizing long-term (one to several years) immersion fieldwork. [[Cambridge University]] financed a multidisciplinary expedition to the [[Torres Strait Islands]] in 1898, organized by Alfred Court Haddon and including a physician-anthropologist, [[W. H. R. Rivers]], as well as a linguist, a botanist, other specialists. The findings of the expedition set new standards for ethnographic description.

A decade and a half later, Polish-born anthropology student [[Bronisław Malinowski]] (1884-1942) was beginning what he expected to be a brief period of [[fieldwork]] in the old model, collecting lists of cultural items, when the outbreak of the First World War stranded him in [[New Guinea]]. As a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resident on a British colonial possession, he was effectively confined to New Guinea for several years.<ref> Malinowski, Bronisław (1967) ''A diary in the strict sense of the term''. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World [1967]</ref> He made use of the time by undertaking far more intensive fieldwork than had been done by ''British'' anthropologists, and his classic ethnography, ''[[Argonauts of the Western Pacific]]'' (1922) advocated an approach to [[fieldwork]] that became standard in the field: getting "the native's point of view" through [[participant observation]]. Theoretically, he advocated a [[Functionalism (sociology)|functionalist]] interpretation, which examined how social institutions functioned to meet individual needs.

British social anthropology had an expansive moment in the [[Interwar period]], with key contributors as [[Bronisław Malinowski]] and [[Meyer Fortes]]<ref>[[Jack Goody]] (1995) ''[http://www3.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521450489 The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918-1970]'' review: [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496(199702)24%3A1%3C211%3ATEMTRO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I]</ref>

[[A. R. Radcliffe-Brown]] also published a seminal work in 1922. He had carried out his initial fieldwork in the [[Andaman Islands]] in the old style of historical reconstruction.  However, after reading the work of French sociologists [[Émile Durkheim]] and [[Marcel Mauss]], Radcliffe-Brown published an account of his research (entitled simply ''The Andaman Islanders'') that paid close attention to the meaning and purpose of rituals and myths. Over time, he developed an approach known as [[structural functionalism|structural-functionalism]], which focused on how institutions in societies worked to balance out or create an equilibrium in the social system to keep it functioning harmoniously. (This contrasted with Malinowski's functionalism, and was quite different from the later French [[Structuralism#Structuralism in anthropology and sociology|structuralism]], which examined the conceptual structures in language and symbolism.)

Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown's influence stemmed from the fact that they, like Boas, actively trained students and aggressively built up institutions that furthered their programmatic ambitions. This was particularly the case with Radcliffe-Brown, who spread his agenda for "Social Anthropology" by teaching at universities across the [[Commonwealth of Nations|British Commonwealth]]. From the late 1930s until the postwar period appeared a string of monographs and edited volumes that cemented the paradigm of British Social Anthropology (BSA). Famous ethnographies include ''The Nuer,'' by [[Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard]], and ''The Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi,'' by [[Meyer Fortes]]; well-known edited volumes include ''African Systems of Kinship and Marriage'' and ''African Political Systems.''

[[Max Gluckman]], together with many of his colleagues at the [[Rhodes-Livingstone Institute]] and students at [[Manchester University]], collectively known as the [[Manchester School (anthropology)|Manchester School]], took BSA in new directions through their introduction of explicitly Marxist-informed theory, their emphasis on conflicts and conflict resolution, and their attention to the ways in which individuals negotiate and make use of the social structural possibilities.

In Britain, anthropology had a great intellectual impact, it "contributed to the erosion of [[Christianity]], the growth of [[cultural relativism]], an awareness of the survival of the primitive in modern life, and the replacement of [[wikt:diachronic|diachronic]] modes of analysis with [[wikt:synchronic|synchronic]], all of which are central to modern culture."<ref>Thomas William Heyck [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28199712%29102%3A5%3C1486%3AATBSA1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7] The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 5 (Dec., 1997), pp. 1486-1488 doi:10.2307/2171126</ref>

Later in the 1960s and 1970s, [[Edmund Leach]] and his students [[Mary Douglas]] and [[Nur Yalman]], among others, introduced French structuralism in the style of [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]]; while British anthropology has continued to emphasize social organization and economics over purely symbolic or literary topics, differences among British, French, and American sociocultural anthropologies have diminished with increasing dialogue and borrowing of both theory and methods. Today, social anthropology in Britain engages internationally with many other social theories and has branched in many directions.

In countries of the British Commonwealth, social anthropology has often been institutionally separate from [[physical anthropology]] and [[primatology]], which may be connected with departments of biology or zoology; and from archaeology, which may be connected with departments of [[Classics]], [[Egyptology]], and the like. In other countries (and in some, particularly smaller, British and North American universities), anthropologists have also found themselves institutionally linked with scholars of [[folklore]], [[Museology|museum studies]], [[human geography]], [[sociology]], [[social relations]], [[ethnic studies]], [[cultural studies]], and [[social work]].
===Anthropology in Britain===
[[Image:Edward Burnett Tylor.jpg|thumb|right|E. B. Tylor, 19th-century British anthropologist.]]
[[Edward Burnett Tylor|E. B. Tylor]] ( 2 October 1832 – 2 January 1917) and [[James Frazer|James George Frazer]] ( 1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941) are generally considered the antecedents to modern [[social anthropology]] in Britain. Though Tylor undertook a field trip to [[Mexico]], both he and Frazer derived most of the material for their comparative studies through extensive reading not fieldwork: Classics (literature and history of Greece and Rome), the work of the early European folklorists, and reports from missionaries, travelers, and contemporaneous ethnologists. Tylor advocated strongly for unilinealism and a form of "uniformity of mankind".<ref>[http://www.aaanet.org/gad/history/044stocking.pdf Stocking, George Jr. (1963) "Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of Invention," ''American Anthropologist'', 65:783-799, 1963]</ref> Tylor in particular laid the groundwork for theories of [[cultural diffusionism]], stating that there are three ways that different groups can have similar cultural forms or technologies: "independent invention, inheritance from ancestors in a distant region, transmission from one race [sic] to another."<ref>Tylor, E. B. (1865) ''Researches into the early history of mankind the development of civilization.'' London: John Murray.</ref> Tylor formulated one of the early and influential anthropological conceptions of [[culture]] as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."<ref>Tylor, E. B. (1871) ''Primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom''. 2 vols. London, John Murray.</ref> However, as Stocking notes, Tylor mainly concerned himself with describing and mapping the distribution of particular elements of culture, rather than with the larger function, and generally seemed to assume a Victorian idea of progress rather than the idea of non-directional, multilineal cultural development proposed by later anthropologists. Tylor also theorized about the origins of religious feelings in human beings, proposing a theory of [[animism]] as the earliest stage, and noting that "religion" has many components, of which he believed the most important to be belief in supernatural beings (as opposed to moral systems, cosmology, etc.). Frazer, a Scottish scholar with a broad knowledge of Classics, also concerned himself with religion, myth, and magic. His comparative studies, most influentially in the numerous editions of ''[[The Golden Bough]]'', analyzed similarities in religious belief and symbolism worldwide.

Neither Tylor nor Frazer, however, were particularly interested in [[fieldwork]], nor were they interested in examining how the cultural elements and institutions fit together. Toward the turn of the twentieth century, a number of anthropologists became dissatisfied with this categorization of cultural elements; historical reconstructions also came to seem increasingly speculative. Under the influence of several younger scholars, a new approach came to predominate among British anthropologists, concerned with analyzing how societies held together in the present ([[wikt:synchronic|synchronic]] analysis, rather than [[wikt:diachronic|diachronic]] or historical analysis), and emphasizing long-term (one to several years) immersion fieldwork. [[Cambridge University]] financed a multidisciplinary expedition to the [[Torres Strait Islands]] in 1898, organized by Alfred Court Haddon and including a physician-anthropologist, [[W. H. R. Rivers]], as well as a linguist, a botanist, other specialists. The findings of the expedition set new standards for ethnographic description.

A decade and a half later, Polish-born anthropology student [[Bronisław Malinowski]] (1884-1942) was beginning what he expected to be a brief period of [[fieldwork]] in the old model, collecting lists of cultural items, when the outbreak of the First World War stranded him in [[New Guinea]]. As a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resident on a British colonial possession, he was effectively confined to New Guinea for several years.<ref> Malinowski, Bronisław (1967) ''A diary in the strict sense of the term''. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World [1967]</ref> He made use of the time by undertaking far more intensive fieldwork than had been done by ''British'' anthropologists, and his classic ethnography, ''[[Argonauts of the Western Pacific]]'' (1922) advocated an approach to [[fieldwork]] that became standard in the field: getting "the native's point of view" through [[participant observation]]. Theoretically, he advocated a [[Functionalism (sociology)|functionalist]] interpretation, which examined how social institutions functioned to meet individual needs.

British social anthropology had an expansive moment in the [[Interwar period]], with key contributors as [[Bronisław Malinowski]] and [[Meyer Fortes]]<ref>[[Jack Goody]] (1995) ''[http://www3.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521450489 The Expansive Moment: The Rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918-1970]'' review: [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496(199702)24%3A1%3C211%3ATEMTRO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I]</ref>

[[A. R. Radcliffe-Brown]] also published a seminal work in 1922. He had carried out his initial fieldwork in the [[Andaman Islands]] in the old style of historical reconstruction.  However, after reading the work of French sociologists [[Émile Durkheim]] and [[Marcel Mauss]], Radcliffe-Brown published an account of his research (entitled simply ''The Andaman Islanders'') that paid close attention to the meaning and purpose of rituals and myths. Over time, he developed an approach known as [[structural functionalism|structural-functionalism]], which focused on how institutions in societies worked to balance out or create an equilibrium in the social system to keep it functioning harmoniously. (This contrasted with Malinowski's functionalism, and was quite different from the later French [[Structuralism#Structuralism in anthropology and sociology|structuralism]], which examined the conceptual structures in language and symbolism.)

Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown's influence stemmed from the fact that they, like Boas, actively trained students and aggressively built up institutions that furthered their programmatic ambitions. This was particularly the case with Radcliffe-Brown, who spread his agenda for "Social Anthropology" by teaching at universities across the [[Commonwealth of Nations|British Commonwealth]]. From the late 1930s until the postwar period appeared a string of monographs and edited volumes that cemented the paradigm of British Social Anthropology (BSA). Famous ethnographies include ''The Nuer,'' by [[Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard]], and ''The Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi,'' by [[Meyer Fortes]]; well-known edited volumes include ''African Systems of Kinship and Marriage'' and ''African Political Systems.''

[[Max Gluckman]], together with many of his colleagues at the [[Rhodes-Livingstone Institute]] and students at [[Manchester University]], collectively known as the [[Manchester School (anthropology)|Manchester School]], took BSA in new directions through their introduction of explicitly Marxist-informed theory, their emphasis on conflicts and conflict resolution, and their attention to the ways in which individuals negotiate and make use of the social structural possibilities.

In Britain, anthropology had a great intellectual impact, it "contributed to the erosion of [[Christianity]], the growth of [[cultural relativism]], an awareness of the survival of the primitive in modern life, and the replacement of [[wikt:diachronic|diachronic]] modes of analysis with [[wikt:synchronic|synchronic]], all of which are central to modern culture."<ref>Thomas William Heyck [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28199712%29102%3A5%3C1486%3AATBSA1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7] The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 5 (Dec., 1997), pp. 1486-1488 doi:10.2307/2171126</ref>

Later in the 1960s and 1970s, [[Edmund Leach]] and his students [[Mary Douglas]] and [[Nur Yalman]], among others, introduced French structuralism in the style of [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]]; while British anthropology has continued to emphasize social organization and economics over purely symbolic or literary topics, differences among British, French, and American sociocultural anthropologies have diminished with increasing dialogue and borrowing of both theory and methods. Today, social anthropology in Britain engages internationally with many other social theories and has branched in many directions.

In countries of the British Commonwealth, social anthropology has often been institutionally separate from [[physical anthropology]] and [[primatology]], which may be connected with departments of biology or zoology; and from archaeology, which may be connected with departments of [[Classics]], [[Egyptology]], and the like. In other countries (and in some, particularly smaller, British and North American universities), anthropologists have also found themselves institutionally linked with scholars of [[folklore]], [[Museology|museum studies]], [[human geography]], [[sociology]], [[social relations]], [[ethnic studies]], [[cultural studies]], and [[social work]].