Anthropology may be dissected into four main perspectives, firstly physical
or biological anthropology, which is an area of study concerned with human
evolution and human adaptation. Its main components are human paleontology, the
study of our fossil records, and human genetics, which examines the ways in
which human beings differ from each other. Also adopted are aspects of human
ecology, ethnology, demography, nutrition, and environmental physiology. From
the physical anthropologist we learn the capabilities for bearing culture that
distinguish us from other species. Secondly archaeology, which follows from
physical anthropology, reassembles the evolution of culture by examining the
physical remains of past societies.
Its difference from physical anthropology being its concern with
culture rather than the biological aspects off the human species. Archaeologists
must assess and analyse their subject culture from accidental remains, which can
only provide an incomplete picture. Thirdly, Anthropological linguistics is a
field within anthropology which focuses upon the relationship between language
and cultural behaviour.
Anthropological linguists ask questions about language and communication to
aid the appraisement of society rather than a descriptive or linguistic
assessment. For example Freil and Pfeiffer (1977) cite an assessment of the
Inuit language where there are twelve unrelated words for wind and twenty-two
for snow, showing the difference in significance by comparison with our own
society. The deduction being that wind and snow are more significant to the
Inuit so they scrutinise them more rigorously and can clearly define them
accordingly. This kind of linguistic analysis facilitates a better understanding
of a foreign culture to help place it into context to allow contrast.
Fourthly, social anthropology is the study of human social life or society,
concerned with examining social behavior and social relationships. As the focus
of social anthropology is on patterns of social connection, it is commonly
contrasted with the branch of anthropology that examines culture, that is,
learnt and inherited beliefs and standards of behavior and in particular the
meanings, values and codes of conduct. Cultural anthropology (the study of
culture in its social context) is associated particularly with American
anthropology (specifically, in the United States), and social anthropology with
European, especially British studies, which have tended to be more sociological,
that is, they are more concerned with understanding society.
However, culture and society are interdependent, and today the single term
sociocultural anthropology is sometimes used. The social anthropologist uses a
number of cultural ethnographic studies to construct an ethnological study. A
social anthropological definition of culture is given by J.P.Spenley in 'The
Ethnographic Interview' (1979), culture is the acquired knowledge that people
use to interpret, experience and generate social behaviour.
By this interpretation culture is not the physical characteristics of any
society but the reasoning behind those characteristics, it is a body of implicit
and explicit knowledge shared by a group of people. It is used by people
individually as a map to determine their behaviour in any given situation.
Spendley's definition does not divert from the significance of behaviour,
customs, objects or emotions, these are essential tools for the anthropologist
which allow the interpretation of culture to facilitate the tracking down of
cultural meaning.
Ethnographic study is a search to uncover this meaning which is the root
cause of cultural differences and can therefore be seen as the definition of any
culture. There has been considerable theoretical debate by anthropologists over
the most useful attributes that a technical concept of culture should stress.
For example, in 1952 Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, American
anthropologists, published a list of 160 different definitions of culture. A
brief table of this list next page, shows the diversity of the anthropological
concept of culture.
