According to Allen Repko’s Interdisciplinary Research, Anthropology studies “the origins of humanity” and “the dynamics of cultures worldwide” (Repko 85), through cultural phenomena and social structure. Anthropologists use scientific and interpretive methods to collect data including experiments, cultural immersion, field work, interviewing, language, archaeology, biology, and many others. The fundamental assumption that one must be familiar with to contemplate anthropologically is that of cultural relativism, which “assumes that systems of knowledge possessed by different cultures are ‘incommensurable’” (Repko 91). Put simply, the idea behind cultural relativism is that people’s notions about what is good and beautiful are shaped by their surrounding culture and are therefore not comparable to the systems of knowledge of other cultures. Keeping in mind cultural relativism as a tenant of anthropological theory, it follows that both cultural and physical anthropologists would embrace the epistemology of constructivism, “which holds that human knowledge is shaped by the social and cultural context in which it is formed and is not merely a reflection of reality” ( Repko 96).
It has been suggested that anthropology originated as a discipline from the traveler Herodotus, who journeyed from Greece to Egypt in 500BC and returned with a travel log detailing his experiences with the people and the artifacts he came into contact with. It didn’t take long for these travel logs and their exotic subject matter to gain popularity, and in 1922 they became known as ethnographies, after anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowsi published his work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Since then, anthropologists such as Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay, Margaret Meade and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, have clarified the task of the cultural anthropologist with their ethnographic research. In the 20th century, anthropology was defined as a discipline within the intellectual realm of the humanities; however, the discipline also borrows from the tenants of natural science and of sociology. In this way, anthropology, with its four sub-fields, including cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, physical anthropology and archaeology, is innately an interdisciplinary subject.
If I could choose one object that, in my opinion, exemplifies anthropology, it would be a world map created before the 15th century. Between the 15th and 16th centuries, leaders were beginning to take a greater interest in geography and as a result, many world maps were created. What is perhaps most interesting about these atlases is that they are vastly subjective and their orientations depended largely upon the perspective of the cartographer. The surviving images of these maps give anthropological insights into the state of mind of societies all over the world; for instance, where they place themselves (i.e. are they placed in the center, while the world revolves around them). These maps would be excellent tangible examples of cultural relativism and evidence of it in differing cultures and societies.
Bibliography
Repko, Allen F. Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory. Los Angeles, Calif: Sage, 2008. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment