anthropology
cultural anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...cultural anthropology The subfield of four-field anthropology that studies culture and social relations. It is historically grounded in the way the discipline of anthropology took shape in the United States, where cultural anthropology has coexisted with archaeology , linguistic anthropology , and biological anthropology ( see sacred bundle ). During the middle of the twentieth century, anglophone anthropology was divided between the American disciplinary formation and British social anthropology ; the former was considered to be more...
advocacy anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...advocacy anthropology The practice of providing direct vocal or political support for subjects in an anthropological research project. It is one of several overlapping terms relevant to the application of anthropological knowledge, including activist anthropology , engaged anthropology, and applied anthropology . While it shares common features with the others, it is not necessarily (like applied anthropology) formally contracted work; is often short-term in duration; and is rooted in a sense of moral responsibility, commitment, and solidarity on the...
practising anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...practising anthropology Putting anthropology to practical use in its broadest sense, ranging from research and design to the implementation and management of an organization, process, or product. It is aligned closely with applied anthropology , and sometimes used interchangeably with that term, but it can connote a greater level of autonomy on the part of the anthropologist to define and shape both the research and action, which can be more limited in situations of applied anthropology. The practice of anthropology occurs in an enormous range of...
public anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...public anthropology An approach to anthropological research and communication that addresses social concerns relevant to a broadly defined public interest. Although the lines between it and applied and practising anthropology are blurry, proponents have asserted that public anthropology aims to transform the discipline by making the creation of anthropological knowledge more transparent and accountable beyond both academia and the typical sites of institutional practice of applied anthropology. They also embrace an ethical position that anthropologists...
applied anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...anthropology ) is more focused on implementation, action, or advocacy. While most anthropologists reject an opposition between academic and applied work, the labour conditions and ethical dimensions of full-time applied work can differ markedly from conditions of full-time academic or university-based anthropology. The goal of practitioner organizations such as the Society for Applied Anthropology or National Association for the Practice of Anthropology is to support applied professionals. Compare practising anthropology , advocacy anthropology ,...
business anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...anthropology The concentration within applied anthropology that focuses on the application of anthropological research and findings in commercial or industrial settings. It is sometimes referred to as ‘corporate anthropology’. Business anthropologists working within institutions or as external consultants study themes like marketing and consumer behaviour; organizational culture and structure; management theory and practice; work and labour conditions; international business; and/or product design and development. See applied anthropology...
medical anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...medical anthropology The branch concerned with matters of human health and well-being. Drawing on cultural, biocultural , linguistic, sociological, and ecological perspectives, it studies the social distribution of sickness, experiential meanings of illness, cross-cultural patterns and institutions of treatment and healing, the phenomenon of medical pluralism , and themes related to global health. Although interest in healing rites and practices is an old concern in anthropology, medical anthropology began to take shape during the 1970s with elements...
social anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...social anthropology The anthropological tradition that developed in Britain during the twentieth century. Although British anthropologists have long considered culture a central disciplinary concept ( see sir e. b. tylor ), social anthropology has been typically contrasted with the North American tradition of cultural anthropology . Both traditions share a commitment to fieldwork , but differ in emphasis: the dominance of structural-functionalism in British anthropology led to a general emphasis on social structure and associated subjects (...
activist anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...activist anthropology The practice of collaborative research and action with (typically, but not always, socially marginalized) people involved in a political struggle. Rooted in the ‘action anthropology’ of Sol Tax , it gained wider relevance beginning in the 1990s. It is more closely aligned with advocacy anthropology than traditional applied anthropology . It rejects a stance of objective detachment and accepts that political conviction driving research generates scholarly understanding. As an ethnographic method, it is characterized by dialogue...
interpretive anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...interpretive anthropology An approach developed by Clifford Geertz in the 1970s and 1980s that views anthropology as a hermeneutic practice whose method involves writing detailed (‘thick’) descriptions of how people interpret their experience of the world. Loosely associated with structuralism and symbolic anthropology , it asserts primarily that culture is a web of symbolic meanings that can be interpreted as a text. It embraced the superiority of interpretive analysis over positivism for gaining access to experience and meaning ( see max weber ),...
nutritional anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...nutritional anthropology The study of food and diet that brings together socio-cultural, biological, and political-economic perspectives into an integrative framework. Although nineteenth-century anthropologists documented eating patterns, they were mostly focused on economic systems, and it was not until the 1930s that a more integrative approach emerged in British anthropology ( see audrey richards ). As governments expanded social policy related to nutrition, nutritional anthropology also expanded, positioning itself as an applied science...
feminist anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...feminist anthropology An influential approach that simultaneously critiques androcentric anthropology and asserts that knowledge of human experience is deficient if it does not systematically examine women. Feminist anthropologists have made major contributions to anthropological knowledge and practice, as well as feminist social movements. Its origins are intertwined with ‘first wave’ feminism ( 1850–1920 ), a period when women anthropologists challenged the lack of women in ethnographic data. During the ‘second wave’ of feminism ( 1920–1980 ), feminist...
museum anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...museum anthropology A specialized focus in anthropology that studies the creation, use, and meaning of material culture for curation in a museum; studies of existing museum collections; and the study of museums as social institutions. Depending on the orientation, it may be a form of applied anthropology . The discipline’s beginnings are associated with the study and collection of objects for museums. In the nineteenth century, museums organized objects in terms of evolutionary concepts, influenced by prevailing anthropological theories at the time....
psychological anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...psychological anthropology The branch concerned with the human mind , cognition , emotional experience, ethnopsychology , ethnopsychiatry , and enculturation . Its roots are in the American culture and personality school. A central objective has been to balance psychology’s interest in the individual with (American) anthropology’s interest in culture. The field has differentiated itself from psychology through the use of ethnographic methods, as well as a cross-cultural perspective that questions the self-evidence and universality of Western...
development anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...development anthropology The concentration within applied anthropology that focuses on the application of anthropological research and findings to projects in community and international development. Anthropologists working in development agencies or as external consultants emphasize that development projects are more successful when they are fine-tuned to local cultures and social dynamics. They have often viewed themselves as advocates for people living at the grassroots—the poor, women, farmers, etc.—whose lives would be most disrupted (or benefited)...
Boasian anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...Boasian anthropology The influential American orientation in cultural anthropology that took shape around Franz Boas , often by his students, during the first half of the twentieth century. Boasian anthropology heavily emphasized culture as a core concept and fieldwork as a central anthropological activity. Dominant themes and approaches include: a commitment to cultural relativism and linguistic relativity ; historical particularism and diffusionism ; enculturation ; the salvage paradigm; and the cultural, rather than biological, basis of...
political anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...political anthropology The branch that studies power , political action and institutions, legal processes and systems, violence , and dynamics of social control. During the middle part of the twentieth century, political anthropology was divided between British structural-functionalist accounts of politico-legal structures and order in non-Western societies, and American neo-evolutionary perspectives delineating types of political systems. By the 1960s and 1970s, these approaches gave way to a more dynamic and contested view of politics and legal...
cognitive anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...cognitive anthropology The branch that studies the relationship between culture, thought, and perception. Although it is grounded in long-standing anthropological interest in the mind , its immediate origins lie in 1950s ethnoscience ’s focus on non-Western classification systems. By the 1970s interest shifted away from indigenous categories to mental models and cognition considered common to all humans, and the field took shape in dialogue with formal linguistics and psychological science. Cognitive anthropologists focus on culture as the product...
legal anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...legal anthropology The field of anthropology that studies jurisprudence , legal codes, disputing processes, and the relationship of these things with institutions and processes of social control. Sir Henry Maine’s 1861 study Ancient Law marks the origins of the field, documenting differences between Western and non-Western legal concepts and processes. Arguing against evolutionary notions that only Western cultures have ‘law’, ethnographic studies starting with Bronisław Malinowski asserted the ‘law-like’ character of many indigenous social...
media anthropology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology
...media anthropology The branch concerned with the socio-cultural dimensions, interpretations, and impacts of mass communication technologies, media institutions, and expressive cultures. It encompasses research on a wide range of media forms, including radio, cinema, television, photography, and online communities. Although anthropology’s historical bias towards non-Western and small-scale societies inhibited significant attention to modern media, notables such as Margaret Mead , Gregory Bateson , and Hortense Powdermaker studied mass media in the 1940s...
