Social anthropology

history

Social anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies (including participant observation methods), the social organization of a particular person: customs, economic and political organization, law and conflict resolution, patterns of consumption and exchange, kinship and family structure, gender relations, childrearing and socialization, religion, and so on.

Social anthropology also explores the role of meanings, ambiguities and contradictions of social life, patterns of sociality, violence and conflict; and the underlying logics of social behaviour. Social anthropologists are trained in the interpretation of narrative, ritual and symbolic behaviour, not merely as text, but with communication examined in relation to action, practice, and the historical context in which it is embedded. Social anthropologists address the diversity of positions and perspectives to be found within any social group.

The name social anthropology is used in the United Kingdom but it is a subject closely related to, or even the equivalent of, cultural anthropology, the latter term being more commonly used in other English speaking countries.

Substantive focus and practice

Social anthropology is distinguished from subjects such as economics or political science by its holistic range and the attention it gives to the diversity of culture and society across the world, and the capacity this gives the discipline to re-examine Euro-American assumptions. It is differentiated from sociology, both in its main methods (based on long-term participant observation and linguistic competence), and in its commitment to the relevance and illumination provided by micro studies. It extends beyond strictly social phenomena to culture, art, individuality, and cognition. While some social anthropologists use quantitative methods (particularly those whose research touches on topics such as local economies, demography, or health and illness), social anthropologists generally emphasize qualitative analysis of long-term fieldwork, rather than the more quantitative methods used by most economists or sociologists.

Specialisations

Specialisations within social anthropology shift as its objects of study are transformed and as new intellectual paradigms appear; ethnomusicology and medical anthropology afford examples of current, well-defined specialties.

More recent and currently emergent areas within social anthropology include the relation between cultural diversity and new findings in cognitive development; social and ethical understandings of novel technologies; emergent forms of 'the family' and other new socialities modeled on kinship; the ongoing social fall-out of the demise of state socialism; the politics of resurgent religiosity; and analysis of audit cultures and accountability.

The subject has been enlivened by, and has contributed to, approaches from other disciplines, such as philosophy (ethics, phenomenology, logic), the history of science, psychoanalysis, and linguistics.

Ethical considerations

The subject has both ethical and reflexive dimensions. Practitioners have developed an awareness of the sense in which scholars create their objects of study and the ways in which anthropologists themselves may contribute to processes of change in the societies they study.

History

Social anthropology has historical roots in a number of 19th-century disciplines, including ethnology, folklore studies, and Classics, among others. (See History of anthropology.) Its immediate precursor took shape in the work of Edward Burnett Tylor and James George Frazer in the late 19th century and underwent major changes in both method and theory during the period 1890-1920 with a new emphasis on original fieldwork, long-term holistic study of social behavior in natural settings, and the introduction of French and German social theory.

Departments of Social Anthropology exist in universities around the world. The field of social anthropology has expanded in ways not anticipated by the founders of the field, as for example in the subfield of structure and dynamics.

1920s-1940

Modern social anthropology was founded in Britain at the London School of Economics and Political Science following World War I. Influences include both the methodological revolution pioneered by BronisĹ‚aw Malinowski's process-oriented fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands of Melanesia between 1915 and 1918 and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown's theoretical program for systematic comparison that was based on a conception of rigorous fieldwork and the structure-functionalist conception of Durkheim’s sociology.Barth, Fredrik, et al. (2005) »One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Other intellectual founders include W. H. R. Rivers and A. C. Haddon, whose orientation reflected the contemporary Volkerpsychologie of Wilhelm Wundt and Adolf Bastian, and Sir E. B. Tylor, who defined anthropology as a positivistic science following Auguste Comte. Edmund Leach (1962) defined social anthropology as a kind of comparative micro-sociology based on intensive fieldwork studies. Scholars have not settled a theoretical orthodoxy on the nature of science and society, and their tensions reflect views which are seriously opposed.

1940s-1980s

Following World War II, sociocultural anthropology as comprised by the fields of ethnography and ethnology diverged into an American school of cultural anthropology while social anthropology diversified in Europe by challenging the principles of structure-functionalism, absorbing ideas from Claude LĂ©vi-Strauss's structuralism and from Max Gluckman’s Manchester school, and embracing the study of conflict, change, urban anthropology, and networks. The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth was founded in 1946.»http://www.theasa.org/

1980s to present

A European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) was founded in 1989 as a society of scholarship at a meeting of founder members from fourteen European countries, supported by the »Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. The Association seeks to advance anthropology in Europe by organizing biennial conferences and by editing its academic journal, Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale. Departments of Social Anthroplogy at different Universities have tended to focus on disparate aspects of the field. Harvard's Social Anthropology Program, for example, is now particularly concerned with issues of globalism, ethnic violence, gender studies, transnationalism and local experience, and the emerging cultures of cyberspace.»http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~anthro/grad_social.htm

Similarities to Sociology

Sociology

Sociologists' work has a greater focus on the behavior of the group, and thus examines such phenomena as interactions and exchanges at the micro-level, group dynamics and group development, and crowds at the macro-level. Sociologists are interested in the individual and group, but generally within the context of larger social structures and processes, such as social roles, race, class, gender, ethnicity, and socialization. They use a combination of qualitative research designs and quantitative methods (less used in Social Anthropology), such as procedures for sampling and surveys. Sociologists in this area are interested in a variety of demographic, social, and cultural phenomena. Some of their major research areas are social inequality, group dynamics, social change, socialization, social identity, and symbolic interactionism. Traditionally, Social/Cultural Anthropology studied human societies in non-industrial settings in other countries and Sociology studied the industrialized societies in the western countries. Now Social/Cultural Anthropology and Sociology have expanded into studying more variety of societies in other countries and in the western countries that they both have had a major convergence with each other. Although Sociology is not part of the field in Anthropology and they tend to differ in the theories they use, the overlaps with Social/Cultural Anthropology are more significant than most of the other Social Sciences. Some experts say that Social Anthropology is a branch of Sociology. When Social Anthropology would traditionally study primitive societies, it could be categorized as a subfield of Sociology, which is sometimes called Sociology of Primitive Societies.»http://books.google.com/books?id=ggn-VgZceYAC&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=Will+Anthropology+be+absorbed+by+Sociology%3F&source=bl&ots=BKp9150eWu&sig=WUiMgK1POsxgFpcCXIVl6D0rj2c&hl=en&ei=h0EQS62IEMaglAf96f2MBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCUQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Will%20Anthropology%20be%20absorbed%20by%20Sociology%3F&f=false»http://nos.org/331courseE/L-3%20SOCIOLOGY%20ITS%20RELATIONSHIP%20WITH%20OTHER%20SOCIAL%20SCIEN.pdf»http://www.jstor.org/stable/68477

Anthropologists associated with social anthropology

Famous students of social anthropology

  • Nick Clegg - Leader of the UK Liberal Democratic Party and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
  • Hugh Laurie - Actor - Best known for role of doctor in House
  • Thandie Newton - Actress
  • Alexandra Shulman - Editor of British edition of Vogue

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Bronislaw Malinowski (1915) The Trobriand Islands
  • (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific
  • (1929) The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia
  • (1935) Coral Gardens and Their Magic: A Study of the Methods of Tilling the Soil and of Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands
  • Edmund Leach (1954) Political systems of Highland Burma. London: G. Bell.
  • (1982) Social Anthropology
  • Thomas H. Eriksen (1985) Social Anthropology, pp. 926–929 in The Social Science Encyclopedia
  • Adam Kuper (1996) Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School

External links

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