Anthropology is a group of disciplines that comprehensively study human beings from the biological and cultural perspectives. This word is composed of human and logos, which is understood from the perspective of human knowledge. It was first seen in the description of people with noble moral quality and behavior by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. 150 1 year, German scholar Handel used this word as the title of his works on human anatomy and physiology. Therefore, before19th century, the usage of the word anthropology was equivalent to what we call physical anthropology today, especially the study of human anatomy and physiology. After entering the19th century, many European scholars began to be interested in the discovery of archaeological remains, which are often accompanied by artifacts. These products are still used by primitive people, so scholars began to pay attention to the physical types of primitive people and the reports of primitive society and culture. These situations were first brought to Europe by explorers, missionaries and sailors. Then anthropologists go to different cultures to collect this information in person. Therefore, anthropology stopped the tradition of focusing only on human anatomy and physiology, and further conducted a comprehensive study of human beings from the aspects of physique, culture, archaeology and language. Of course, due to the different academic traditions of different countries, there are different understandings of the names and branches of anthropology. In continental Europe, anthropology is only a narrow interpretation, which refers to the study of human physique, while the study of human culture is called ethnology.

Introduction to anthropology

Anthropology is a subject with people as the direct research object, people-oriented and comprehensive understanding as the purpose. If people are divided into animals and intellectuals, it is impossible to fully understand people. Anthropology aims to comprehensively study human body and culture (living conditions) and clarify the relationship between human body and culture. To sum up, anthropology can be roughly divided into: anthropology, also known as natural anthropology, mainly studies human bodies such as morphology, heredity and physiology; Cultural anthropology focuses on customs, cultural history, language and other cultures, and prehistoric anthropology specializes in the study of human bodies and cultures in prehistoric times.

In the branch of anthropology, physical anthropology is a subject that studies human beings from the perspective of biology, including origin, development, ethnic differences, the relationship between human body and ecology, and the body and behavior of existing primates. Among them, moustache has developed into a more specialized field, such as the study of human evolution, ethnology, primates and so on. At the same time, some technical means have been formed, such as anthropometry and observation technology of wild primates. With the development of genetics, physical anthropology has also drawn many theories and analytical methods from it.

Cultural anthropology is a discipline that studies various human behaviors from a cultural perspective. It studies the origin, development and change of human culture, studies the cultural differences of various nationalities and regions in the world, and tries to explore the essence and evolution law of human culture. Cultural anthropology in a broad sense includes archaeology, linguistics and ethnology, while cultural anthropology in a narrow sense refers to ethnology. Ethnology is a comparative study of culture based on ethnography. The most successful work done by cultural anthropologists is the study of human marriage and family, kinship, religious witchcraft, primitive art and so on. In British academic circles, this part is often called social anthropology, sometimes collectively referred to as social cultural anthropology.

Etymologically speaking, anthropology is a science that studies people. This subject attempts to study human beings comprehensively according to their biological and cultural characteristics, with special emphasis on human differences and the concepts of race and culture.

Anthropology originated from European and American scholars' study of the society outside the modern western scientific and technological civilization in the era of geographical discovery, which is called "barbaric", "primitive", "tribal", "legendary" and "pre-literal" society. But at present, the research field of anthropology has expanded to modern society, trying to summarize the universality of human behavior as a whole and describe social and cultural phenomena.

The two main fields of anthropology are physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. They are closely related to other disciplines, such as archaeology, linguistics, sociology, politics, economics, psychology and history. Interdisciplinary communication has produced many valuable results. For example, economists put forward the concept of "economic man" according to the comparative schema of anthropology, forming economic anthropology.

In fact, in the early society, human beings began to think about how their own culture and habits happened, and the seeds of scientific thought came into being. Many philosophers and historians in ancient Greece, China and Arabia, as well as many philosophers in Europe since16th century, are pioneers of modern anthropology. However, scientific anthropology began to take shape only after the emergence of the theory of evolution in the19th century. Cultural anthropology focuses on the classification of different societies and cultures, thus establishing the stages and processes of human evolution, in short, it is a linear interpretation of history. Marxism points out that social form is determined by the mode of production, and all political, legal and ideological superstructures are based on the mode of production. At the same time, western missionaries, businessmen and explorers collected a large number of information about customs, religions and witchcraft of different nationalities, which provided rich information for the development of anthropology.

Anthropological theory school

Since the 20th century, cultural anthropology and physical anthropology began to separate, at the same time, many anthropologists began to turn to the so-called "cultural pluralism" view, and many schools appeared.

Evolution school and anthropology were born at the same time. Morgan, Taylor, Bastian and others put forward the time series of cultural and social evolution, focusing on the vertical development of culture, and also became the founders of the evolutionary school. The enlightenment thought of Montesquieu in18th century was compared with the progress of natural science in19th century. & gt biological evolution theory, 18 and 19 century social evolution theory, etc. , which is the basis of cultural and social evolution thought of anthropology evolution school in19th century.

The school of theoretical evolutionism studies human society and its culture with the idea of evolution, and thinks that human beings are of the same origin, the same essence and the same psychology, so the same culture is produced and the social development has the same way, from low to high.

Taylor is called the father of anthropology. He is in> Some people think that culture is evolutionary. On the basis of studying the evolution of marriage and family, Morgan constructs the history of family development and puts forward the problem of social evolution. In < < ancient society > > it further developed the thought of social evolution in an all-round way and showed the development process of human beings from barbarism to civilization.

Franz Boas and the school of cultural history first abandoned the choice of facts, attached to the research method of abstract evolution, paid attention to field work and tended to the so-called functional view, insisting on the overall investigation of any culture. He is the main figure of the school of cultural history which occupies a dominant position in the field of American cultural anthropology.

French social school marcel mauss and "Sociology" school. Generally speaking, Moss, like Baudrillard, advocates a systematic study of social phenomena, but in a slightly different way. He pointed out that society is a "self-regulating" and balanced system, and the role of each element of the system is to maintain the integration and adaptation of the system. He inspired later functionalism and influenced a whole generation of European sociologists and anthropologists.

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This school of theory also opposes the classical evolutionism, arguing that the center of minority civilization has created all the existing cultures, and the spread of cultural characteristics is the basic driving force for human development. They call the center of civilization "cultural circle", so it is also called cultural circle school.

Functionalism and structuralism

Malinowski is the representative of functional school. This school believes that the only way to explain anthropological facts is to explain its role in a certain culture, so the goal of anthropological research is to grasp the organic connection between the whole culture and its parts, and the historical comparison method is of little significance. On the contrary, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown is an advocate of structuralism. This school believes that the purpose of anthropological research is to reveal the systematic essence beyond empirical facts.

Cultural psychology

The basic idea of this school is that culture determines the psychological composition of each individual and opposes the concept of universal spirit or human nature. For example, in his study of the southwestern United States, ruth benedict found that the way of thinking or reasoning of Indians is completely different from that of their neighbors, so culture determines their psychological tendency. Nowadays, the study of culture and personality is more extensive, such as the study of value system and national character.

Cultural materialism

Cultural Materialism American anthropologist Marvin Harris (1927,) published "Cultural Materialism" in 1979, and put forward the idea of cultural materialism. Its theory emphasizes the decisive role of reproductive or population pressure and ecological pressure on social and cultural systems. Harris believes that the basic biological psychological needs of human nature (such as food, sex, emotion, etc. ) has led to four universal levels of human organization. Cultural materialism is also called "the most important work written by Harris".

Cultural anthropology is still a young science and has not yet formed a completely consistent theoretical system. But if anthropologists can avoid ethnocentrism and create the concept of universal objectification, the "science" about culture can be established.

The applied research of anthropology, that is, the research aimed at providing guidance for the government and other organizations, has made many achievements. For example, about the consequences of social changes, about traditional social and cultural knowledge and so on. The main problem of applied research is value judgment, that is, absolutely objective research and acceptance of established policies.

The purpose of physical anthropology is to determine the status of human beings in nature and explain the natural differences between races. Darwin's theory of evolution and gregor Mendel's genetics have deepened and changed people's understanding. The main content of research now is the relationship between human beings and other primates and the essence of human skeleton evolution since at least 500 thousand years. 1924 and 1959, the ape-man fossils found in South Africa and East Africa provide a lot of information for research. Moreover, we already know that the processes that lead to racial differences from individual differences are: selection, genetic migration, migration and mutation. By using objective methods, various features are separated, and then their frequency of occurrence is calculated by mathematical methods to find out their functions and evolutionary significance. This kind of research enables us to understand the structure of human beings and predict the future. At present, the main research fields of physical anthropology are human ecology, human evolution, primates and genetics. In addition, there are applied research such as anthropometry.

The purpose of anthropology

In short, the purpose of anthropological research is to fully understand individuals. But at a deeper level, this kind of research is not only about the understanding of human body structure, but also about the possibility of all human thoughts and concepts. In other words, how humans act, how to recognize their own actions, how the results of actions affect people's thinking, and the interaction between people and other groups and symbols are the most fundamental questions that anthropology wants to answer.

Anthropological research is not about finding an answer or trying to give a standard answer. On the contrary, anthropological research tries to find all possible answers, and then tries to answer a certain part of the question with various answers. Under such an answer, anthropology emphasizes respecting the answers of each group and interpreting the true identity of each answer with empathy. Perhaps in other disciplines, anthropologists are just playing the game of "in other words", just some kind of unscientific social science. But on another level, the research purpose of anthropology is not to pursue one truth, but to pursue all-round truth-even if there is only one truth, it is often difficult for everyone to see the "that" truth.

The employment rate of anthropology in colleges and universities is mostly above 90%, but the employment rate of anthropology in Qingdao University is 7 1%, so choose carefully.