Anthropology and its Subfields: Working Definitions
Anthropologyis the comparative study of humankind in all times and places. Although anthropologists normally specialize in some aspect of the four subfields below, they traditionally have been expected to have some training in all four.
Archeologyis the branch of anthropology that studies that past through its physical remains.
Physical anthropologyis the branch of anthropology that studies human physical variation across time (human evolution) and across geographical space (human races).
Linguistic Anthropologyis the branch of anthropology that studies and compares human languages (especially the nonwritten languages that are not formally studied by other disciplines), including the evolution of language, and the relation of language to universal or local patterns of thought and behavior.
Cultural Anthropology(sometimes called “Social Anthropology”) includes two closely related facets:
Ethnographyis the study of living cultures, usually through extended fieldwork and “participant observation.”
Ethnologyis the comparative analysis of ethnographic data (in practice, ethnography and ethnology are often so closely related as to be almost indistinguishable)
Anthropology and related disciplines. Traditionally, anthropologists were distinguished by the special attention they gave to ancient, nonliterate, and geographically remote peoples who received little attention from historians, sociologists, psychologists, and other social scientists and humanists. The closely related discipline of sociology, by contrast, has traditionally focused on the complex industrial societies of the West. While these distinctions are rapidly breaking down in a changing world, anthropologists still tend to be characterized by a special interest in peoples who are different from those of Western industrialized nations. They tend to take a more broadly comparative perspective, and to favor a “holistic” approach that takes into account the interrelationship of all aspects of a people’s existence, rather than focusing exclusively on economics, or art, or religion, etc. Today historians, sociologists, anthropologists, art historians, literary critics and others are increasingly aware of one another’s work, and are becoming increasingly similar and holistic in their approaches.