Anthropology (from the Greek word άνθρωπος, "human" or "person") consists of the study of humanity (see genus Homo). It is holistic in two senses: it is concerned with all humans at all times and with all dimensions of humanity. Anthropology is traditionally distinguished from other disciplines by its emphasis on cultural relativity, in-depth examination of context, and cross-cultural comparisons.

Historical and institutional context

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Main Article: History of anthropology

Anthropology has been characterized as "the most scientific of the humanities, and the most humanistic of the sciences." Contemporary anthropologists claim a number of earlier thinkers as their forebears, and the discipline has several sources; Claude Lévi-Strauss, for example, claimed Montaigne and Rousseau as important influences. Anthropology can best be understood as an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment, a period when Europeans attempted systematically to study human behavior. The traditions of jurisprudence, history, philology, and sociology then evolved into something more closely resembling the modern views of these disciplines and informed the development of the social sciences, of which anthropology was a part. At the same time, the romantic reaction to the Enlightenment produced thinkers, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and later Wilhelm Dilthey, whose work formed the basis for the "culture concept," which is central to the discipline.

Institutionally, anthropology emerged from the development of natural history (expounded by authors such as Buffon) that occurred during the European colonization of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Programs of ethnographic study have their origins in this era as the study of the "human primitives" overseen by colonial administrations. There was a tendency in late 18th century Enlightenment thought to understand human society as natural phenomena that behaved in accordance with certain principles and that could be observed empirically.see, for instance, the writing of Auguste Comte In some ways, studying the language, culture, physiology, and artifacts of European colonies was not unlike studying the flora and fauna of those places. Some critics point to the fact that the material culture of "civilized" nations such as China have historically been displayed in fine-art museums alongside European art, while artifacts from African and Native North American cultures were displayed in Natural History Museums, alongside dinosaur bones and nature dioramas. The British Museum or the Parisian Musée de l'Homme are examples of such museums—the Musée de l'Homme held the "Hottentot Venus" remains until the 1970s. Saartje Baartman, a Namaqua woman, was examined by anatomist Georges Cuvier. This being said, curatorial practice has changed dramatically in recent years, and it would be inaccurate to see anthropology as merely an extension of colonial rule and European chauvinism, since its relationship to imperialism was and is complex. Museums weren't the only site of anthropological studies: with the New Imperialism period, starting in the 1870s, zoos became unattended "laboratories," especially the so-called "ethnological exhibitions" or "Negro villages." Thus, "savages" from the colonies were displayed, often nudes, in cages, in what has been called "human zoos." For example, in 1906, anthropologist Madison Grant put a Congolese pygmy named Ota Benga in a cage in the Bronx Zoo, and labelled him "the missing link" between an orangutan and the "white race" (Grant, a renowned eugenicist, was the author of The Passing of the Great Race (1916). Such exhibitions were attempts to illustrate and prove in the same movement the validity of scientific racism, the first formulation of which may be found in Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853-55). In 1931, the Colonial Exhibition in Paris still displayed Kanaks from New Caledonia in the "indigenous village"; it received 24 million visitors in six months, thus demonstrating the popularity of such "human zoos."

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@Raia urban outfitters? Anthropology?
ClementineNYC (Clementine Gallot) Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:16:20 -0000
@Raia urban outfitters? Anthropology?
Visiting Assistant Professor, Sociology a... - Rochester, NY (http://tinyurl.com/ycct794) Get Anthropology Jobs #Anthropology #14623 #jobs
GetAnthropoJobs (Anthropology Jobs) Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:05:23 -0000
Visiting Assistant Professor, Sociology a... - Rochester, NY (http://tinyurl.com/ycct794) Get Anthropology Jobs #Anthropology #14623 #jobs
I really can't understand why journalists should learn anthropology!..
k8numznumz (Kate) Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:48:02 -0000
I really can't understand why journalists should learn anthropology!..
gonna work on my anthropology paper
tessa_t5xk3f (Tamika Gonzalez) Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:28:28 -0000
gonna work on my anthropology paper
Commentary: Here and There... of Anthropology at Home and Abroad, by Michael MIller http://berkshirereview.net/5122
berkshirereview (Michael Miller) Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:05:58 -0000
Commentary: Here and There... of Anthropology at Home and Abroad, by Michael MIller http://berkshirereview.net/5122
So I switched from environmental biology to cultural anthropology. Yes no science!
heytiko (Tiko Tjiptarto) Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:50:12 -0000
So I switched from environmental biology to cultural anthropology. Yes no science!

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