Montserrat Virgilio Bernal

Evidence 1
Anthropology, culture and social conscience
Group 405
Anthropology can be defined as the science devoted to the study of the (ancient and
modern) human beings, their lifestyles, and their ways of life, since ancient times,
different groups of people have been questioning themselves about the different
traditions of other cultures, there are several tales where travelers described customs,
garments, religions and the structure of different social groups, even when the
anthropology didn’t exist as a science. Due to this, we can understand that it has been
an important characteristic of human beings the capacity to question and highlight the
cultural, social, biological and physical differences. Other sciences that study particular
aspects (the human mind and psychology, the various languages spoken, and
linguistics) is enriched by contributions from various disciplines and goes beyond them.
This is where you can recognize the characteristics of anthropology: by gathering all
aspects of a human group (holistic perspective) and comparing them with those of other
groups (comparative perspective), it seeks an explanation by contrasting both the
characteristics they have in common and those that make them different from each
other.
We can recognize four main areas
 Physical anthropology: It studies the physical characteristics of humans through
the fossils found and the distinctive features of contemporary groups.
 Anthropological linguistics: It studies the diversity of languages spoken by the
existing human groups, attempts to reconstruct the history of their origin, as well
as the role of the relationship between language and the development of the
groups that speak it.
 Archaeology: It is devoted to the study of material remains of past cultures.
 Cultural anthropology: t refers to the analysis and description of cultures, both
from the past and from human groups of today.
Evolutionist school argues that the societies shall pass through states of development,
in that way they could be able to place in some of them, the work of the social scientist
is to discover and present the stages that spanned all cultures to reach the highest level
of development, generally associated with the European societies of that time, all
societies evolved in the same way, however when these theory was created all the
sciences think about evolution and progress, supposedly all the societies will have to
evolved to the civilization, let’s keep in mind that Europe came from the Industrial
Revolution, Charles Darwin published his book “The origin of species”, the big
European cities were consolidates due to the country migration to the city, in that way
the social sciences took that notion of progress as a model to classified the cultures.
One of the most important authors of this current is the British Edward B. Tylor,
author of the first textbook of general anthropology. He proposed to explain the
evolution of human societies by passing through various stages to reach a developed or
superior stage; one of his contributions is the concept of survival of the culture or
survivals, understood as “processes or customs that since they became habits have
remained at different stages of the evolution of societies.
The next school emerges as a reaction to the prevailing evolutionary ideas, arguing that
they were based on insufficient empirical evidence. It is proposed, rather than to strive
to establish general stages, to emphasize particular aspects of the singular history of
the studied cultures. In other words, every culture or society, is the consequence of its
own particular process which result of the sum of the aspects who have been build it
through the pass of time.
The notion of cultural relativism arises, which disqualifies the existence of savage
cultures and higher cultures, categories that evidence the ethnocentrism of their
authors, placing their own as the model of society to be achieved. This proposal is led
by the American Franz Boas, and one of his main contributions is his demonstration that
race, language and culture are elements independent from the human condition and
that it is possible to find societies that shared the same racial features, behaviors and
different languages.
Defined stages with distinctive biological and cultural features finds in this proposal the
demonstration that evolution was not a simple process.
 Diffusionism: This current also emerges as a reaction to evolutionism, and
proposes that cultures adopted their elements by imitation. Independent creation
is discarded and, in this sense, the most ancient cultures are the centers of origin
from which, over time, techniques and knowledge have been transmitted or
distributed.
 Functionalism: The emphasis of this British current is on function; the duty of the
anthropologist is to describe the functions of the customs and institutions for the
society studied, means by which we come to understand its origins. the
functionalism, has a strong influence in the social sciences, sociologist as Émile
Durkheim made important researches since this particular way of seeing the
culture. A very clear analogy that explains this system is the comparison between
a biological organism and a social system.
 Neoevolutionism: After World War II, Leslie White re-examines the evolutionist
paradigm, her work was to re-examined and his contributions to the science of
culture are redeemed: the existence of a cultural evolution determined by the
amount of energy that could be captured and put into execution by person.
 French structuralism: This school was represented by Levi-Strauss, from France;
uses an analogy to explain the origin of the differences and similarities among
cultures: the crux lies in the existence of a general structure, an underlying
pattern common to all cultures. And what marks the difference among them is the
melody.
Reflection:
Anthropology provides the possibility to study every aspect of human existence,
provides the answer to our questions about ourselves, our past, present and future,
anthropology helps to connect everyone from around the globe; anthropology has
the power to transform us, to unlock our assumptions about everything, food,
gender, race, politics, economics; etc, it is to give new possibilities and answers to
our social and personal challenges.

References:
N.A [2017] Topic 1. Anthropology as a Science. Canvas.
https://cursos.tecmilenio.mx/courses/89172/pages/my-course?
module_item_id=337208
N.A [2017] Topic 2. History, Theories and Precursors in Anthropology. Canvas.
https://cursos.tecmilenio.mx/courses/89172/pages/my-course?
module_item_id=337208
N.A [2017] Topic 3. Culture and Society. Canvas.
https://cursos.tecmilenio.mx/courses/89172/pages/my-course?
module_item_id=337208
N.A [2017] Topic 4. Family, Kinship and Lineage. Canvas.
https://cursos.tecmilenio.mx/courses/89172/pages/my-course?
module_item_id=337208
N.A [2017] Topic 5. Areas and Applications of Anthropology in Research. Canvas.
https://cursos.tecmilenio.mx/courses/89172/pages/my-course?
module_item_id=337208