APY1501 STUDY NOTES
2022/2023
APY1501 STUDY NOTES
(60 MCQ – 2 hours)
WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY?
Anthropology
Produces information on people and what they have in common.
Studies humankind everywhere, both past and present
Studies where people live, the organisation and the general feat...
Anthropology
Produces information on people and what they have in common.
Studies humankind everywhere, both past and present
Studies where people live, the organisation and the general features of people’s languages.
Initially what distinguished anthropology from sociology was that Anthropology studied 'preliterate' people.
Anthropology as an independent discipline is distinguished from other disciplines that study humankind by the fact that
anthropology is concerned with all facets of human existence.
The anthropological fieldwork methodology is distinguished from the methodologies of other disciplines that study
human beings by its involvement in experiencing something of other people’s live and becoming familiar with their
activities in their contexts.
An holistic approach to the study of cultures means that anthropologists study all facets of human life including the
environmental factors to which people must adapt for survival.
Sociocultural anthropologists:
Focus on the lifestyles of the rich diversity of societies as they are found worldwide.
Relations between people in terms of culture
Linguistic anthropologists: The relation between language and the other aspects of the life of a society
They initially studied the historical development of unwritten languages of non-western societies.
Study societies to gain an understanding of how cultural phenomena are expressed verbally.
Study the way in which language is used in different social contexts
Biological anthropologists:
- The influence of biological and hereditary characteristics on behaviour of members of a society.
- The physical adaptation of human populations to their environment
Biological anthropologists also make use of:
human genetics (the study of inherited human traits)
population biology (the study of the effects of the environment)
Epidemiology (the study of the differing effects of diseases on populations).
They focus on the fossil remains of prehistoric human-like beings
Archaeologist:
The material remains of societies which are collected during excavation of sites where people once lived.
past living conditions and changes that occurred in human populations during prehistoric times
, Fields of application and practical work:
agriculture
resettlement
alcohol and drug abuse
missionary work
cultural resource management
rural and urban development
design and architecture
women and development
community development
conflict resolution
education and schools
war
employment and labour relations
wildlife management
health and medicine
social impact assessment
land use and land claims
succession disputes
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL WAY:
Ethnography/ethnographic research:
1. Involves first-hand, direct contact with the people being studied.
2. It is both the process and the product of fieldwork
3. It may include personal network analyses of informants
Ethnographic fieldwork as research methodology in anthropology Is used to gather information on the culture of
societies by means of the interviewing of informants and participant observation.
Anthropological information that has been collected by means of the ethnographic method will be regarded as a
more meaningful and accurate representation of peoples’ sociocultural systems when an anthropologist has used
the emic and etic research approaches during his/her fieldwork.
Emic: Insder - How the people themselves view things.
Etic: Outsider: How the scientist interprets (unbiased).
The most important sources of information on a particular sociocultural system are the people at grass-roots level.
Anthropologists MAINLY gather information about the people they study by means of In-depth interviewing of
informants.
The latest survey by Unisa’s Bureau of Market Research (BMR) indicates:
More than half of all South Africans still fall in the lowest income bracket (In 2008, there were more than 6 million black
households living below the “subsistence” level)
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