Introduction to Anthropology
What is Anthropology?
It's a common question. Anthropology, unlike its sister biology and its brother, sociology, Anthropology is still not well known. It is common to find someone who confused between anthropology and sociology or anthropology and archaeology or less common, anthropology and biology.
The truth is, if you study anthropology, you would get those three subjects as bonus!
Could that be true? Yeah!
Anthropology (Ow wait, I could hear the voice of my lecture :D) is a HOLISTIC science of mankind.
What's with that 'holistic' thing? Sounds important.
Yup, because only in anthropology you would learn science of mankind in a wholesome. Holistic means 'whole', in anthropology it means that you would learn everything which connected with human, starting from the past, present, and even to predict the future of humankind.
Although anthropology always being categorized as a social science, it's possible to find anthropology as a natural science, depend on the concentration.
What would we learn on anthropology?
When it comes to the definition, most people would say anthropology is about culture, indigenous people, Unknown tribes, untouched paradise on Pacific Islands. Well, it's not wrong, but as a holistic science, it's just not complete. But once again, it depends on the concentration that's chosen by anthropologists.
You could actually choose any kind of subject that interest you! But to keep it clear, anthropology focuses on how that ideas influence human live, the complexity would be determined by how large or how small the community that you're observing.
Basically, anthropology is being divided into four subjects, Biological, Cultural, Social, and Linguistic. Then, Archaeology joint the family. But then, human lives keep on developing and become more diverse and complicated. As long as human being still grow, anthropology would also become more complicated. A new subfields are added to anthropology like anthropology of technology , tourism anthropology, psychological anthropology, anthropology of health, even culinary anthropology.
Why anthropology is so important?
Hello...are you human being?
Don't you feel ashamed? You know how to create a robot, you know how to create a super car, but you don't know yourselves??? How can you love yourselves if you don't know who you are as human being? Yeah I need to calm down.
But seriously, human caused trouble anywhere and anytime. And also, as the diversity among human keep growing, conflicts would be a great potential among those who aren't ready to accept diversity and change, while we couldn't stop it.
As anthropologists, both students and experts, we're being taught to see things from many sides and be as objective as possible. Anthropologists are bridge that connect two or more different societies. We tried to be a mediator of two different sides in conflict without taking side to anywhere.
And so, that concludes all. As a student, I'm hoping there would be correction on every sentences that I wrote on this blog. Also, English isn't my native, so sorry if it's suck V^^
Nighty and with love,
LRL
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