Title: The Anthropological Perspective what Makes it Unique | Actforlibraries.org
Headings: The Anthropological Perspective what Makes it Unique
The Anthropological Perspective what Makes it Unique
Content: Quite simply, just because we all take some belief or style of behavior for granted in the present, does not mean human beings everywhere, or throughout human history, would have agreed. As John Bodley (1999) puts it, an examination of the wide diversity of other societies encourages anthropologists “to view their own culture through an outsider’s eyes.” In other words, studying other cultures with very different understandings of the world, very different customs and styles of life, leads to what anthropologists refer to as “defamiliarization.” Defamiliarization refers to the process through which you develop an ability to look at our own culture as though it were a foreign culture through the study of other societies. That is, extensive cross-cultural study allows one to think more critically about one’s own culture, and to understand that many aspects of one’s own beliefs or ways of doing things, which we all take for granted on a daily basis, are actually not only completely arbitrary, but also far from universal throughout human history, or even in the present day in many cases. Many others of our practices or beliefs are actually very recent phenomena. This is something which is reemphasized by anthropology’s second emphasis. 2. The second major emphasis which is distinctive of anthropology as a social science is its evolutionary/historical approach. This approach, coming from archeology and physical anthropology, focuses upon both the biological and cultural evolution of human beings and of human societies.