Anthropology as a Humanity and Social Science
With its origin in the natural sciences, humanities, and the social sciences, anthropology currently has a dual identity as both a humanity and social science field. As a humanity, it offers a critical and analytical approach to social events and focuses on the development of human beings and their traditions, heritage, and culture. As a social science, it scientifically analyses the society and provides the factual differences between humanities and pure sciences.
Humanity anthropology includes sociocultural anthropology and linguistics anthropology. Sociocultural anthropology investigates the culture and social organization of specific groups of people including their language, rules and regulations, conflict resolution methods, family organization and kinship practices, gender roles, religion, economic and political setting, trade and goods consumption, mythology, and socialization practices (Kottak, 2018). The information is primarily obtained through long-term thorough field studies of the particular community. Secondly, linguistics anthropology analyses how the people communicate in the societies, including their verbal and non-verbal tendencies, language variations with time and distance, social use of language, and how the language and culture of a specific population are linked. Anthropologists refer to linguistic forms and processes to understand a certain sociocultural process and thus solve any problems encountered. This branch is divided into sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, semiotics, discourse analysis, and narrative analysis.
On the other hand, anthropology as a social science is classified into biological anthropology and archaeology. Also known as physical anthropology, the biological classification studies the evolution and adaptability of the physical human being, population genetics, and primatology (Science Daily, 2020). This is achieved by the branches of the field, namely anthropometrics, forensic anthropology, osteology, and nutritional anthropology. Secondly, archaeology examines the current placement and nature of artifacts so as to appreciate the movement and spread of the ancient population and establishment of the social structure of societies, which led to the interactions among modern societies. This also provides additional information on population genetics and historical linguistics. Various field and laboratory techniques are employed in archaeology, including remote sensing, excavation, dating studies, and residue analyses. Material analyses is not limited to prehistoric times only but also includes that from historical, ethnographic, and modern populations.
Anthropology’s dual identity has many advantages and very few disadvantages. First, by analyzing social, cultural, biological, and historical contexts of societies, it enhances the understanding of the human population better than any other field. Cultural analysis is even more important in the contemporary world, considering that a single location may contain people from different backgrounds, cultures, and languages. Anthropology thus informs the relationships formed among people from such locations since one cannot exist outside their culture, beliefs, and language. Secondly, anthropology promotes business growth where it is applied in determining consumer attitudes and consumption tendencies. Anthropology scrutinizes different social and peer groups, considers employees’ behaviors and thought processes and office and factory perceptions* all of which are ultimately used in promoting individual productivity and creativity, and overall organizational performance. The main disadvantage lies in the tendency to indulge in large samples or populations alone and neglecting the impact of small samples. Also, using all the listed fields in analyzing a particular society or material leads to over-interpretation of a concept, losing sight of the main points. Moreover, data collection and analysis methods such as participant-observation are likely to possess bias as the anthropologist records it from their own perspective. This also means that while humanity and social-science classification of anthropology exist independently, they have to be used together during analysis to ensure the conclusions made are factual and void of bias.
References
Kottak, P. C. (2018). Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. McGraw-Hill Education.
Science Daily. (2020). Anthropology. Science Daily.