Letter to Future Anthropology Students
Dear Colleagues,
This letter is meant to help you make an informed decision on whether anthropology should be your minor or major. The letter addresses anthropology as related to human life. My hope is that you will gain from reading this letter and that you will, therefore, easily, decide. Anthropology focuses on human diversity and its meaning. It also looks at the inequities that bedevil human existence over time and the geographical stretch that such events occur in. Anthropology is both a humanistic science and a social science. The course is usually placed under the college of Humanities and Social Sciences in most universities across the globe. It explores the whole range of human activities and their attainments thereof. It has never been more important to understand the world we live in more than it is in the modern era. It is almost a survival requirement to understand the world and the environment around us. This includes getting the hang of how humans have adapted to the surroundings and even transformed it socially; including how we relate to each other. Anthropology provides a useful lens through which we can gain an in-depth understanding of cultural, institutional, and social triggers of world problems...
It is the same course that will help us figure out the most plausible solutions to these afflictions. Through the course, learners get to acquire necessary analytical skills to dissect, analyze and get an inside understanding of complex, rapidly changing and pluralistic world. The challenges relating to human rights, environmental and social justice, the power relations between cultures and various nations, plus an increased awareness in matters that relate to inequality as far as ethnicity, sexuality and gender are concerned and the solutions to the above issues is part and parcel of Anthropology.
While we are influenced by what surrounds us, we also shape the world around us with our actions. Indeed, we are both natural and nature itself because the sum total of existence cannot be viewed in terms of sheer innate or external influence. It is essentially a combination of both phenomena (Fuentes).
Anthropology seeks to make the world a better place. The anthropological approaches, applied in science and technology, are likely to begin with humans; as opposed to specific non-human aspects. These entities arise in the analysis that focuses on the possibilities and the limits that they pose to human life.
Such…
