Discussion question frameworks and applications

¶ … anthropology: its holism or its comparative perspective?

Many disciplines are comparative in their outlook. An English student might compare two sonnets from two different eras of English literature. A scholar of religion might compare attitudes about parental authority in Christianity vs. Confucianism. An anthropologist might compare the social constructions of two different societies. But anthropology's holistic perspective is unique because anthropology must consider a society's religious beliefs, contemporary and historical social relationships, literary documents, and even deploy the scientific method, so an anthropologist can understand how human biology and geography has affected how a culture has developed over time. It is difficult to think of a discipline that cannot be comprised by the scope of anthropology. Thus anthropology's holistic perspective, which is intent upon embracing as much of the other disciplines as possible in its methodology, makes the subject unique.

Give two examples of how a physical anthropologist and an archaeologist might collaborate.

An archeologist who discovered the remains of an ancient people might wish to know how each person's dental remains, physical size, and bone composition gave clues to the ways the society ate, and moved around in search of food and shelter. The physical anthropologist could determine if the persons were meat eaters, had easy access to proteins, raised animals for dairy products, and help solve other questions about daily life that would give further clues to the archeologist about how the persons utilized artifacts and where the people had migrated from, originally, based upon their lifestyle.

An archeologist might also analyze the physical remains of individuals with a physical anthropologist to see what era of the evolutionary progression the persons may have come from, or if their physical structures bore resemblance to other known tribes or bands in the area. This would help give added weight to a possible interpretation as to how the society was constructed, if the remains bore similar features to a known group with similar physical features.

What does racism means if race has no biological basis?

Race may have no biological basis, but anthropology does not study biology alone -- race is also a cultural construction. An African-American man might have the physical DNA of European, Caucasian individuals within his genetic code, but because he is subject to the racial classification and potential discrimination within America, because America holds race to be an extant category, this does not mean that race lacks significance as a subject of cultural study. Race may be a constructed fiction, but racism, or the hatred that the cultural fiction of race has spawned, is real.