Society as an Integrated Whole

What Is Anthropology? ANTH 2301 Society as an Integrated Whole There was a notable decline in newborn mortality rates in several rural African communities throughout the 2010s. Although pleased with this encouraging trend, experts were at first stumped for an explanation. Did dads and moms take any different actions to support their children's health? Were governments in Africa offering babies better health care? Did aid organisations allocate additional resources? These claims didn't appear to be supported by any substantial evidence. The proliferation of mobile phones was the only factor that had changed in the areas with reduced newborn death rates. Is there a connection between it and decreased infant mortality? If so, in what way? According to research, the capacity to use fintech products like mobile money transfers and others was more important than simply owning or using a phone. Now, if a newborn developed a fever in the middle of the night, the mother could phone her extended family right away to arrange for the money needed to get the child to the hospital for care. A faster course of therapy increased the likelihood of recovery. Infant health may be greatly impacted by things that don't seem to be directly connected to it. Remember our explanation of the extremely broad scope of anthropology at the beginning of this chapter? While some academic fields concentrate on certain societal domains, like technology or medicine, anthropology examines all spheres of human cognition and behaviour. Anthropologists use the holism method to investigate potential unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated aspects of social life. A couple uniting as one is the most typical kind of marriage in American and European traditions. In the US, the majority of persons who are divorced go on to be married again, creating a pattern of marriagedivorceremarriage known as serial monogamy. However, a man may have more than one wife in some cultures. It is tempting to believe that morality or gender roles have anything to do with the predominant kind of marriage in a society. However, it turns out that a specific culture's method of obtaining food has a very big impact on marriage patterns. One guy married to two or more women produces a large number of offspring in small-scale farming cultures, which aid in the tasks of weeding, watering, fertilising, and watching after the crops (Boserup [1970] 2007; Goody 1976). In societies where children work in the food production, it is more common for men to marry many women. Of course, this isn't always the case because a culture's marital practices can be influenced by a variety of other variables, but having children does help make this type of marriage more common. In modern-day America, however, the majority of people work in factories, stores, and offices rather than on farms. Children are not considered valuable resources for domestic work, and they are not allowed to work for pay under the law. Children can also be seen as a financial burden on the family since they need a significant outlay of funds for things like nursery, health care, special education, and toys. The higher fecundity of several spouses in this situation might make the household poorer. In addition, our capitalist, fast-paced economy demands a highly mobile and adaptable labour force. American workers have to be ready to relocate and retrain in order to obtain new employment, as they may lose their jobs. Many Americans go through times in their careers when they are uneasy or precarious, which has an impact on their ability to support their families and maintain healthy relationships with their spouses and kids. A setting like this leads to smaller families and weaker marriages. The cycles of marriage and divorce associated with serial monogamy are similar to the patterns of stability and upheaval in American professional life. These are only two illustrations of the reasons anthropologists are dedicated to studying civilizations from a wide perspective. The relationships between the many spheres of society are frequently not immediately clear to the researcher. A researcher may fail to recognise broader influences that influence the subject of study if they focus too intently on just one domain.