Overall, with this being an introductory course, it has not been difficult, however, a lot of new information was introduced to me. Having lived in a conservative country for the majority of my life, anthropology was never introduced to me because it involved evolution, and even after moving to the United States, I realized that anthropology was not introduced to students here either. So, I took this course with an open mind, knowing I would be learning a lot because I was unfamiliar with anthropology, in fact, I did not know what anthropology was. So far in this course, the most difficult part would have been learning about Primates and how they have evolved. I think that this is mainly due to the fact that the topic was very dense with information that I was, again, unacquainted with. Learning about all the human and non-human primates definitely altered my perspective on evolution and how we have come to be as humans throughout time due to misconceptions that were ingrained in me for so long. However, having so many primates exist and being able to differentiate between them all became easier after looking at diagrams and making mind maps about when each one was alive which helped me visually understand them. Even then that was difficult because a lot were alive during similar times, because, due to contrary belief, the primate lineage was not in fact linear. Coping with this challenge of overwhelming information was made easier after watching multiple people explain primates and the different types through videos as well as reading articles both online and the required readings.
My appreciation of anthropology was definitely deepened when learning about Cultural Anthropology. I found cultural anthropology extremely interesting because it studied humans, societies, and their cultural worlds, exploring both how diverse humans are as well as what they have in common. Another misconception embedded in my head was that anthropologists would only study isolated areas where most of its population was not literate or considered to be not advanced or modern. However, anthropologists study all types of societies: small, large, basic, and complex and in fact all societies in our world today are all part of a large process consisting of migration, intercontinental exchange in ideas, and many more. One of the most important things I learned was cultural relativism and the power of ethnography.
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Cultural relativism ensures that anthropologists do not judge other people’s values, nor rank the different cultures from the “best” to the “worst” or the “developed” to the “underdeveloped.” With cultural relativism in mind, one cannot claim that a society whose population mainly has smartphones or cars compared to one that does not have a better quality of life. When conducting studies, anthropologists have to put their views aside and their own culture aside while studying other cultures in order to reduce the likelihood of a bias. Anthropologists emphasize the need to understand the actions of other humans, while analyzing how they interpret their own actions and views of the world. Therefore, cultural relativism is a vital tool for observing and studying local worlds in their own terms, ensuring they are understood in neutral terms.
Another important tool in cultural anthropological research is ethnography, or fieldwork, as its sometimes called, which is used as the main form of collecting data. Ethnography is extremely time-consuming, anthropologists, on average, spend at least a year collecting data. Spending a long time in the field is important because the goal of ethnographic work is to develop a deep understanding of a society, meaning anthropologists must learn the local language and be a part of local activities, both day-to-day as well as the occasions. Anthropologists collect data through participant observation, where he/she would talk to the locals, ask questions, learns the local way of doing things, and spend time with the group of people they are studying. Therefore, anthropologists combine direct observation, conversations with the locals, and participation in activities to be able to provide detailed descriptions of these people’s day-to-day lives compared to what other researchers may collect. Hence, this is the main reason why ethnographic work is extremely time-consuming, the anthropologists must build, rapport, trust with the people they are trying to understand, who will then, reveal aspects of their lives they would not feel comfortable revealing to journalists or in surveys with social scientists. Anthropologists need to ensure the participants feel that they and their culture are valued, that they are simply not “lab rats,” or a science experiment. Therefore, anthropologists carry out fieldwork with the relationships and connection their data is concerned with. Anthropologists do not study remote individuals but rather how these individuals relate to each other. Culture arises from communication of people with each other, not the individuals themselves, which is why anthropologists study humans in full social context. As a result, it is not sufficient to listen to what people say, but rather we have to partake in the same activities they do all the while observing their actions in order to fully understand them and the purpose behind their actions, ideologies, and ways of living.
I believe that, overall, I have grasped the material covered throughout the course pretty well. Anything that I found confusing at the time, I would look up and read up more about, or I would go over my notes again, or watch videos to help me, so in the end I felt pretty comfortable with the content.
Cultural anthropology, although a field on its own with multiple subfields, relates to other fields, both scientific and non-scientific. Currently, I am majoring in behavioral and biological sciences, while on the pre-medicine track, however I am thinking of changing it so I am going to broadly state how anthropology relates to the medical field. Basically, there are a few things that are common between medicine and anthropology. For one, cultural anthropology aims at discerning man as a human being, so a physician should do the same, making a humanistic approach to his/her patients. Anthropologists study humans within the framework of culture, something that is learned, symbolic, shared, and all encompassing. Culture provides people with a “lens” of perceiving the world around them, the ways in which they come to terms with problems they face, including the ways in which someone should be treated when sick. People with different cultures and experiences have different notions in regards to how they approach disease, cure, treatment, and the expectations they have of a physician. Therefore, a physician needs to be familiar with the needs of his/her patient, be able to understand their way of perceiving things in order to provide an effective treatment, including keeping sorcery, magic, taboos, spirit intrusion, etc.… in mind. Overall, cultural anthropology allows us to make sense of our modern world, it allows us to understand and respect other cultures, and it is not the “most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences,” but it also is valuable in understanding other fields, serving as a basis for them.
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