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Outlining anthropology and its various perspectives.

Dr. Zubeeda QuraishyDepartment of Informatics,University of Oslo, Norway

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What is Anthropology? Are you as interested as I am in knowing how,

when, and where human life arose, what the first human societies and languages were like, why cultures have evolved along diverse but often remarkably convergent pathways, why distinctions of rank came into being, and how small bands and villages gave way to chiefdoms and chiefdoms to mighty states and empires?

--Marvin Harris, Our Kind,1990.

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What is Social Anthropology? Social Anthropology is the comparative study of human

conduct and thought in their social context. Societies around the world vary enormously in their social, cultural and political forms, and their individual members display an initially overwhelming diversity of ideas and behaviour. The study of these variations, and the common humanity which underlies them and renders them intelligible to sympathetic outsiders, lies at the heart of Social Anthropology.

Anthropologists acquire their information through a distinctive method termed ‘participant observation’. This means that they spend many months or even years living among the people with whom they are researching, sharing their experiences as far as possible, and hence attempting to gain a well-rounded understanding of that society and of the activities and opinions of its members

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Definition of Anthropology The word anthropology itself tells the basic

story--from the Greek anthropos ("human") and logia ("study")—

It is the study of humankind, from its beginnings millions of years ago to the present day.

Nothing human is alien to anthropology. Indeed, of the many disciplines that study our

species, Homo sapiens, only anthropology seeks to understand the whole panorama--in geographic space and evolutionary time--of human existence.

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Various Sub disciplines of Anthropology 1. Social and Cultural Anthropology 2. Physical Anthropology 3. Ethnology and Ethnography 4. Archeological Anthropology 5. Psychological Anthropology 6. Political Anthropology 7. Economic Anthropology 8. Visual Anthropology

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(Contd..) Sub disciplines of Anthropology 9. Applied Anthropology 10. Linguistic Anthropology 11. Medical Anthropology 12.Nutrition Anthropology 13. Development Anthropology 14.Molecular Anthropology

and the list continues……

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While it is easy to define,anthropology is difficult to describe….. ..as its subject matter is both exotic (e.g., star lore

of the Australian aborigines) and common place (anatomy of the foot).

Its focus is both sweeping (the evolution of language) and microscopic (the use-wear of obsidian tools).

Anthropologists may study ancient Mayan hieroglyphics, the music of African Pygmies, and the corporate culture of a U.S. car manufacturer.

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Why anthropologists are interested in studying cultures?

‘Curiosity’ We all "do" anthropology because curiosity

is a universal human trait. We are curious about ourselves and about

other people, the living as well as the dead, here and around the globe

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Anthropological questions are often asked by all? Do all societies have marriage customs? Do all cultures have different ways of greetings and

food habits? As a species, are human beings innately violent or

peaceful? Did the earliest humans have light or dark skins? When did people first begin speaking a language? How related are humans, monkeys and

chimpanzees? Is Homo sapiens's brain still evolving?

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If such questions are part of folk anthropology… …practiced in school yards, office

buildings and neighborhood cafes..

How does the science of anthropology differ from ordinary opinion sharing and "common sense"?

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Comparative Method Anthropology begins with a simple yet

powerful idea: any detail of our behavior can be understood better when it is seen against the backdrop of the full range of human behavior.

attempts to explain similarities and differences among people holistically, in the context of humanity as a whole.

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Comparative method (contd…) Anthropology seeks to uncover principles of behavior

that apply to all human communities.

To an anthropologist, diversity itself (seen in body shapes and sizes, customs, clothing, speech, religion, and worldview--)provides a frame of reference for understanding any single aspect of life in any given community.

It is essential to study in the context and compare against the different panorama

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We [anthropologists] have been the first to insist on a number of things: that the world does not divide into the pious and the superstitious; that political order is possible without centralized power and principled justice without codified rules; that the norms of reason were not fixed in Greece, the evolution of morality not consummated in England. Most important, we were the first to insist that we see the lives of others through lenses of our own grinding and that they look back on ours through ones of their own.

--Clifford Geertz

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History of anthropological conceptions on culture “Culture is descriptive, inclusive, and

relativistic” John. H.Bodley,1994.

I use the term culture to refer collectively to a society and its way of life or in reference to human culture as a whole.

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The modern technical definition of culture is defined .. “ as socially patterned human thought and

behavior”, originally proposed by the nineteenth-century British anthropologist, Edward Tylor.

Created exhaustive universal lists of the content of culture, usually as guides for further research. Others have listed and mapped all the culture traits of particular geographic areas.

{(Food habits, way of dressing, marriage customs, ways of greeting, working pattern, life style, values( family, work place, place of worship, at the house of relatives, strangers, men to men, women – women, men – women, elders towards children and vise versa acc to age and r.ship etc)}.

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Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, published a list of 160 different definitions of culture in 1952. the list indicates the diversity of the

anthropological concept of culture. The specific culture concept that particular anthropologists work with is an important matter because it may influence the research problems they investigate, their methods and interpretations, and the positions they take on public policy issues.

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Diverse Definitions of CultureTopical:Culture consists of everything on a list of topics,

or categories, such as social organization, religion, or economy

Historical:Culture is social heritage, or tradition, that is passed on to future generations

Behavioral:Culture is shared, learned human behavior, a way of life

Normative:Culture is ideals, values, or rules for living

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Contd…Functional:Culture is the way humans solve

problems of adapting to the environment or living together

Mental:Culture is a complex of ideas, or learned habits, that inhibit impulses and distinguish people from animals

Structural:Culture consists of patterned and interrelated ideas, symbols, or behaviors

Symbolic:Culture is based on arbitrarily assigned meanings that are shared by a society

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Culture involves at least three components: What people think What they do The material products they produce.

Mental processes, beliefs, knowledge, and values are parts of culture.

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Important principles of culture… Process of learning, teaching and reproducing are

essential characteristics of culture. Culture exists in a constant state of change.

Culture consists of systems of meaning -- members of a human society must agree to relationships between a word, behavior,(request you to eat food and take away the food rudely from front of you ) or other symbol and its corresponding significance or meaning.

Culture is described in a relativistic way as different human societies will inevitably agree upon different relationships and meanings. (Object and a word-door and its meaning in English).

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Properties of culture: Culture has several properties: shared (it is a social phenomenon) learned (culture is learned not biologically inherited)

how culture is taught & reproduced is also crucial symbolic (speech is a symbolic element of human

language) transmitted cross-generationally (Kroeber,1917 and

Leslie White,1949 treat culture as a superorganic entity).

adaptive, and integrated.

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There are many who depart from the views expressed and regard culture as … Objective reality Not superorganic approach but has human

carriers. an observable phenomenon and people’s

unique possession People can be deprived of culture against

their will.

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Contd…. From the different definitions it is

known that there is much disagreement about the word and concept of culture.

So, an ongoing negotiation and conversation about what culture should mean is continuing.

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Clifford Geertz(1926- present) Clifford Geertz best known for his

ethnographic studies emphasizes on the importance of the symbolic – of systems of meaning – as it relates to culture, cultural change and the study of culture. The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973

is best known for his ethnographic studies of Javanese culture

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What cultural anthropologists are doing at Intel & Microsoft? Understanding alien cultures and finding

out what’s important in those cultures. What people are doing in their daily lives? What people are doing with technology? How digital home differs from culture to

culture?

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What is society? A society is any group of people (or, less commonly,

plants or animals) living together in a group and constituting a single related, interdependent community. This word is frequently taken to include entire national communities; for instance, comment upon some aspect of U.S.or Indian society.

Society can also be used to refer to smaller groups of people, as when we refer to "rural societies" or "academic society," etc.

Society is distinguished from culture in that society generally refers to the community of people while culture generally refers to the systems of meaning -- what Geertz calls "webs of significance" which govern the conduct and understanding of people's lives. (*no clear diff between culture and society)

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Anthropological perspectives Evolutionary Perspective: Anthropology brings an explicit, evolutionary

approach to the study of human behavior. Each of anthropology's four main subfields-socio cultural, biological, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology--acknowledges that Homo has a long evolutionary history that must be studied if one is to know what it means to be a human being.

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Cultural Anthropology The discipline’s largest branch in N. America applies the comparative

method and evolutionary perspective to human culture. Culture represents the entire database of knowledge, values, and

traditional ways of viewing the world, which have been transmitted from one generation ahead to the next--nongenetically, apart from DNA--through words, concepts, and symbols.

Cultural anthropologists study humans through a descriptive lens called the ethnographic method, based on participant observation, in tandem with face-to-face interviews, normally conducted in the native tongue.

Ethnographers compare what they see and hear themselves with the observations and findings of studies conducted in other societies.

Originally, anthropologists pieced together a complete way of life for a culture, viewed as a whole that is, in a holistic perspective.

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Cultural anthropology (contd..) Today, more focus is on a narrower aspect

of cultural life, such as economics, politics, religion or art.

Cultural anthropologists seek to understand the internal logic of another society. It helps outsiders make sense of behaviors that, like face painting or scarification, may seem bizarre or senseless.

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Cultural anthropology (contd) Anthropology helps us to see our

own culture more clearly by understanding the differences between cultures.

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Comparative method & Ethnocentrism… Comparative method helps an

anthropologist to avoid "ethnocentrism," the tendency to interpret strange customs on the basis of preconceptions derived from one's own cultural background.

Cultural anthropologists not only study rain forest tribes in Brazil but growing numbers now study U.S. groups instead, applying anthropological perspectives to their own culture and society.

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Linguistic Anthropology "As you commanded me, I, Spider Woman, have

created these First People. They are fully and firmly formed; they have movement. But they cannot talk. That is the proper thing they lack. So I want you to give them speech." So, Sotuknang gave them speech, a different language to each color, with respect for each other's difference. He gave them also the wisdom and the power to reproduce and multiply. --Hopi Indian Emergence Myth

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Language…. Hallmark of the human species holds a

special fascination for most anthropologists Has enabled Homo sapiens to transcend the

limits of individual memory. It is upon language that culture itself

depends--and within language that humanity's knowledge resides.

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Archaeology Human record is written not only in alphabets and

books, but preserved in other kinds of material remains-- cave paintings, pictographs, discarded stone tools, earthenware vessels, religious figurines, abandoned baskets– found in tattered shreds and patches of ancient societies.

Fragmentary but fascinating record is interpreted to reassemble long-ago cultures and forgotten ways of life.

Studies have been extended in two directions--backward some 3 million years to the bones and stone tools of our proto human ancestors, and forward to the reconstruction of life ways and communities of 19th-century America.

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Biological AnthropologyBiological (or physical) anthropologists

Looks at Homo sapiens as a genus and species, tracing their biological origins, evolutionary development, and genetic diversity.

Study the bio cultural prehistory of Homo to understand human nature and, ultimately, the evolution of the brain and nervous system itself.

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Four main branches of anthropology…

Cultural, Linguistic, Archaeology, and

Biological anthropology make anthropology whole.

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Examples of Anthropological Perspectives… Perspectives in Anthropology brings together

information about many diverse attributes of MAN in an attempt to understand him in its entirety. As the subtlety and complexity of anthropology becomes better understood, the issues emerging from the integration of biology, behaviour and culture inter alia human evolution, primate behaviour and human variation shall become increasingly relevant and interesting

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Anthropological Perspectives on Palliative Care (medical & cultural anthropology)

Palliation is unique in different cultures. (For ex, Sepik Society).

Complex “negotiations” between biomedicine and culture frequently take place. (Navajo, Ethiopean, Sepik, Hindus and Islamic cultures)

Cultural anthropology helps us see dying as a social process.

It provides us with a number of important tools with which to understand this universal yet culture-specific process.

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Contd…. Anthropology asks us to look at the way in

which the process of dying is organized in time and space as well as at the web of social relations in which the process takes place.

(From Concepts to Reality, Anthropological Perspectives on Palliative Care by GREGORY PAPPAS)

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Anthropological perspectives on Health Care(for ex, Global issues in midwifery) A distressing cross-cultural trend is showing up in the

growing body of anthropological literature about midwifery and birth in the developing world. Many instances can be quoted from different countries and cultures wherein how midwives and pregnant women are treated.

Robbie Davis-Floyd, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. Midwifery Today E-News (Vol 2 Issue 18 May 5, 2000)

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Female Reproductive Health: An Anthropological Perspective - Medical Anthropology Reproduction follows many patterns in different societies

with varying consequences for health. Anthropological research on optimal reproductive

strategies from the cross cultural and evolutionary perspective.

By exploring the anthropology of variables such as trauma, abuse and infanticide anthropologists hope to show the foundations of modern day return to "alternative" reproductive health practices such as midwifery, physical therapies, and traditional nutrition including phytomedicines.

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Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship (contd..) Anthropological Perspectives On Kinship by

Ladislav HolyChanges in the conceptualisation of kinship brought about by new reproductive technologies and the growing interest in culturally specific notions of personhood and gender.

The extent to which western assumptions have guided anthropological study of kinship in the past.

In the process, a growing sensitivity on the part of anthropologists is revealed to individual ideas of personhood and gender, and encourages further critical reflection on cultural bias in approaches to the subject.

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Anthropological perspectives on migration and migration history ‘Migration is a key social phenomenon’ Migration has considerably contributed to changing

perceptions of immigrants and as well the host cultures.

Mass character of immigrants and their complexity has affected the adaptation processes and social interaction .

Important to conduct the historical and anthropological/ethnographical case studies on migrant movements, migrant incorporation/exclusion and migrant representation etc. in both sending and receiving countries.

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Ethnicity and NationalismAnthropological Perspectives Anthropology has the advantage of generating first-hand

knowledge of social life at the level of everyday interaction.

To a great extent, this is the locus where ethnicity is created and re-created.

Ethnicity emerges and is made relevant through ongoing social situations and encounters, and through people's ways of coping with the demands and challenges of life.

From its vantage-point right at the centre of local life, social anthropology is in a unique position to investigate these processes.

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Contd… Anthropological approaches also enable us to explore

the ways in which ethnic relations are being defined and perceived by people; how they talk and think about their own group as well as other groups, and how particular world-views are being maintained or contested.

The significance of ethnic membership to people can best be investigated through that detailed on-the-ground research which is the hallmark of anthropology.

Social anthropology, being a comparative discipline, studies both differences and similarities between ethnic phenomena & provides a nuanced and complex vision of ethnicity in the contemporary world.

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Anthropological Perspectives on Gender Examines the cultural constructions of

femininities and masculinities from a cross-cultural perspective.

**Our discussions will examine how individuals and societies imagine, negotiate, perform and contest dominant gender ideologies, roles, relations and identities. (share own experiences & personal backgrounds)

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What does it mean to be human?While the question may never be fully

answered, the study of anthropology titled as "immense journey" by Loren Eiseley has attracted some of the world's greatest thinkers, whose discoveries forever changed our understanding of ourselves.

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Information Systems from Social Science Perspective (Anthropology) “While technological determinism can be applicable and

useful in situations that are characterized by high degree of control and short time frames, it has limited value in dynamic and complex situations that unfold over longer periods of time.

Technological determinism cannot adequately account for the interactions between ICT, the people who design, implement and use them, and the social and organisational contexts in which the technologies and people are embedded.“ (Kling et al. 2000 p.49-50) (relation-ship between technical and social factors in working processes)

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(Contd..) Information Systems & Anthropology

Bansler (1987) describes Høyer’s theory in these terms:

“It is insufficient to look at an enterprise as a technical system, as humans play a key role in the enterprise’s function, and because humans have certain needs and behaviour, that must be taken into account.

The system engineer has to consider these needs when he designs and implements a computer system.” (Bansler 1987 p. 90, Ole and Johen’s translation)

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IS & ….. Perspective - Walsham explains the concept of Web Models ‘’.. draw broad boundaries around the focal computer system

and examine how its use depends upon a social context of complex social actions. The models define this social context by taking into account the social relations between the information system, the infrastructure available for its support, and the previous history within the organisation of commitments made in developing and operating related computer-based technologies.” (Walsham 1993 p.55)

“With respect to the social relations as considered in web models, it is important to note that participants include users, system developers, the senior management of the company, and any other individuals or groups who are affected by the computer-based information system.” (Walsham 1993 p.55).

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Information Systems & Anthropology.. The social systems perspective helps to

understand the importance of the context and particularly IS in developing countries must be context sensitive, for example, participation, may not be regarded the same in a developing country context as in a developed country.

Participation needs to be approached more critically and without the assumption that it will always and necessarily bring benefits.

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Information Infrastructure Theory Information infrastructure is a vast field that covers all

kinds of use and use areas. It involves political, social, organisation, human aspects and issues – from the development of industrial at national, regional or even the global level(Hanseth and Monteiro,1997)

An infrastructure is a socio-technical network, which includes more than just technological components .It includes actors, knowledge, use situation and procedures around them.

Infrastructures are heterogeneous in the sense that they include elements of different qualities, humans and computers.

IIs are ‘open’ and ‘ scaled’(Hanseth,2002)

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Actor Network Theory As a methodological theory is generally used to understand

information infrastructures (IIs) . Provides a framework for the socio-technical aspects and views the

technology as an actor on par with other actors Provides theoretical concepts for documenting a complex and

heterogeneous socio-technical work practice with many actors. Brings forth to light how new technology affects and interacts with the

various actors and vice versa indicating a mutual interaction process. Has the advantage of viewing both the human and non human actors as

linked elements in the networks (heterogeneous actor networks) and more so rather than focusing separately on each element the focus is on the interplay and relations between these elements.

As pointed out by Latour (1987) these heterogeneous actors in the network are constituted by various concerns, different degrees of power and different perceptions towards the technology and its benefits.

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Action Research Action research is inquiry or research in the

context of focused efforts to improve the quality of an organization and its performance.

It typically is designed and conducted by practitioners who analyze the data to improve their own practice.

Action research can be done by individuals or by teams of colleagues.

The team approach is also called collaborative inquiry.

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Action Research…. Has the potential to generate genuine and

sustained improvements in the work or research undertaken.

Gives implementation team new opportunities to reflect on and assess their work.

To explore and test new ideas, methods, and materials;

To assess how effective the new approaches were To share feedback with fellow team members