Essence of anthropology

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Summary

The video for this lesson explains the four fields of anthropology, defines the concept of holism, and describes how anthropologists approach their subject matter from a holistic and comparative cr...

The video for this lesson explains the four fields of anthropology, defines the concept of holism, and describes how anthropologists approach their subject matter from a holistic and comparative cross-cultural perspective in order to reach the broadest and most inclusive conclusions possible on their subject. Each field, cultural, physical (biological), linguistic anthropology, and archaeology, is described and situational material is included to illustrate how each field functions and interconnects with the others. Subfields to the four major fields, such as forensics and paleoanthropology, are introduced and discussed, and the concept that humans are biocultural beings, because of the simultaneous adaptations of our biology with culture, is illustrated. The video also introduces the student to the way anthropologists carry out their analyses through rigorous fieldwork and participant observation in order to create the ethnographies that describe humans cross-culturally. Applied anthropology, sometimes referred to as the fifth subfield of anthropology, is introduced.

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