Anthropology is the study of human beings in the broadest sense. It is divided into two main disciplines, Prehistory or Archaeology, and Social/Cultural Anthropology. Archaeology is broadly focused on reconstructing the way of life of societies prior to their entry into the historical record. Allied with this, although consituting a discipline itself is physical anthropology which is concerned with the study of human evolution including the study of non-human primates.

Cultural anthopologists mainly study the culture of a discrete group, usually located in the developing world. Their object of study is “culture” often viewed in comparative perspective, with an intellectual tradition traceable back to key figures in early 20^th century United States anthropology. “Social” anthropology is the name given to a similar tradition in the United Kingdom where the emphasis tends to be upon social “structure” and social organization rather than culture per se, and stems from a different set of founding figures. The French and Dutch traditions have also made important contributions to the development of the discipline as a whole. The comparative dimension to anthropological enquiry is often pursued under the heading “ethnology”.

The key research methodology and practice of Cultural/Social Anthropology is the ethnographic method. As a product, an ethnography is the holistic description and analysis of a particular people’s way of life, although contemporary ethnographies often focus in great detail upon one particular dimension of cultural or social experience. The information that is recorded in an ethnography is generated through the method of participant-observation, where the researcher spends at least one year in a particular social or cultural milieu. Qualitative research practices such as open ended interviews are heavily relied upon. These are often supplemented by Quantitative methods involving controlled sampling and hence the application of standard statistical techniques of univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analysis. However, Qualitative methods are dominant in most ethnographic projects in the present day. Anthropology is generally classified as one of the social sciences, although there are those who would argue that it is more appropriately classified with the humanities, given problems with its status as a science, problems stemming from its reliance on “subjective” Qualitative methods which are viewed as more prey to investigator bias, unlike Quantitative methods.

This brief overview of the discipline more or less defines its main form. However it should be noted that at the outset of the 21^st century, anthropology as a discipline incorporates a wide variety of subdisciplinary areas of interest . It is a large and ramifying area of inquiry which is not done justice in a brief statement such as this. I would also add that if you have come across anthropology in a search for a way in which to acquire understanding of a particular cultural milieu that you may have personal experience of, or are simply seeking to understand at a distance, you need to remember that anthropology ultimately aims for objective understanding. This entails demystification, a making-familiar of the strange, even disenchantment, a process in which romanticist views of indigenous people have no place. That may make much of what you find in the ethnographic record of relevance to your area of concern at best unsatisfying, at worst downright boring. Forwarned is forearmed. Anthropology requires a good deal of dedication to its disciplinary strictures for the realization of its insights. Bon voyage.

Links to Quality Information on Anthropology