Edward EvansPritchard's contribution to anthropological theory - Essay Example

Modern anthropologists also study their home societies. Archeology: this branch, like cultural anthropology deals with the diversity in human behavior in the past. The only difference between the two being that the population in question no longer exists and hence is not physically available for observation and participation. Archeologists have to rely on artifacts, art forms and other remnants of an extinct culture in order to reconstruct history. Linguistic Anthropology: deals with the study of diversity in human language and communication methods between time periods and areas.

Linguistic anthropologists analyze the development of languages over time, how contemporary languages differ, how they are related and the link between language and other aspects of a culture. Come to think of it most sciences study an aspect of humans in some way or the other. Take history, biology, chemistry, psychology, sociology and economics for example. There is an element, which sets the subject of anthropology a step aside from the rest of the sciences and that is the anthropological perspective, which consists of three components: 1.

Cross -cultural or comparative: anthropology studies humans in every form of body and behavior. The entire spectrum of human aspects and comparing the aspects to one another helps analyze what is possible and necessary for humans. 2.Holistic: this component attempts to relate and correlate the parts of a culture to each other as well as to the parts of other cultures. It analyses the occurrences of combinations, relation of a particular culture to its environment and adaptations.3.Relativistic: this perspective is the breeding ground for all existing controversies within the anthropological perspective.

The idea being conveyed is that the value systems and customs pertaining to a particular culture are relative to that specific culture. In plain English, sauce for the goose may not be sauce for the gander! There is nothing such as right values and wrong values. Right and wrong is a very subjective issue, which has different interpretations and different meanings in different cultures. In dealing or communicating with other cultures we cannot automatically assume that the level of understanding is uniform between us and another individuals.

It is always safer to assume that there is none. The principles of anthropology strictly guard against being judgmental of a particular culture. For example, certain practices among the locals of an area may come across as weird, amusing or even loathful to us but we must keep in mind that there might be a rational and a reasoning for any tradition to occur even though the logic might not be acceptable to our thinking. Malinowski initiative to understand " the native point of view" is the present day fundamental to socio-cultural anthropology.

To understand a cultures concepts, traditions, and behaviors, we must push aside our preconceived notions about the same and take into consideration what these concepts mean to the people of a community. The emphasis on fieldwork is another aspect, which makes the subject of anthropology unique among other sciences in the sense that it involves "real time" observations. The concept of participant