Comparison of the Social Sciences - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages This in turn provided ripe conditions for social biases and cleavages to emerge. Managing diverse cultures within the same environment is a hard yet not impossible task. People need to understand that other people’s cultures, beliefs, values, norms and the like are distinct for a number of reasons and these reasons should be well respected. Only appropriate understanding of the underlying causes can ensure that interaction between human beings will remain as free of biases and cleavages as humanly possible. Moreover this will breed respect for other cultures and a chance for human beings to survive along each other in relative peace and prosperity. The evolution of scientific traditions has provided us with a number of tools with which human cultures and preferences can be easily understood better. Various kinds of investigation methodologies and systems have evolved over the decades that can be used reliably to investigate human behavior in terms of the overlying cultures and human interaction in large groups with diverse backgrounds. Some of the most prominent scientific fields that can be used to deal with human diversity include anthropology, psychology and sociology. This text will concentrate on how these different systems could be used to understand human cultures better and to promote understanding and respect for each other’s culture. 2. Anthropology Anthropology refers to the overall study of humanity in terms of their cultural diversity. The field of anthropology traces its origins from studies in humanities, natural and social sciences at the same time (Wolf, 1994). The most basic concerns of anthropology include: defining human life and its origins; organization of social relations amongst human beings; tracking the ancestors of the modern human being; physical traits of human beings; human behavior and its causes; variations in behavior amongst various human groups; influences of the Homo Sapien culture on modern social organization and culture. This list can be extended to far more but the concerns listed above are the most major. In terms of understanding other people’s cultures anthropology tries to find out how human beings behavior vary by distinctions amongst them (such as race, ethnicity, and geographical origin). These variations in human behavior and the origins of such behavior can provide invaluable clues to understanding human cultures better. These learning’s results can in turn be used to educate people about each other’s cultures and their diversity. In the longer run such steps could ensure that people understand and tolerate the variations in each other’s behavior better to promote cultural pluralism. Contemporary anthropology can be broadly classified into four major sub divisions which are cultural anthropology (also known as socio-cultural anthropology), archaeology, linguistic anthropology and physical (biological) anthropology (Layton, 1998). Biological anthropology attempts to explain how human population has evolved using an evolutionary framework. The spreading of population from one part of the globe to the other is being theorized using biological anthropology with mechanisms such as “Out of Africa” and the “multi-regional evolution” debates. Researchers in the field are trying to explain the causes of variations in human race and hence culture due to geographical variations as well as other factors. In contrast cultural ...Download file to see next pagesRead More