Anthropology is the scientific study of humankind, spanning human biological evolution, the archaeology of past societies, the diversity of living cultures, and the structure of human languages. It grew gradually out of Enlightenment era writing rather than from one founding text, and its fieldwork methods, living for extended periods inside the community being studied, were set largely by Bronislaw Malinowski's work in the 1910s and 1920s. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Central QuestionSourced to the subject's own accountWhat do the full range of human biological variation and cultural practice, studied comparatively across every society rather than assumed from any one, reveal about what is universal to being human and what is not? 1 ScopeSourced to the subject's own accountAnthropology is the holistic study of humanity, encompassing human biology and evolution, past and present cultures and societies, and the development of language, usually organized into biological, cultural, linguistic and archaeological branches. 1 SignificanceSourced to the subject's own accountFranz Boas, trained in physics and geography before turning to ethnography, established the four-field American model of anthropology and argued against the racial hierarchies common in nineteenth century social science, insisting each culture be understood on its own terms rather than ranked against a single standard of progress. 1 Disputed
Founded YearSourced to the subject's own accountEdward Burnett Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871) established the discipline's central concept of culture and is commonly cited as founding the modern academic discipline; institutional roots reach back earlier still, to the Ethnological Society of London (1843) and the Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris (1859). Anthropology
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Founded By
Tylor's Primitive Culture, published in 1871, is the year recorded as when the field was founded.
Source History of Anthropology (Wikipedia)
Boas is credited as founder of the modern American four-field tradition rather than of anthropology as such, which has older European roots.
Source History of Anthropology (Wikipedia)
Has Scientist
Source A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (Wikipedia)
Source Bronislaw Malinowski (Wikipedia)
Source Claude Levi-Strauss (Wikipedia)
Source Derek Freeman (Wikipedia)
Source Edward Burnett Tylor (Wikipedia)
Source Margaret Mead (Wikipedia)
Has Theory
Source Cultural Relativism (Wikipedia)
Studies
Source Ethnography (Wikipedia)
Source Kinship (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. History of Anthropology (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLead section
History of anthropology in this article refers primarily to the 18th- and 19th-century precursors of modern anthropology. The term anthropology itself, innovated as a Neo-Latin scientific word during the Renaissance, has always meant "the study of man".
- Founded By: Edward Burnett Tylor
- Founded By: Franz Boas
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