Anthropology
Anthropology is the systematic study of humans, their societies, cultures, biology, and development across time and place.
Cultural anthropology: The study of contemporary human cultures, social life, and meaning through comparison and fieldwork. It examines how people make meaning and organize social life within anthropology’s broad study of humans.
Participant observation: A research method in which investigators take part in everyday activities while observing them. It lets ethnographers learn practices and meanings through sustained involvement in social settings.
Franz Boas: A German-born American scholar who helped establish modern anthropology and cultural relativism. His rejection of racial determinism and single-line cultural evolution reshaped American anthropology.
Medical anthropology: The study of health, illness, and healing as biological and culturally shaped phenomena. It applies anthropological perspectives to how people experience illness and interact with health systems.
Race: A historically changing system for classifying people, often based on perceived bodily traits and ancestry. Anthropological research has challenged biological race categories while examining their powerful social effects.
Archaeology: The study of past human societies through the material remains they left behind. It extends anthropological inquiry into societies known chiefly through objects, structures, and landscapes.
Ethnographic interview: A flexible conversation used to learn how people describe experiences, practices, and beliefs. Interviews complement observation by eliciting explanations and accounts in participants’ own terms.
Lewis Henry Morgan: An American lawyer and anthropologist known for comparative studies of kinship and social evolution. His influential evolutionary scheme exemplifies nineteenth-century anthropology’s theories of social development.
Forensic anthropology: The analysis of human skeletal remains to assist legal investigations and identify individuals. It applies knowledge of human biology to identification and investigation of deaths.
Ethnicity: A form of collective identity associated with shared ancestry, history, culture, or language. Anthropologists study how ethnic identities are formed, maintained, and transformed in social settings.