Talk:Anthropology

This article is using the common scientific time system mentioned in Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Scientists use the BP method of dating, especially when using radiometric dates or thermoluminescence dates, which are what are in use in this article. Whoever keeps changing them to B.C. is being inconsistent and substantially changing the dates to make them wrong. They are put off by 2000 years by doing this. The citations used to establish the dates are also then misused. The dates for early humans in Ethiopia/Omo are around 200,000-265,000BP. NOT BC. It's the rare anthropologist who uses AD/BC and this is an article about anthropology. Please do not edit the dates, keep them consistent.--Levalley (talk) 15:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

The study of "Man"??

I suggest modifying this to "the study of humanity." There are not a lot of anthropologists out there who would refer to anthropology as the study of "Man" these days, for good reason.

I can help, but I'm overwhelmed

Hi. I'm a graduate student (interdisciplinary, with one area of focus in anthropology). I saw the request for an expert. Besides having focused on this area for my graduate work, I would be able to get in touch with experts who might not otherwise edit wikipedia - but I'm new at wiki editing, and I want to make sure my changes would be accepted by the many communities that are now paying attention to this article. I'll take a closer look to see what I can do, but please let me know how I can help. Earthliz (talk) 20:44, 16 April 2010 (UTC)earthliz

Hi. I'm well versed in anthropology too (just about to have a meeting about fieldwork, exciting!) i'm up for improving this page, but it will take work. I think Ingold and Erikksen are good places to start, as they have a verbose and eloquent grasp of what anthropology is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.149.96 (talk) 07:59, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Someone should create a new article

Is there anyone who has specialization in Sociology and Anthropology?

If there is, someone should create a new article on how similar sociology and anthropology are. Sociology and Anthropology are so similar to each other especially with Cultural Anthropology.

I cannot believe that no one has created an article talking about their similarities and none of the Sociology and Anthropology articles mention their very close relationship together.

If anyone has specialization in both fields or at least know them very well, please someone or people should create an article talking about how they are so similar to each other and how Cultural Anthropology is almost a duplicate study of Sociology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Canto2009 (talk • contribs) 20:43, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

It's an interesting topic, but would probably count as original content, which isn't quite what wikipedia is about. The similarity between anthropology and sociology is probably related to the latter predominating in continental Europe. Whereas sociology did-away with its less credible scientific bits in the late 19th century, anthropology, to me, seems more resolutely scientific (yet, without drawing upon positivism, which is a bit odd.. Perhaps it's more like psychoanalysis in that wholly metaphysical sense?). The other thing I'd have to say on the topic is that sociology is less anthropomorphic subject (ie. it is more anti/post-humanist) after the influence of the better nuggets of post-structuralist thought, particularly Michel Foucault... --Tomsega (talk) 18:31, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Changes to final paragraph

I've undone the edits I made to the final paragraph. I've decided it's pointless (and useless) to try and put them in. The entire article is disorganized, has no main outline, follows no train of thought and makes odd claims such as "such and such book is a classic", without any kind of rational whatsoever. I thought that what I put in was much more common sense and less extravagant than many of the things said in the article - however, here's the dialogue between me and another editor about those edits (from my talk page):

First paragraph

Is not too bad. But is there a reason why this article keeps coming back to anthropologists as opposed to anthropology? At any rate, the first paragraph is passable.

Incorporate as many parts of anthropology as possible

Over the past few weeks, I've spoken to a lot of colleagues about what's happened in anthropology in the last 30-40 years (some of them go back that far). Everyone agrees that anthropology has either attracted new disciplinary fields to publish and convene inside the AAA, but that the early focus (in the 1950's at least) on the four fields is part of why anthropology now has so many distinct sections or units. These include: Ethnology, Environmental, Archaeology, Africanist, Feminist, Political and Legal, Biological, Museum, Educational, Culture and Agriculture, Evolutionary Anthropology (which includes many people from molecular biology and related sciences, many of them Primatologists), Cultural, Middle Eastern, Anthropological Sciences (another group trained in both anthropology and other sciences, not necessarily related to evolution, for example, allied to forensics), East Asian, Humanistic, Latin American and Caribbean, Medical, Linguistics, Psychological, Anthropology of Consciousness, Europe, Food and Nutrition, North American, Religion, Work, Urban and National/Transnational, Visual, Practice of Anthropology (aka Applied). These are the subgroups in American anthropology (British anthropology has fewer sections). I listed them more or less in the order they're on the AAA page, and bolded the traditional four "subfields". There is also, obviously, a General Anthropology section.

If you're wondering where primatology is, in the above schema, it's in Biological, which has its own subgroups. Ethnomusicology and ethnopoetics are organized in two places (at least), Ethnology (which is huge in and of itself) and Humanistic.

One thing I wanted to pull out of this list is that one way anthropology has always used to organized itself when it tries to simplify its work, is regional. Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia have apparently been incorporated into the "indigeneous" section, presumably the only large land mass in that section is Australia. This is an extremely important way that anthropology has proceeded and organized itself, since many anthropologists have specialized in "everything about one place," when possible.

I want the article to be readable by people who know little or nothing about anthropology, and to that end, have looked at all my introductory textbooks (I must have 35-30, publishers are generous with these things). The four "subfield" approach is mentioned in all of them, sometimes very briefly. Additional "subfields" are mentioned in most of them, depending on which subfield the textook is in (and there are only a couple of general anthropology textbooks at the introductory level).

So one of my goals is to better integrate this page with the various regional projects, and to have a list of the regions (and subregions) somewhere, and get Anthro Project tags on appropriate pages about regions. I'd like to have all of the above fields have articles and be under the "See Also" section (we don't have to mention every single one of them in the lead, but working more of them into the body of the article would be good.

One more thing: I really think we need a separate page on Anthropologists. That's where all the stuff about particular anthropologists goes, as well as a discussion of the rather well-known fact that one need not be trained in anthropology to be an anthropolgist (either academically, in terms of publishing, or in terms of findings). So, someone like George Collier (sometimes called the founder of Psychological Anthropology and a chief editor in anthropology monographs for 40 years, professor of anthropology at Stanford for more than 30 years - and that's a program with fairly high rankings), had a doctorate in psychology, but was hired as an anthropologist after he did extensive fieldwork with the Menominee (a Native American group). Also, there are a large number of authors who anthropologists quote as if they are anthropologists or about whom anthropologists say "provides one of the best ethnographic accounts on X," when that person is a novelist or a filmmaker or documentarian whose work contributed to preserving visual or other aspects of a particular culture (like Camus and his Black Orpheus). Thor Hyderdahl is listed here on wikipedia as an ethnographer (which he certainly was) and the number of times he's cited in anthropological works (even if just to argue with him, although recently, sometimes to vindicate some of his theories) is larger than many living academic anthropologists.

I'm not proposing any huge changes right away, just a gradual reconstruction of this page as we add subpages. My own enthusiasms were leading me to doing the regional work first (most anthropologists belong to both a theoretical subfield and a regional subfield, if one wanted to study the entire planet, one would need to belong to a lot of associations and read a lot of journals - each of these subfields has lots of publications). So I'm agreeing with SLRubenstein that we should call the four "subfields" fields, so that the word "subfield" is available for all the others. Nearly all the others can easily be subsumed under one of the four main fields (although not always; consciousness is a big exception). Some of the subfields are actually methods (like the science group) and used through the four fields, but perhaps a table with brief descriptions (near the bottom) could clarify this. If you are wondering why I'm so excited about including all the parts of anthropology that we can, it's because one never knows which parts of the field are going to be coming up with the most interesting things, at any given moment. If you get a chance, take a look at the Science section's homepage (Carol Ember, who should have her own page if she doesn't) is the president-elect - scroll down to their news section (courtesy of Texas A & M, interesting stuff there):

Science news in anthropology from Texas A & M

Or look at the awards given in Biological Anthropology this year (who can resist wanting to know more about orangutans):

Orangutan research (yes, that's how they spell it)

Wouldn't it be great if we could have an anthropological news box on this page and promote various current stories from all fields/subfields (whatever we end up calling them)?

FYI

If people who watch this page are also interested in how Wikipedia is governed, be sure to check out this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Advisory_Council_on_Project_Development . Slrubenstein | Talk 16:29, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm always interested in how Wikipedia works.LeValley 20:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

First section is much improved

I'm not good at following edit histories, but the opening paragraphs have evolved over the last year, and in the right direction. There is some clarity here for the average encyclopedia reader, and starts well. Good job!LeValley 20:32, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The citations are strong and actually quite interesting (the link to the Renaissance roots of anthropology is an excellent choice). I see the "Be Bold" instruction at the top of the article - and I'm guessing it's there because this article is really long, goes into detail about certain subfields but not others, meaning that those sections should be moved either to their subfield pages or to their own pages (Anthropology across all nations needs to be somewhere else - article makes it look as if there's been a great deal of research and consensus about anthropology-by-nationality, when in fact, it's a fairly minor topic in the discipline as a whole, and there is little consensus about it). I'm not feeling bold at all today, but perhaps in future I will.LeValley 21:03, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Social Vs Cultural

are two very distinct traditions reflecting european vs american understandings respectively. that the latter is inadmissable as a qualification to an lse phd programme is testament to their difference. social is rooted in the british and french tradition of studying social systems, the way society works. cultural is more interested in a geertz inspired explication of cultural difference. the former is more of a social science, the latter more of a humanity, and this page should reflect that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.140.107 (talk) 13:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to editors to vote/discuss definition of science in Talk:Science

There has been an extensive discussion on the Talk:Science of what the lead definition of the science article should be. I suspect this might be an issue that may be of interest to the editors of this page. If so, please come to the voting section of the talk science page to vote and express your views. Thank you. mezzaninelounge (talk) 18:34, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

reconstruction of african history

given that anthropology is a method of reconstructing histroy how can it be used toreconstruct african history —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.0.4.246 (talk) 08:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)