Q1) How do you situate Anthropology in Social Science?
Anthropology is a global discipline involving humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Anthropology builds upon knowledge from natural sciences, including the discoveries about the origin and evolution of Homo sapiens, human physical traits, human behavior, the variations among different groups of humans, how the evolutionary past of Homo sapiens has influenced its social organization and culture, and from social sciences, including the organization of human social and cultural relations, institutions, social conflicts, etc.[24][25] Early anthropology originated in Classical Greece and Persia and studied and tried to understand observable cultural diversity, such as by Al-Biruni of the Islamic Golden Age. As such, anthropology has been central in the development of several new (late 20th century) interdisciplinary fields such as cognitive science, global studies, and various ethnic studies. Anthropology is defined as the study of human beings. It is the search for the existence and the way humans behave and live in a society. Situating Anthropology in social sciences would probably be the best category that we can put in into.
Anthropology not only deals about the evolution of humans or any other creature but also studies about their culture, behaviour, language, religion and all other social and cultural activities that humans involve themselves in. Cultural anthropology tells us about the way society interacts with each other and what rituals they follow to live as a family. Linguistic anthropology makes us find the types of languages being followed by humans and animals in the world and their origin.
Biological anthropology can be divided into two categories
- Human palaeontology – the emergence of human and their later evolution.
- Human variation – it tells us how humans vary from each other in appearance and culture.
Anthropology of Economics – it tells us how living beings utilize the resources they produce for themselves. Other fields where anthropology can be applied are medical science, life science, political science. Therefore it is without any doubt the most appropriate argument to put anthropology into social sciences as it helps us in explaining the real meaning of different types of fields of Anthropology and the way human beings have survived in the world.
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