Brief overview of Anthropology

Anthropology is the scientific study of humans, especially of human societies, human cultures, human history and their attributes such as ethnicities, language, demeanors, and frequent practices. Anthropology aims to study all aspects of human societies and the mechanisms that form them and continuously build them. Just as any science, Anthropology subdivides in four sectors: Biological Anthropology (concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their extinct hominin ancestors, and related non-human primates, particularly from an evolutionary perspective), Linguistic Anthropology (explores how language shapes communication, forms social identity and group membership, organizes large-scale cultural beliefs and ideologies, and develops a common cultural representation of natural and social worlds), Social Anthropology (focuses on behavior and its patterns amongst cultures and societies—both contemporary and past ones), and Archeology (the study of the past such as ancient human civilizations.

What started European interest in Anthropology was the colonization of different continents by European colonizers such as the Americas, Africa, Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. When European colonizers arrived at these places, they were quite perplexed on the difference in mannerism, clothing, language, behavior, and overall culture these civilizations possessed which was quite different from the consensual christian European traditions that were prominent in Europe at the time, this lead to the field to start and led to curious people to study the distinction between their culture and the newly discovered one.

Major schools of thought in anthropology include Functionalism, which focuses on how cultural practices meet social needs; Structuralism, which analyzes culture through underlying systems of meaning; Cultural Materialism, which emphasizes the role of the environment and technology; Cultural Relativism, the idea that cultures should be understood on their own terms.

Lastly, the process and discussion of decolonization involves the use of modern experiments and results (supported by research) to cleanse—or perhaps modify—the narrative of European colonization in anthropological views and concepts, which as one might imagine, contain biases based on the anthropology of their time. There are colonial legacies that are to be acknowledged, recognizing that anthropology's foundations are rooted in colonial extraction and Indigenous dispossession, and that these histories continue to shape present inequalities. This is achieved by shifting from extractive research to ethical, collaborative, and participatory methods that empower communities, ensure they benefit from the research, and give them greater say in topic selection and findings. Hope you enjoy this succinct field and opens your perspective on fellow humans.