1 Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology?
Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference. The members themselves decide what they can do, individually or as a group, to make the world a better place.”
—Jane Goodall, With Love, 1994
How I became an anthropologist.
In college, I took a sociology class, and the only thing I remembered from it was the Milgram study where people gave other people electrical shocks just because a man in a white lab coat said to. We learned that on the first day. Unfortunately, I didn’t perform very well in that class, so, I decided to take anthropology the next semester. I thought about what I could do to improve my academic performance and this “easy A” anthropology class would be my testing ground. “What would an academic advisor tell me to do?” I wondered, trying to get an outsider’s perspective (without actually bothering to get an outsider’s perspective). “Well,” I thought, “I should probably read the book and take notes on each paragraph as I go. I should come to class, pay attention, and take lots of notes there too.” To my surprise, my simple plan worked like a charm and that was a revelation for me. It didn’t hurt that the information was fascinating, shocking, and even sometimes revolting (people tend to remember emotional stuff). The student who sat next to me who got Bs and Cs asked me what my secret was, and I told him, “I read the book, take notes on everything, and come to class.” He seemed disappointed.
But that wasn’t everything. My next plan of action was to think about the information as it was presented. For instance, I would intentionally think, “Is that true?” “How does that relate to my history class?” “How did they test that?” This strategy also paid off and slowly things began to make more sense and I saw overlaps between different disciplines and became a more critical thinker.
And so, even though I was an English major, I accidentally earned a dual degree in anthropology because I had taken so many anthropology electives. I didn’t realize then that what I was doing was very anthropological. I got some distance from my issue by thinking of myself from an outside perspective. That is exactly what anthropologists do! They get try to distance themselves from their own cultural biases and automatic assumptions to see things differently. When I was thinking about how different subjects connected to anthropology I was thinking holistically. Anthropology is a holistic discipline, making connections between different parts of a culture, to understand how the whole system works. As it turns out, thinking like an anthropologist is not just helpful for understanding exotic peoples in strange, mysterious lands or discovering lost civilizations, but is a valuable tool for understanding oneself and for learning in general.
What is Anthropology?
Anthropology is the study of being human. While there are many different definitions of anthropology, I like this one, w