INTRODUCTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY

UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA SARAWAK
SSF1173: INTRODUCTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY

LECTURE NAME: DR JUNA LIAU
NAME: ILMAN BIN HUSHARY (75036)
ASSIGNMENT: INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT (DIGITAL BOOKLET)
BOOKLET NAME: INTRODUCTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY (LU 1-LU13)



LU 1: WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY?
KEY CONCEPTS:

1. ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology is discipline of infinite curiosity about human beings. The term comes from the Greek,
Anthropos for ‘man’ and ‘human’ and logos for ‘study’. Anthropology focuses on the study of differences
and similarities with both biological and cultural. (Ember and Ember, 2015). Every parts on this world
contains humas populations is the interest to anthropological study and Anthropologist want to discover
human, human change, and the biological and cultural of human.
The study of Anthropology comes with their discipline which are about human beings in this world, such
as:

a. Sociology
b. Psychology
c. Political science
d. Economics
e. History
f. Human biology
g. Philosophy literature

Figure 1: The variety study of Anthropology

Source: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/anthro_res_rpt/

2. FIELDS ON ANTHROPOLOGY
There are 4 majors of fields on anthropology, such as:

a. Biological anthropology
Biological anthropologists carry out systematic studies of the non-cultural aspects of humans and near-
humans. Non-cultural refers to all of those biological characteristics that are genetically inherited in
contrast to learned. Near-human is a category that includes monkeys, apes, and the other primates as
well as our fossil ancestors. The primary interest of most biological anthropologists today is human
evolution; they want to learn how our ancestors changed through time to become what we are today.

Biological anthropologists also are interested in understanding the mechanisms of evolution and genetic
inheritance as well as human variation and adaptations to different environmental stresses. (Dennis
O’niel, 2012.)

Figure 2: The studies of Biological Anthropology

Source: https://slideplayer.com/slide/14340652/

b. Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropologists are interested in learning about the cultural aspects of human societies all over
the world. They usually focus their research on such things as the social and political organizations,
marriage patterns and kinship systems, subsistence and economic patterns, and religious beliefs of
different societies. Most cultural anthropologists study contemporary societies rather than ancient
ones. (Dennis O’niel, 2012.)

Figure 3: The variety of culture in the world, study of Cultural Anthropology

Source: https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Bonvillain-Cultural-Anthropology-2nd-
Edition/PGM232949.html

c. Linguistic anthropology

Linguistic anthropologists study the human communication process. They focus their research on
understanding such phenomena as the physiology of speech, the structure and function of languages,
social and cultural influences on speech and writing, nonverbal communication, how languages
developed over time, and how they differ from each other. (Dennis O’niel, 2012.)

Figure 4: The talk about linguistic anthropology and share about different language.

Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-linguistic-anthropology-1691240

d. Archeology
Archaeologists are interested in recovering the prehistory and early history of societies and their
cultures. They systematically uncover the evidence by excavating, dating, and analyzing the material
remains left by people in the past. Archaeologists are essentially detectives who search through many
thousands of pieces of fragmentary pots and other artifacts as well as environmental data in order to
reconstruct ancient life ways. (Dennis O’niel, 2012.)

Figure 5: Santubong archeological site. Visited by Datuk Amar Abang Johari in 2016.

Source: The Borneo Post, https://www.theborneopost.com/2016/12/08/making-santubong-an-archaeological-site/

3. HOLISTIC APPROACH IN ANTHROPOLOGY
Holistic is the perspective on the human condition such as mind, body, individuals, society, and the
environment and even define one another. For example, In Pakistan, a young women raped by a gang
and classified as gang rape. This case was explained by Sally Merry, an anthropologist, with the relate to
holistic approach explanation, she said the gang rape was authorized by higher authorities because it is a
cultural norm for socially higher class that men power than women. This case has the connection
between human actions, environment and society. (Lumen Learning, Holism in Anthropology)

LU 2: PERSPECTIVE AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS
1. EVOLUTION

Evolution is theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living
things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are
due to modifications in successive generations. The theory of evolution is one of the fundamental
keystones of modern biological theory. (Francisco Jose Ayala, 2021) In anthropology, there are 3 types of
evolution, such as:

a. The human lineage
b. Social evolution
c. Cultural evolution

Figure 6: The human lineage

Source: https://mayasanthro.weebly.com/theory-of-evolution.html

Figure 7: The social evolution

Source: http://daalmekaala.blogspot.com/2016/07/social-evolution.html?m=1

Figure 7: The culture evolution, followed by generation and modern change.

Source: http://phys.org

2. FUNCTIONALISM

Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is the doctrine that what makes something a mental state of a
particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but rather on the way it functions, or the
role it plays, in the system of which it is a part. This doctrine is rooted in Aristotle's conception of the
soul, and has antecedents in Hobbes's conception of the mind as a “calculating machine”, but it has
become fully articulated (and popularly endorsed) only in the last third of the 20th century. (Janet Levin,
2018). There are 2 main stands of functionalism on anthropology, by Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown
and Bronislaw Malinowski, such as:

a. Malinowski functionalism – ethnography and needs functionalism
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronisław_Malinowski

Figure 8: Malinowski Functionalism

Source: https://studylib.net/doc/7466020/functionalism---anthropology

b. Structural functionalism – Raddliffe-Brown

Source: https://prabook.com/web/alfred.radcliffe-brown/3778180

3. Structural functionalism
Structural functionalism, in sociology and other social sciences, a school of thought according to which
each of the institutions, relationships, roles, and norms that together constitute a society serves a
purpose, and each is indispensable for the continued existence of the others and of society as a whole.
In structural functionalism, social change is regarded as an adaptive response to some tension within the
social system. (Brian Duignan, 2020)

4. Structuralism
Structuralism, in cultural anthropology, the school of thought developed by the French anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss, in which cultures, viewed as systems, are analyzed in terms of the structural
relations among their elements. According to Lévi-Strauss’s theories, universal patterns in cultural
systems are products of the invariant structure of the human mind. (Surabhi Sinha, 2018).

LU 3: ETHNOGRAPHY AND FIELD METHODS
KEY CONCEPTS:

1. ETHICS IN ATHROPOLOGY
The concern of anthropologists to produce research that is ethically sound has grown in the past several
decades. Originally, when conducting ethnographic field work, anthropologists weren't particularly
concerned with ethical dilemmas and the impact of their research on the people that they were
studying. Besides the people being observed and researched, anthropologists must consider the impact
that their research will have on themselves, and act accordingly in an ethical manner. (Explorable.com,
Aug 11, 2015).

Figure 9: The Anthropologist talk to the people just like friend because the ethics of anthropology.

Source: https://buildcreate.com/on-anthropology-ethics-and-practice/

2. ETHNOGRAPHY
Ethnography, descriptive study of a particular human society or the process of making such a study.
Contemporary ethnography is based almost entirely on fieldwork and requires the complete immersion
of the anthropologist in the culture and everyday life of the people who are the subject of his study.
Ethnography produces an account such as book, an article or a film. (Britannica, 2020)

3. ETHNOLOGY
Ethnology is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different
peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural
anthropology). Ethnology uses ethnographic data to build models, test hypotheses, and create
theories that enhance understanding of how social and cultural systems works.

Figure 10: A museum of ethnology at Osaka, Japan.

Source: https://www.kanpai-japan.com/osaka/national-museum-ethnology-minpaku

4. FIELD TECHNIQUES
All anthropological field methods can be grouped into five basic categories: material observation,
biological observation, behavioral observation, direct communication, and participant-observation. All
five types of field methods involve observation, including the use of any of the five human senses to
acquire information about the environment.

LU 4: CULTURE AND CULTURE CHANGE
KEY CONCEPTS:

1. CULTURE
Cultural anthropologists study how people who share a common cultural system organize and shape the
physical and social world around them, and are in turn shaped by those ideas, behaviors, and physical
environments.

2. CULTURE RELATIVISM
Cultural relativism is the idea that beliefs are affected by and best understood within the context of
culture. It is a theory and a tool used by anthropologists and social scientists for recognizing the natural
tendency to judge other cultures in comparison to their own and for adequately collecting and analyzing
information about other cultures, without this bias. (iresearchnet.com)

3. ETHNOCENTRISM
Ethnocentrism means you use your own culture as the center and evaluate other cultures based on it.
You are judging, or making assumptions about the food of other countries based on your own norms,
values, or beliefs. (Khan.acedemy.org)

Figure 11: The cultural ethnocentrism

Source: http://filosofiaamartillazosblog.wordpress.com

4. ETHNOGENESIS
The term ethnogenesis is used to describe the process by which an ethnic group or nation (in the older
sense of “people” and not “state”) is formed. There are many cases of ethnogenesis recorded in history.
A case in point is the emergence of the Métis, in the valley of the Red River in what is now Manitoba.
The descendants of 18th-century French-speaking fur traders working for the trading companies plying
the Canadian and American interior for furs and indigenous wives, the Métis emerged as a distinct
cultural entity in the 18th century, with a distinct culture that was a hybrid of French-Canadian and

indigenous culture and a distinct language that was a Creole admixture of the French and Cree language.
(iresearchnet.com)

Figure 12: The Antes ethnogenesis at Avar, Goth, Khazar, Pechenegs, Polovtsy.
Source: https://ms.delachieve.com/apa-yang-ethnogenesis-ethnogenesis-eastern-slav/

LU 5: NARRIAGE AND FAMILY
KEY CONCEPTS:

1. EXTENDED FAMILY
Extended families consist of several generations of people and can include biological parents and their
children as well as in-laws, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Extended families are typical of
collective cultures where all family members are interdependent and share family responsibilities
including childrearing roles (Waites, 2009).

Figure 13: The extended family

Source: https://medium.com/@arm.in/do-people-care-about-the-extended-family-7e0828062575

2. FAMILY
Family is a group of people related either by consanguinity or affinity. The purpose of families is to
maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Ideally, families would offer predictability,
structure, and safety as members mature and participate in the community.

3. MARRIAGE
Marriage, a legally and socially sanctioned union, usually between a man and a woman, that is regulated
by laws, rules, customs, beliefs, and attitudes that prescribe the rights and duties of the partners and
accords status to their offspring (if any). The universality of marriage within different societies and
cultures is attributed to the many basic social and personal functions for which it provides structure,
such as sexual gratification and regulation, division of labour between the sexes, economic production
and consumption, and satisfaction of personal needs for affection, status, and companionship.
(Britannica)

LU 6: RELIGION AND BELIEF SYSTEM
KEY CONCEPTS:

1. BELIEF
A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition about the world is true. In
epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be
either true or false.

Figure 14: The religional belief

Source: https://gosouth.co.za/on-freedom-of-religion-and-the-right-to-question-religious-beliefs-and-practices/

2. RELIGION
Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews,
texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural,
transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely
constitutes a religion.

Figure 15: The variety of religion in this world

Source: https://www.liveworksheets.com/worksheets/en/Social_Science/Religions/Religion_yg91151cl

3. RITUAL

A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to
a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious
community. Rituals are characterized, but not defined, by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-
governance, sacral symbolism, and performance

Figure 16: The Islam ritual, called Solat.

Source: https://pakistan.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_pf/features/2017/04/07/feature-03

LU7 AND LU 8: ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AND LIVELIHOOD
KEY CONCEPTS:

1. MARKET EXCHANGE
Exchange is the transfer of things between social and actors. Things can be human or animal, material or
immaterial, words or things. The actors can be individuals, groups, or being such as gods and spiritual.

Figure 17: The Market Exchange

Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-are-exchange-systems-170817

2. MARKET PRINCIPLE
Market principle dominating in this world capitalist economy. It governs te distribution of means of
production such as land, labour, natural resources, technology and capital.

3. RECIPROCITY
Reciprocity is exchange between social equals, who are normally related by kindship, marriage or
others. This is dominant in the more egalitarian societies which are among forages, cultivators and
pastoralist. There are 3 degrees of reciprocity: generelized, balanced and negative.

Figure 18: The reciprocity in market

Source: https://www.dignifiedpacific.com/hello/what-is-reciprocity-generosity-1st-eden-seminars

4. REDISTRIBUTION
In cultural anthropology and sociology, redistribution refers to a system of economic exchange involving
the centralized collection of goods from members of a group followed by the redivision of those goods
among those members. The example of redistribution is potlatches.

Figure 19: The distribution (selling) vegetables and fruits in Zanzibar

Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/culturalanthropology/chapter/economic-organization-distribution-2/

LU 9: POLITICAL SYSTEM AND SOCIO-POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
KEY CONCEPT:

1. POLITIC
Political anthropology is a subfield of sociocultural anthropology, but like anthropology as a whole, it
remains immune to precise delimitation. The core of political anthropology is the comparative,
fieldwork-based examination of politics in a broad range of historical, social, and cultural settings.
Today, it is common to see political anthropologists combine ethnographic work with history. (Christian
Krohn-Hansen, 2015)

2. POLITICAL POWER
Power is the crux of politics, local, national, and international. Since the beginning of human power has
been occupying the central position in human relations. To comprehend international politics and
relations, studying the concept of power in political science is a must. The relation between the state
and power is very close. In the words of Hartman, power lurks in the background of all relations
between sovereign states.

Figure 20: The political power to society

Source: https://www.wfdd.org/tags/political-power

3. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
Organizational politics refers to a variety of activities associated with the use of influence tactics to
improve personal or organizational interests. Studies show that individuals with political skills tend to do
better in gaining more personal power as well as managing stress and job demands, than their politically
naive counterparts. They also have a greater impact on organizational outcomes. (Michael Jarret, 2017)

Figure 21: The political parties or organization in Malaysia.

Source: http://www.mcgkl.org/Lectures+%26+Excursions+-+Recent+reviews_298_1.htm

4. SOCIO-POLITIC
Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how power and
oppression operate in society across micro to macro levels of analysis.

LU 10: RACE AND ETHNICITY
KEY CONCEPTS:

1. ETHNICITY AND RACE
Ethnicity, as defined in the public domain, is "the cultural characteristics that connect a particular group
or groups of people to each other". Twenty-first-century anthropologists, however, are likely to
complicate simple notions of ethnicity, or they might refuse to accept a general definition of the concept
without first demanding accounts of the particular formation of an ethnic identity in a unique place and
time. As the social corollary of race, "ethnic" (ethnicity as a unique term does not emerge in the United
States until the 1950s) initially served to reinscribe physical notions of racial, and in some cases national,
identity onto groups of people often naively assumed to have a shared cultural, historical, or even
evolutionary past. (JRank articles)

Figure 21: The variety of ethnicity and race

Source: http://researchdesignreview.com

2. INEQUALITY (ETHNICITY AND RACE)
Inequality refers to the phenomenon of unequal and/or unjust distribution of resources and
opportunities among members of a given society. The term inequality may mean different things to
different people and in different contexts. Moreover, inequality encompasses distinct yet overlapping

economic, social, and spatial dimensions. (Sin Yee Koh, 2020)

3. RACISM
Racism is the belief that some “races” are inferior to others. In a society composed of people with
noticeably different physical features, such as difference of skin color, racism is almost invariably
associated with social stratification. Those “races” considered inferior make up a larger proportion of
the lower social classes or castes. (Ember and Ember, 2015)

4. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic
factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived
power (social and political).

Figure 22: A demontration at Europe about Black Nurses Lives Matter because of racism.

Source: http://theguardian.com

Figure 23: The social stratification at South Africa

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Social-Stratification-in-South-Africa_fig4_46449524

LU 11: GENDER AND SEX
KEY CONCEPTS:

1. GENDER
Gender in societies are only 2, which are men and women only. Gender is assigned at birth based on
external biological attributes. The division into just two genders is very common cross-culturally. (Ember
and Ember, 2015)

2. GENDER ROLES
A gender role is a set of societal norms dictating what types of behaviors are generally considered
acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on their actual or perceived sex. These are
usually centered around opposing conceptions of femininity and masculinity, although there are myriad
exceptions and variations. (Lumen Learning).

Figure 23: The gender roles of men and women

Source: https://medium.com/@ahhaoah/my-mother-a7f4e90806d8

3. SEX
Sex is observable physical characteristics that distinguish the two kinds of human beings, females and
males, needed for reproduction. (Lavenda and Schultz 2015, 375). Mostly experienced as dimorphic,
genetic or hormonal factors produce ambiguous external genitalia. So, there are some ways biologically
in which we might talk about a male-female continuum, or even contemplate other-sex categorizations.

4. SEXUALITY
Sexuality here they mean sexual nature is not a kind of secondary embellishment of what is at root
asexual. An asexual human being is an abstraction.

Figure 24: Sexuality of gender and sex

Source: https://archive.discoversociety.org/2016/12/06/focus-critical-perspectives-in-gender-and-sexuality/

LU 12 AND LU 13: APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY
KEY CONCEPTS:

1. LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY
Linguistic anthropology is a branch of anthropology that studies the role of language in the social lives of
individuals and communities. Linguistic anthropology explores how language shapes communication.
Language plays a huge role in social identity, group membership, and establishing cultural beliefs and
ideologies. (Richard Nordquist, 2019)

Figure 25: The Cristian women talk with 2 Muslims women in linguistic anthropology

Source: http://linguisticanthropology.org

2. FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY
Forensic anthropology is the speciality in anthropology that is devoted to helping solve crimes and
identifiying human remains, usually by applying knowledge of physical anthropology. It is attracting
increasing attention by the public and an increasing number of practitioners. (Ember and Ember, 2015).

Figure 26: An investigation on human bones in forensic anthropology

Source: http://www.fresnostatenews.com/2019/01/31/forensic-anthropology-and-the-stories-in-the-bones/

3. MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Medical anthropology is a subdiscipline of social anthropology focused on studies of illness, healing,
medical care, and biotechnologies across societies. Today, medical anthropology has become a site
within anthropology where wide-ranging issues crosscut – classical interests in local forms of medical
knowledge and practice, the development of new biotechnologies and new forms of medicalization of
human experience, reproductive technologies and the reshaping of kinship, the body and disciplinary
practices, global inequalities in access to care, globalization of diseases (with HIV/AIDS a critical site for
anthropology) and responses, emerging forms of governmentality enacted through medical institutions,
critical studies of how race, ethnicity, and gender are embedded in medical knowledge and practice,
violence and human suffering, pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical lifestyles – these and many other
issues have become core to what now constitutes medical anthropology. (Harvard Medical School)

Figure 27: A medical anthropologist in west Africa gives a health advices due to Zika pandemic at
Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire

Source: https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-health/2016/03/11/zika-qa-medical-anthropologist/

4. ENVIROMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Environmental anthropology focuses on issues relating to the interaction of humans with their
environments, at the local, regional and global levels, particularly focusing on how to understand and
alleviate the degradation of the environment. (Ember and Ember, 2015).

Figure 28: An environmental anthropology applied

Source: https://anthropology.stanford.edu/research-projects/environmental-anthropology

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