Introduction to Anthropology

SEXUALITY

Definition:

 It aims to critically investigate some of
life's most private and sometimes taken-
for-granted elements, locating sexual ac-
tions, desires, and relationships in specif-
ic historical and cultural settings.

Learning Unit 12 & 13:
Applied Anthropology

BUSINESS ANTHROPOLOGY
Definition:
 Business anthropology is defined by the great ma-
jority of guides as the application of anthropologi-
cal to business issues.
Main characteristics of business anthropology
 Focused on people and their groups
 Ethnographic research
 Thick Data
 Holistic thinking
 Socio-anthropological Analysis

LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY

 focuses on how people in differ-
ent cultures utilise language.

 Those that perform this type of
anthropology have had exten-
sive linguistics instruction.

 frequently study with individuals
who speak unwritten (or oral)
languages or languages that
are spoken by a small number
of people.

 study may entail devising a
method for writing a previously
unwritten text.

MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Definition

 a subfield of anthropology that uses social, cul-
tural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to
better understand the factors that influence
health and well-being (broadly defined), illness
experience and distribution, sickness preven-
tion and treatment, healing processes, therapy
management social relations, and the cultural
significance and use of pluralistic therapies.

Medical anthropologists study such issues as:
 Health ramifications of ecological “adaptation and maladaptation”.
 Popular health culture and domestic health care practices.
 Local interpretations of bodily processes.
 Changing body projects and valued bodily attributes.
 Perceptions of risk, vulnerability and responsibility for illness and health care.
 Risk and protective dimensions of human behavior, cultural norms and social institutions.

URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY

Definition

 the investigation of urban cultural systems
and identities, as well as the numerous politi-
cal, social, economic, and cultural influences
that create urban forms and processes.

 Anthropologists also questioned the defini-
tions of the words city and urban, which were
influenced by Western knowledge at the time.

 To avoid ethnocentrism, urban anthropolo-
gists investigated the social mechanisms and
cultural institutions that distinguish cities from
“primitive” societies and peasant communi-
ties, as well as Western and non-Western cit-
ies, using ethnographic methods, historical
analysis, and cross-cultural comparisons.

Learning Unit 14:
Anthropology in Malaysia

BUREAUCRACY AS KNOWLEDGE

- to study states, colonialism, companies, capital-
ism, churches, religion, and other socio-material
structures that have organized human life by at-
tending to the knowledge processes embedded
in their administrative procedures and routines.

CONSTRUCTION AS KNOWLEDGE

 The construction of process that happens through individual knowledge is
an active or social engagement. This implies that trainers should provide
learners opportunities to socially and individually engage in the process of
making meaning by using participatory methods.

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