Social anthropology

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Social anthropology ( Latin socius 'companion' , ancient Greek ánthrōpos 'man' and logic ) is a sub-area of ethnology (earlier ethnology, today also social and cultural anthropology ). As a social science , they studied the man as a social being in social contexts today in both the 1300 world's  ethnic groups and indigenous peoples , etc. and in other collective life contexts, such as family and kinship associations, organizations, urban spaces This differs from the cultural anthropology ( ethnology of the German and European cultural area ), whereby some theoretical and methodological approaches of these two sub-areas of the discipline overlap.

The term “social anthropology” was used in German in the 1960s by the ethnologist Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann for a short time as an equivalent to the British social anthropology or French anthropologie sociale . In recent decades, however, the term “social anthropology” has experienced a rebirth in order to upgrade ethnologies cultivated in Europe compared to the North American-influenced international discipline cultural anthropology (for example through the establishment of the European Association of Social Anthropologists ) and thus a more competitive research landscape due to transnationalization and globalization To take into account. In the practice of research and teaching, however, both German and international social and cultural anthropologists work ethnologically, i. That is, they refer to humans as both culturally and socially shaped beings.

Social anthropology (UK)

The social anthropology ( English ) comes from the British research tradition. It appeared - from the 1960s - initially in German-speaking countries under the term “social anthropology”; over time, however, this was largely abandoned in favor of the terms ethnology or ethnosociology . In the course of globalization, including research and science, the term anthropology has been experiencing a renaissance in German-speaking countries for some time.

Cultural anthropology (USA)

In the US, on the other hand, there is cultural anthropology as a counterpart to ethno (socio) logy and social anthropology of European character, although its content has a lower affinity to sociology . Since the 1960s, however, cultural anthropology has also received increasing attention in Germany . Franz Boas - originally a professor of physical (= scientific or more specifically: biological) anthropology - who developed it from American anthropology from the mid-1930s onwards, is considered to be the pioneer of cultural anthropology . Until the 1940s, it was initially considered a branch of ethnology , before it was able to emancipate itself in the USA as an independent research area within (humanities) anthropologies .

Despite the formal identity of the name, the cultural anthropology is "not" congruent with the local cultural anthropology . (See there for similarities and differences.)

Older "social anthropology"

In German, however, "social anthropology" previously referred to, since the 1880s, a branch of physical anthropology that dealt with questions of the inheritance of characteristics within social groups. It flourished before National Socialism , when, like anthropology, it dealt with questions of definitions, relationships and properties and reproductive control of assumed "human races" on the basis of (scientifically refuted) race theories . She was looking for scientific recognition, i. H. the application of their statements by the historical and economic sciences, and political influence on state measures on a “ racial ” basis. At the beginning of the 1940s it fell silent, so that the term slowly became "free" later. However, it was the ethnologist Mühlmann, who worked on a biological basis during the Nazi era, who tried to feed exactly this term back into the German scientific landscape in the 1960s.

The most important representatives were:

  • Otto Ammon (1842-1916). Originally an engineer, the “race researcher” founded the “Anthropological Commission” in Karlsruhe in 1885.
  • Ludwig Woltmann (1871–1907), a doctor who, as an advocate of racist and social Darwinist theses, published the monthly magazine Politisch-Anthropologische Revue .

Contemporary social and cultural anthropology (ethnology)

General

The ethnology (social and cultural anthropology) has meanwhile broken away from the tradition of physical anthropology and represents a separate, social and cultural science subject. The sub-area of ​​social anthropology deals with the scientific analysis of the human being as a social being in a society or Group. In this context one speaks of social structure and interaction . The structure is what the concrete action is based on (e.g. family structure, company structure, political structure, world system), the social interaction describes the action itself, which takes place within the structures and possibly also changes them. So it is an interaction. Contrary to the western doctrine of individualism , humans tend to form communities and groups. These groups can be of very different nature - for example, ethnic groups , political groups or economic groups or social class as well as family or religious groups. Social structure and interaction are phenomena that exist both between and within these groups

These phenomena can be analyzed on different levels:

  • a macro level: one analyzes social phenomena in a larger context, for example social structure, networks and interaction on a global level; Globalization theories , world system theory , network analysis
  • a micro level: one analyzes social structures and behavior of a concrete, manageable community (for example a village community or a family). However, even when analyzing the micro level, the larger context (macro level) must not be disregarded. For example, a family does not live in a vacuum, but under certain political, structural and economic framework conditions.

There is currently [2016] a very strong overlap with the subject matter of ethnology , ethnosociology and sociology . What they have in common, for example, are the subjects of ethnicity or ethnic group , which differ from the term “ people ”, which was central to the previously important discipline of ethnology (ethnology). Methodologically, however, social anthropology is identical to ethnology - especially through the method of participatory observation as the ideal solution, which in turn distinguishes both from sociology. In this respect, the terms ethnology, cultural anthropology , social anthropology, or a combination of both (“cultural and social anthropology”) are to be understood synonymously.

Questions

Due to the breadth of the subject areas, there are many possible questions. Some of the most prominent are listed here:

  1. Power and rank: how does power work, how is it achieved and legitimized ? How do hierarchical structures arise and how are these reproduced or changed? An important representative of this school is Pierre Bourdieu .
  2. Identities : How are identities formed, both collective identities such as ethnic groups and individual identities.
  3. Gender: How are gender subdivisions made and what role do they play in a society? The binary gender categorization is not self-evident, there are third genders , for example in India the Hijras . The socio-anthropologically oriented gender studies ( gender studies ) deals with how these gender divisions come about and what social effects they have.
  4. Relationship : How are “relationship” and “ family ” constructed ? There is no known society that completely renounces family relationships, but the concrete meaning of family relationships for social organization varies.
  5. Rituals : Which rituals or ritual practices are important in a society and which structures are they based on? Which myths accompany or legitimize the rituals? Many are too "normal" for those who practice them to even be perceived as ritual. Someone who was invited to dinner in a European house and only used the fingers of his right hand instead of a knife and fork would violate unwritten rules more or less severely there (compare manners ). Which rules exist in a society or a group and why, and how and by whom they are designed and also changed, or by whom they are followed, manipulated or violated and why, is a further focus of social anthropological research.

See also

Portal: Ethnology  - Overview of Wikipedia content on the topic of ethnology
Portal: Folklore  - Overview of Wikipedia content on the topic of folklore

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chair of Social Anthropology: Social Anthropology. University of Friborg, Switzerland, 2020, accessed on March 13, 2020.
  2. ↑ In the Ethnographic Atlas by George P. Murdock , data records on exactly 1300 ethnic groups were recorded by the end of 2012 .