Showing posts with label Anthropology. Show all posts

Applied Anthropology and Action Anthropology

Nowadays, there are various applications of Anthropology. Mentioned below are some of its applications.

Anthropometry

Anthropometry is the science of measuring the different limbs of the body. It is an inevitable part of Physical Anthropology, and with its help various measurements of the limbs of the body are taken so as to know the proportions of the limbs. With this knowledge the physical anthropologists can give advice in respect of sitting arrangements in aeroplanes, railways, class rooms, offices etc.

Physical Anthropology is also useful in detecting criminals. With the knowledge of foot and hand prints it becomes easier to detect criminals as the types of foot and hand prints are never changed during man's life time. Similarly analyses of hair texture and blood groups also help in detecting criminals. The physical anthropologist can also advise with regard to finding out the father of the son born to an unmarried mother.

The population explosion is a great problem in India, Bangladesh and North Africa. Population explosion has become a menace to the whole mankind. Two-pronged strategy to produce more food as well as to control human population by way of green revolution and family planning programmes had been made to cope with this problem. The services of the cultural anthropologists are useful in the planning of these development programmes. Similarly for successful implementations of prohibition, family planning, adult education and various other development programmes the services of the cultural anthropologists are essential.

National disintegration is another erosive problem in India. The services of both the physical and cultural anthropologists are essential to help solve the problems of casteism, communalism, regionalism, racialism etc. Nowadays, the problems of labour management in various industries have been acute and labour strikes frequently take place. These problems could be mitigated to a great extent if the living and psychological conditions of labourers are studied earlier with the help of the cultural anthropologists.

Action Anthropology

It has been coined by Sol Tax. According to him an action anthropologist is to study the processes of change in the society and help the people to overcome the adverse effects of change and guide planning in such a way that the people do better in the process of change. Though it is an offshoot development from applied anthropology, it does not stop with the humanistic study as an applied anthropologist does with the natives and minority peoples.

Rather, the action anthropologists involve themselves intimately with anthropological problems and pursue their studies in a context of action. In such a study, the distinction between the pure research and the applied research generally disappears. The anthropologist accepts a problem as his own and proceeds through trial and error method.

Folklore

Folklore may be treated as one of the branches of Cultural Anthropology. But it has also been treated as a separate discipline. It is a science "which deals with the survivals of archaic beliefs and customs in civilized peoples. It embraces everything relating to ancient observances and customs, to the notions, beliefs, traditions, superstitions and prejudice of the common people. But also folk tales, songs, legends, myths, proverbs, riddles, folk music and folk dance as well as folk drama belong to the sphere of folklore"

Ethnolinguistics

Another branch of Cultural Anthropology is the Ethnolinguistics which is highly specialized. Ethnolinguistics (sometimes called cultural linguistics) is a field of linguistics which studies the relationship between language and culture, and the way different ethnic groups perceive the world. It is the combination between ethnology and linguistics. The former refers to the way of life of an entire community, i.e., all the characteristics which distinguish one community from the other. Those characteristics make the cultural aspects of a community or a society.

It is the study of human speech and of the various dead and living languages and dialects of the different groups of people of the world. By studying these anthropologist tries to find out the origin and development of the languages and their interrelationships. Then they are classified. The linguist also helps to unveil the men's past and the diffusion of their culture. In the American universities there is a growing trend to establish independent departments of ethnolinguistics. As a science the study of language is somewhat older than Anthropology. The two disciplines become closely associated in the early days of anthropological fieldwork, when anthropologists took the help of linguistics to study unwritten languages. An example is the way spatial orientation is expressed in various cultures. In many societies, words for the cardinal directions east and west are derived from terms for sunrise/sunset. The nomenclature for cardinal directions of Inuit speakers of Greenland, however, is based on geographical landmarks such as the river system and one's position on the coast. Similarly, the Yurok lack the idea of cardinal directions; they orient themselves with respect to their principal geographic feature, the Klamath River

Relation between Sociology & Anthropology

Sociology & Anthropology:
Anthropology – derived from 2 words Anthropos & logos – 1st means man and 2nd means science of study. Anthro is the study of development of the human race. Sociology is study of present society and Anthro is of past man. Anthro is divided into 3 parts (1) physical (2) prehistorical or cultural (3) social. 1 – deals with the bodily characteristics of early man. 2 – It studies about the cultural remains of the primitive people, the origin and development culture and also the culture of the living primitive people. 3 – What types of social institutions were there in primitive society and their development.

Anthro helps sociology to study past material so sociology is dependent on Anthro because the knowledge of the old enables us to study the present day situations better. Anthro too depends on sociology Malinonisky Morgan studied about primitive commission based on private property of our modern times.

Anthro studies about the primitive society of man and culture of old. It studies of society which small and static but – sociology studies about man and society of the present which has a vast area and its dynamic (studies the dynamic changing society). They are all anthropologists. Kroeber says "Anthro and Sociology are twin sisters". Hoebel "Sociology and Social anthro are in line, broadest senses one and the same". Even Pritchard "Sociology is a branch of social Anthro". Every social science must be related to society or else they would not be social sciences and now since social studies society therefore every social science must be related to society. "The Sociological attitude has tended towards practical and present. The anthropological towards pure understanding and the past" – Kluckhonh.

The Issue	Behavioural Approach	Post-Behavioural Approach
Nature of inquiry	Search for pure knowledge and theory	Search for applied knowledge and practice
Purpose of inquiry	Knowledge for knowledge sake; not interested in action	Relevance of knowledge to satisfy social needs and action for problem solving
Focus of study	- Micro level analysis, focus on small units - Process of decision making	Macro level analysis; focus on role of big units Content of the decision
Attitude towards Values	Value Neutral	Interested in the choice of values
Attitude towards social change	Interested in status quo, not interested in social change	Interested in social change for solving social problems

The splendour of the 'Dark Centuries'

The five centuries which passed between the decline of the first great Indian empire of the Mauryas and the emergence of the great classical empire of the Guptas has often been described as a dark period in Indian history when foreign dynasties fought each other for short-lived and ephemeral supremacy over Northern India. Apart from Kanishka's Indo-Central Asian empire which could claim to be similar in size and importance to has china, the parthians of Persia and to the contemporary Roman empire this period did lack the glamour of large empires. But this 'dark period' particularly the first two centuries AD was a period of intensive economic and cultural contact among the various parts of the Eurasian continent. Indian played a very active role in stimulating these contacts. Buddhism which has been fostered by Indian rulers since the days of Ashoka was greatly aided by the international connections of the Indo-Greeks and the Kushanas and thus rose to prominence in Central Asia. South India was establishing its important links with the West and with Southeast Asia in this period. These links especially those with southeast Asia, proved to be very important for the future course of Asian history.

But India it self experienced important social and cultural changes in this period. For centuries Buddhism had enjoyed royal patronage. This was partly due to the fact that the foreign rulers of India found Buddhism more accessible than orthodox Hinduism. The Vedic Brahmins had been pushed into the background by the course of historical development all though Hinduism as such did not experience a decline. On the contrary new popular cults arose around gods like Shiva, Krishna and Vishnu-Vasudeva who had played only a marginal role in an earlier age. The competition between Buddhism which dominated the royal courts and cities and orthodox Brahminism which was still represented by numerous Brahmin families every where left enough scope for these new cults to gain footholds of their own, of great importance for the further development of Hinduism and particularly for the Hindu idea of kingship was the Kushana rulers identification with certain Hindu gods - they were actually believed to attain a complete identity with the respective god after their death.

Religious legitimation was of greater importance to these foreign rulers than to other Indian kings. Menander's ashes had been distributed according to the Buddhist fashion and Kanishka was identified with Mithras but wima kadphises and Huvishka were closer to shiva as shown by the images on their coins. Huvishka's coins provide a regular almanac of the iconography of the early Shiva cult. The deification of the ruler which was so prevalent in the Roman and Hellenistic world as well as among the Iranians was thus introduced into India and left a mark on the future development of Hindu Kingship.

Another future of crucial importance for the future political development of India was the organization of the Shaka and Kushana Empires had been, but were based on the large-scale incorporation of local rulers. In subsequent centuries many regional Empires of India were organized on this pattern.

The most well-known contribution of the 'dark-period' was a course, to Indian art. After the early sculptures of the Mauryas which were greatly influenced by the Iranian style, a new Indian style, a new Indian style has fist emerged under Shungas and their successors in the Buddhist monuments of Bharhut and Sanchi which particularly showed a new style of relief sculpture. The merger of the Gandhara school of art, with its Graeco-Roman style and the Mathura school of art which included 'archaic' Indian elements and became the center of Indo-Kushana art, finally led to the rise of the Sarnath school of art. This school then set the pattern of the classical Gupta style.

Less-well-known, but much more important for the future development of Hindu society, was the compilation of the authoritative Hindu law books (dharmasastra), the foremost of them being the code of Manu which probably originated in the second or third century AD. After the breakdown of the Maurya and Shunga Empires, there must have been a period of uncertainty, which led to renewed interest in traditional social norms. These were then codified so as to remain inviolate for all times to come. If we add to this the resurgence of Sanskrit, as testified by Rudradaman's famous rock inscription of the second century AD. We see that this 'dark-period' actually contained all the element of the classical culture of the Gupta age, Thus the many splendoured and much maligned 'dark-period' was actually the harbinger of the classical age.

Indus And Vedic Civilisation

There is muc to be contrasted between the cultures of the Harappans and the Aryans. There are indeed a few points of similarities, but they are not of any significance. Why the points of contrast are more is primarily because of geographic location, economic activity and the religious practices followed by both the cultures. Far more important is the fact that the Aryans, with a plasticity of mind, made life vibrant; whereas, the Indus life looks more like stylized puppet show.

The plasticity of the Aryan mind was shown in the language as well as the way in which they adapted agricultural and settled life. The seals of the Indus Valley show that the pictographs remained statis, whereas, the Aryan language in the Rig Veda at places rises to musical levels. The success with which the Aryan writings were composed reveals the ability of the Aryan mind to grasp the mulitiple dimensions of human life. And language which exhibits immense potentialities in its vocabulary reveals that the community is full of potentialities. On the other hand, out of nearly 400 characters known to the Harappans only a few were repeated time and again.

The other manifestation of Aryan civilization, that is, its capacity to change and adapt itself, has given a continuity to Indian Civilization despite the absence of mighty empires. On the other hand, the Indus Valley people reached a blind alley and the never learnt anything from other civilizations like the Sumerian. Adaptability or ability to respond to challenges is the hallmark of any youthful civilization. The Indus civilization reached its senilithy by 2000 B.C. whereas the Aryan Civilization was full with creative dynamism.

Archaeology is the only source of our knowledge of the Harappan civilization, but information concerning the Vedic Aryans depends almost entirely on literary texts, which were handed down by the oral tradition. It is clear from the material remains that the Harappan civilization was in certain respects superior to that of the Aryans. In Particular it was a city civilization of a highly developed type, while by contrast city life was unfamiliar to the Aryans. The superiority of the Aryans lay in the military field. In which their use of the light horse chariot played a prominent part, or in literary exuberation.

Harappans were peace loving city-dwellers and good planners as is evident by grid pattern towns, elaborate drainage system, street lights, kelp-burnt brick houses, fortifications, granaries, baths and wells. The early Aryans were not city builders. Their way of life, nomad-pastoralists as theywere, was dominated by war like stock-breeding (they practiced a little agriculture) and migrations. City buildings etc. as a large-scale socio-economic activities is only much later mentioned in the later Vedic texts, epics and the Puranas.

The Harrapa culture is located in the Indus Valley and western India and its urbanization is based on a chalcolithic system with and absence of iron. Later Vedic society centering on the Ganges Valley from which the Harappan culture is largely absent owes its gradual urbanization to iron technology, the widespread domestication of the horse and the extension and intensification of plough agriculture. (Iron, horse and plough being nearly absent - some evidence in later Harappan sites).

The expansion and budding off of the Harappan system in the east as far as Alamgirpur (U.P.) and to the neighbouring areas was neither 'colonisation' nor was it 'political expansion' of any from, it was rather the expansion in terms of the permeations of the socio-economic and socio-cultural systems of Harappan society whereas, the Aryan advance towards eastern region - the Doab of the Ganges and Jamuna - was no doubt facilitated by their horse chariots and effective weapons and can be viewed as 'colonisation' or 'political expansion' though not all the Aryan culture contacts and expansion need have been of a violent kind.

The focal centers of the Harappan culture remained for a long time the twin cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and it is from these centers that Harappan culture budded off, whereas the focus of attention of the Rig Veda was the Punjab and in the later Vedic period it shifted to the Doab of the Ganges and Jamuna rivers. The Punjab seems gradually to fade into the background and was regarded even with disapproval.

The Harappan society had a very complex social stratification, division of labour and multiplicity of crafts and industries, urbanism was its marked feature with Harappans enjoying a settled and sedentary life, and in this society the priest and the merchant played dominant roles perhaps constituting a 'ruling' elite. On the other hand, in the early period the Aryans were organized into a social organization which may be described as 'tribal' or rural' one with a minimal of division of labour and sedentariness. It was sed fully with more pronounced and increased division of labour when specialized trades and crafts appeared. But in this society it was not the priests and the merchants (Vaishyas) but the Priests and the Kshtriya who constituted the rule in elite (though with a tendency to rivalry).

In the Harappan society the Priestly class was of great importance as the central authority. Though there is little evidence in the Rig Veda of any special importance of the priests, however in later Vedic society, the priests as a class assumed a form of institutional authority. The institutions of slavery and prostitution were common to both the societies.