big picture

1. SST-311 Big Picture A
Week 1-3: Unit Learning Outcomes (ULO): At the end of
the unit, you are expected to:
a. Discuss the nature, meaning, and relevance of
anthropology; identify its four sub-disciplines and related
social sciences and differentiate between ethnology and
ethnography.
Big Picture in Focus: ULOa. Discuss the nature, meaning
and relevance of anthropology, identify its four sub-
disciplines and related social sciences and differentiate
between ethnology and ethnography.
Metalanguage
In this section, the most essential terms relevant to the
study of SST 311/EDSST3 and to demonstrate ULOa will
be operationally defined to establish a common frame of
reference as to how the texts work in your chosen field or
career. You will encounter these terms as we go through
the study of Socio-Cultural Anthropology. Please refer to
these definitions in case you will encounter difficulty in
understanding the basic theories, principles and concepts
discussed n Socio-Cultural Anthropology.
• Anthropology is the study of the human species and its
immediate ancestors.
• Archaeologists dig into ancient cultural diversity by
recovering and analyzing the material remains of
prehistoric and modern societies.
• Cultural Anthropology combines ethnography and
ethnology to study human societies and cultures for the
purpose of explaining social and cultural similarities and
differences.
• Ethnography produces an account (a book, an article, or
a film) of a particular community, society, or culture based
on information that is collected during fieldwork.
• Society is organized life in groups, a feature that humans
share with other animals.
Essential Knowledge
To perform the aforesaid big picture (unit learning
outcomes) for the first three (3) weeks of the course, you
need to fully understand the following essential knowledge
that will be laid down in the succeeding pages. Please note
that you are not limited to exclusively refer to these
resources. Thus, you are expected to utilize other books,
research articles and other resources that are available in
the university’s library e.g., ebrary, search.proquest.com
etc.

2. 1. What is Anthropology?
1.1 Anthropology is the study of the human species and its
immediate ancestors.
1.2 Anthropology is holistic in that the discipline is
concerned with studying the whole of the human condition:
past, present and future. Anthropology studies biology,
society, language, and culture.
1.3 Anthropology offers a unique cross-cultural
perspective by constantly comparing the customs of one
society with those of others.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-archaeologists-suggest-
biblical-era-philistines-came-from-europe/a-49467592
1.4 Archaeologists dig into ancient cultural diversity by
recovering and analyzing the material remains of
prehistoric and modern societies. By reconstructing past
ways of life and constructing culture histories,
archaeologists are able to explain the dynamics and
evolution of cultural systems.
1.5 Biological (Physical) anthropologists investigate the
biological diversity, behavior, and evolution of humans and
other primates (such as lemurs, howler monkeys,
baboons, and chimpanzees).
1.6 Cultural anthropologists discover the unique and
universal aspects of contemporary cultures by living with
the people under study. They travel to all corners of the
globe in order to understand the full range of modern
cultural diversity.
https://twitter.com/cpkottak
1.7 Linguists examine languages from around the world,
as well as other forms of communication of humans and
other primates. Major topics researched by linguists
include the history and origins of languages, the structure
of language, how language relates to social aspects (such
as race, class, age, and gender), and language and
cognition.
1.8 All fields of anthropology are characterized by first-
hand observation, or fieldwork.
2. People share both society and culture.
2.1Society is organized life in groups, a feature that
humans share with other animals. 2.2Cultures are
traditions and customs, transmitted through learning, that
govern the beliefs and behaviors of the people exposed to
them.
2.3 While culture is not biological, the ability to use it rests
in hominid biology.
https://slideplayer.com/slide/9145439/

3. 3. Adaptation, Variation, and Change
3.1Adaptation is the process by which organisms cope
with environmental stresses.
3.2 Human adaptation involves interaction between
culture and biology to satisfy individual goals.
3.3 Four Types of Human Adaptation:
3.3.1 Cultural (Technological) Adaptation
3.3.2 Genetic Adaptation
3.3.3 Long-term Physiological or Developmental
Adaptation
3.3.4 Immediate Physiological Adaptation
3.4 Humans are the most adaptable animals in the world,
having the ability to inhabit widely variant ecological
niches.
3.5 Humans, like all other animals use biological means to
adapt to a given environment. 3.6 Humans are unique in
having cultural means of adaptation.
3.7 Through time, social and cultural means of adaptation
have become increasingly important for human groups.
3.8 Human groups have devised diverse ways of coping
with a wide range of environments.
3.9 The rate of this cultural adaptation has been rapidly
accelerating during the last 10,000 years.
3.10 Food production developed between 12,000 and
10,000 years ago after millions of years during which
hunting and gathering was the sole basis for human
subsistence.
3.11 The first civilizations developed between 6,000 and
5,000 years ago.
3.12 More recently, the spread of industrial production has
profoundly affected human life.
http://web.mnstate.edu/robertsb/306/Evolution%20and%2
0Human%20Adaptation%20[Compatibility%20Mode].pdf
4. Four Sub-Disciplines of Anthropology
4.1 The academic discipline of American anthropology is
unique in that it includes four sub-disciplines: cultural
anthropology, archaeological anthropology, biological or
physical anthropology, and linguistic anthropology.
4.2 This four-field approach developed in the US as early
American anthropologists studying native peoples of North
America became interested in exploring the origins and
diversity of the groups that they were studying.
4.3 This broad approach to studying human societies did
not develop in Europe (e.g., Archaeology, in most
European universities, is not a sub-discipline of
anthropology; it is its own department).
4.4 Variation in “Time” (diachronic research): using
information from contemporary groups to model changes
that took place in the past, and using knowledge gained
from past groups to understand what is likely to happen in
the future (e.g., reconstructing past languages using
principles* based on modern ones).

4. 4.5 Variation in “Space” (synchronic research): comparing
information collected from human societies existing at the
same or roughly the same time, but from different
geographic locations (e.g., the race concept in the US,
Brazil, and Japan).
4.6 Any conclusions about “human nature” must be
pursued with a comparative, cross-cultural approach.
5.Cultural Forces and Human Biology
5.1 Cultural traditions promote certain activities and
abilities, discourage others, and set standards of physical
well-being and attractiveness.
5.2 Participation and achievement in sports is determined
by cultural factors, not racial ones.
5.3 In Brazilian culture, women should be soft, with big
hips and buttocks, not big shoulders; since competitive
swimmers tend to have big, strong, shoulders and firm
bodies, competitive swimming is not very popular among
Brazilian females.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFaTPYhRrsw
5.4 In the US, there aren’t many African-American
swimmers or hockey players, not because of some
biological reason, but because those sports aren’t as
culturally significant as football, basketball, baseball, and
track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5q492xpkjA
https://www.iq-test.net/8-types-of-intelligence-how-to-
improve-iq-score-112.html
6. Intelligence Tests
6.1 There is no conclusive evidence for biologically based
contrasts in intelligence between rich and poor, black and
white, or men and women.
6.2 The best indicators of how any individual will perform
on an intelligence test are environmental, such as
educational, economic, and social background.
6.3 All standard tests are culture-bound and biased
because they reflect the training and life experiences of
those who develop and administer them.
6.4 Jensenism asserts that African-Americans are
hereditarily incapable of doing as well as whites.
6.5 Named for Arthur Jensen, the educational psychologist
who observed that on average African-Americans perform
less well on intelligence tests that Euro-Americans and
Asian-Americans.
6.6 This racist notion of the inborn inferiority of African-
Americans recently resurfaced in the 1994 book The Bell
Curve by Richard Hernnstein and Charles Murray.
6.7 Intelligence tests reflect the experiences of the people
who write them.
6.8 Middle- and upper-class children do well because they
share the test makers’ educational expectations and
standards.
6.9 The SATs claim to measure intellectual aptitude but
they also measure the type and quality of high school
education, linguistic and cultural background, and parental
wealth.

5. 6.10 Studies have shown that performance on the SATs
can be improved by coaching and preparation, placing
those students who can pay for an SAT preparation course
at an advantage.
6.11 Cultural biases in testing affect performance by
people in other cultures as well as different groups in the
same nation.
6.12 Native Americans scored the lowest of any group in
the US, but when the environment during growth and
development for Native Americans is similar to that of
middle-class whites, the test scores tend to equalize (e.g.,
the Osage Indians).
6.13 At the start of World War I, African-Americans living
in the north scored on average better than whites living in
the south due to the better public-school systems in the
north.
7. Culture and Sports
7.1 Years of swimming sculpt a distinctive physique. The
countries that tend to produce successful female
swimmers are the United States, Canada, Australia,
Germany, Scandinavia, and the former Soviet Union,
where this body type isn’t as stigmatized for women as it
is in Latin countries.
https://idrottsforum.org/call-for-papers-sport-in-a-mobile-
world-identity-culture-and-politics-interdisciplinary-
seminar-university-of-aveiro-portugal-june-21-22-2018-
call-ends-march-16-2018/
8. The Bell Curve (1994)
8.1 Like Jensen, Hernnstein and Murray disregard more
convincing environmental explanations in favor of a
genetic one to explain patterns observed in intelligence
test scores.
8.2 An environmental explanation acknowledges that for
many reasons, both genetic and environmental, some
people are smarter than others, however these differences
in intelligence cannot be generalized to characterize whole
populations or social groups.
8.3 Psychologists have come up with many ways to
measure intelligence, but there are problems with all of
them.
9. Cultural Anthropology
9.1 Cultural Anthropology combines ethnography and
ethnology to study human societies and cultures for the
purpose of explaining social and cultural similarities and
differences.
9.2 Ethnography produces an account (a book, an article,
or a film) of a particular community, society, or culture
based on information that is collected during fieldwork.
9.3 Generally, ethnographic fieldwork involves living in the
community that is being studied for an extended period of
time (e.g., 6 months to 2 years).
9.4 Ethnographic fieldwork tends to emphasize local
behavior, beliefs, customs, social life, economic activities,
politics, and religion, rather then developments at the
national level.
9.5 Since cultures are not isolated, ethnographers must
investigate the local, regional, national, and global

6. systems of politics, economics, and information that
expose villagers to external influences.
9.6 Ethnology examines, interprets, analyzes, and
compares the ethnographic data gathered in different
societies to make generalizations about society and
culture.
9.7 Ethnology uses ethnographic data to build models, test
hypotheses, and create theories that enhance our
understanding of how social and cultural systems work.
9.8 Ethnology works from the particular (ethnographic
data) to the general (theory).
Comparison between Ethnography and Ethnology
10. Archaeological Anthropology
10.1 Archaeological anthropology reconstructs, describes,
and interprets past human behavior and cultural patterns
through material remains.
10.2 The material remains of a culture include artifacts
(e.g., potsherds, jewelry, and tools), garbage, burials, and
the remains of structures.
10.3 Archaeologists use paleoecological studies to
establish the ecological and subsistence parameters
within which given group lived.
10.4 The archaeological record provides archaeologists
the unique opportunity to look at changes in social
complexity over thousands and tens of thousands of years
(this kind of time depth is not accessible to ethnographers).
10.5 Archaeology is not restricted to prehistoric societies.
10.6 Historical archaeology combines archaeological data
and textual data to reconstruct historically known groups.
11. Biological Anthropology
11.1 Biological, or physical, anthropology investigates
human biological diversity across time and space.
11.2There are five special interests within biological
anthropology:
o paleoanthropology: human evolution as revealed
by the fossil record
o human genetics
o human growth and development
o human biological plasticity: the body’s ability to
change as it copes with stresses such as heat, cold,
and altitude
o primatology: the study of the biology, evolution,
behavior, and social life of primates.
11.3 Biological anthropology is multidisciplinary as it draws
on biology, zoology, geology, anatomy, physiology,
medicine, public health, osteology, and archaeology.
11.4 Paleoanthropologists study the fossil record of
human evolution.

7. 12. Linguistic Anthropology
12.1 Linguistic anthropology is the study of language in its
social and cultural context across space and time.
12.2 Some linguistic anthropologists investigate universal
features of language that may be linked to uniformities in
the human brain.
12.3 Historical linguists reconstruct ancient languages and
study linguistic variation through time.
12.4 Sociolinguistics investigates relationships between
social and linguistic variation to discover varied
perceptions and patterns of thought in different cultures.
13. Theoretical/Academic Anthropology
13.1 Theoretical/academic anthropology includes the four
subfields discussed above (cultural, archaeological,
biological, and linguistic anthropology).
13.2 Directed at collecting data to test hypotheses and
models that were created to advance the field of
anthropology.
13.3 Generally, theoretical/academic anthropology is
carried out in academic institutions (e.g., universities and
specialized research facilities).
14. Applied Anthropology
14.1 Applied anthropology is the application of any of
anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and techniques
to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social
problems.
14.2 Some standard subdivisions have developed in
applied anthropology: medical anthropology,
environmental anthropology, forensic anthropology, and
development anthropology.
14.3 Applied anthropologists are generally employed by
international development agencies, like the World Bank,
United States Agency for International Development
(USAID), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the
United Nations.
14.4 Applied anthropologists assess the social and cultural
dimensions of economic development.
14.5 Development projects often fail when planners ignore
the cultural dimensions of development.
14.6 Applied anthropologists work with local communities
to identify specific social conditions that will influence the
failure or success of a development project.
15. Medical Anthropology
• Medical anthropology studies health conditions from a
cross-cultural perspective.
16. Two Dimensions of Anthropology
GENERAL ANTHROPOLOGY & APPLIED
ANTHROPOLOGY

8. The Four Subfields and Two Dimensions of
Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology
Medical Anthropology
Archaeological Anthropology
Cultural Resource Management (CRM)
Biological or Physical Anthropology
Forensic Anthropology
Linguistic Anthropology
Non-government Organizations (NGO’s)
17. Anthropology and Other Fields
17.1 Anthropology’s own broad scope has always lent it to
interdisciplinary collaboration.
17.2 Anthropology is a science, in that it is a systematic
field of study that uses experiments, observations, and
deduction to produce reliable explanations of human
cultural and biological phenomena.
17.3 Anthropology is also one of the humanities, in that is
encompasses the study and cross-cultural comparison of
languages, texts, philosophies, arts, music, performances
and other forms of creative expression.
18. Cultural Anthropology and Sociology
18.1 Formerly, sociology focused on “western” societies
while anthropology looked at “exotic” societies.
18.2 Cultural anthropological methodologies have
primarily been in-depth and qualitative (e.g., participant
observation).
18.3 Sociological methodologies tended to be mainly
quantitative (statistically based).
18.4 The trend toward increasing interdisciplinary
cooperation (deconstruction) is causing these differences
to disappear.
Different Social Science Disciplines
https://www.quora.com/How-are-findings-in-social-
sciences-verified-to-be-scientifically-valid
19. Political Science and Economics
19.1 While other disciplines have looked at such
institutions as economics and politics as distinct and
amenable to separate analysis, anthropology has
emphasized their relatedness to other aspects of the
general social order.
19.2 Anthropology has tended to emphasize cross-cultural
variation in such institutions, in contrast to the almost
exclusively Western orientation of the other disciplines.
20. Anthropology and the Humanities
20.1 The anthropological concept of “culture” has gained
increasing influence in the humanities’ treatment of human
artifacts.
20.2 In turn, cultural studies have brought a fuller
recognition of the influence such artifacts may exert on
human behavior.

9. 21. Anthropology and Psychology
21.1 Anthropology has contributed a cross-cultural
perspective to concepts developed in psychology.
21.2 The school of cultural anthropology known as culture
and personality has emphasized child rearing practices as
the fundamental means for transmitting culture.
22. Anthropology and History
22.1 The convergence between the disciplines of
anthropology and history has been marked, particularly
during the last decade.
22.2 Recent treatments of colonial history have
emphasized the importance of understanding the cultural
contexts of historical records.
22.3 Kottak argues for some continued distinction between
history and anthropology, on the basis of history’s focus on
the movement of individuals through roles, as opposed to
anthropology’s focus on change in structure or form.
Self-Help: You can also refer to the sources below to help you
further understand the lesson:
appreciating cultural diversity. McGraw-Hill Education.
to Socio-Cultural Anthropology.Malabon City: Mutya
Publishing House, Inc.
appreciating cultural diversity. Mc Graw-Hill Education.
-
Linguistics. Limited Birmingham, UnitedKingdom.Koros Press
Oakville,Canada. Society Publishing.
and witchcraft. 4th edition. Third Avenue, New York, Routledge.