Anthropology is of Greek origin where "Anthropos" means human being, and "Logos" means science. This science is concerned with the study of man. Anthropology is divided into both social anthropology, which studies the behavior of modern humans, and cultural anthropology, which studies the construction and functioning of human cultures in every time and place. Linguistic anthropology, which studies the impact of language on social life. Biological anthropology, which studies the biological evolution of humans. Archeology, which studies ancient human cultures by investigating physical evidence, is a branch of anthropology in the United States
While it is seen in Europe as a separate science, or closer to history than to anthropology.
General anthropology is defined as:
The knowledge of the individual, his actions, and his behaviour.
Man's collective science, behavior, and production.
The science of man is a natural, social, civilized being.
The science of civilizations and human societies.
This means that anthropology is the science of man in a natural, social and civil manner.
Departments of General Anthropology
Anthropology is divided into four main sections from the point of view of anthropologists in Britain, and these sections are:
natural anthropology
This department is related to the natural sciences, especially anatomy, physiology, and biology. This department belongs to the group of natural sciences, and its most important specializations are osteology, human morphology, anthropometry, biometrics, and human surgery. This department is taught in the faculties of medicine and science and most of the specialists in it are doctors and life scientists, but it is also taught in the faculties of social sciences in the departments of anthropology.
Natural anthropology deals with the study of the appearance of man on Earth as a distinct breed, and his acquisition of special characteristics such as walking upright, the ability to use hands, the ability to speak, and the large brain, and then studies its life development. It studies the ancient human races and their characteristics, the contemporary human elements, their various physical attributes and descriptions, and the distribution of those elements on the continents of the earth, and sets standards and controls for those elements, such as height, skull shape, hair color and density, eye color and shapes, skin color, and shapes of noses. . It studies heredity and the transmission of human traits from one generation to another.
Social Anthropology
Studies in it focus on primitive societies. Since World War II, it has been studying rural and urban societies in developing and developed countries. It studies the social structure, social relations, and social systems such as the family, the feminine, the clan, kinship, marriage, social classes and sects, and economic systems, such as production, distribution, consumption, barter, money, political systems, such as laws, punishments, power and government, and belief systems, such as magic and religion. . It also studies the ecological system.
The branch of social anthropology is concerned with analyzing the social structure of human societies, especially primitive societies, in which the integration and unity of social construction clearly appears. Cliff Brown, whose basis is that the social systems in a society are an interwoven fabric of elements - each element affects the other elements, and these elements create a social unit that allows society to continue and survive, and contemporary social anthropology is not interested in the history of social systems, because the history of the social system does not It explains its nature, rather it explains that nature by defining the function of a single social system in the social construction of society.
Civilizational (or cultural) anthropology
It studies the inventions of primitive peoples, their tools, devices, weapons, housing styles, types of clothing, means of adornment, arts, literature, stories, and myths, that is, all the material and spiritual production of the primitive people. It also focuses on civilized communication between the people and the peoples who communicate with them. And what he quotes from them, civilization development, and social change. Since World War II, it has been studying rural and urban societies in developed and developing countries.
Applied Anthropology