What is the difference between anthropology and other social sciences

Anthropology is relevant to everyday life. Anthropology has the power to transform us, to unlock our assumptions about everything: parenting, politics, gender, race, food, economics, and so much more, revealing new possibilities and answers to our social and personal challenges.

The study of anthropology is concerned both with the biological features that make us human such as physiology, genetic makeup, nutritional history and evolution and with social aspects such as language, culture, politics, family and religion. Anthropology is the study of human behavior, beliefs, and adaptations. In the U. The Anthropology department at U.

Anthropologists are scientists who study the development and behaviors of human beings throughout the world, present and past, to help better understand humanity as a whole. They examine biological, archaeological, linguistic or sociocultural traditions, depending on their area of expertise. Anthropologists work in practically every environment and setting imaginable. They can be found working in large corporations such as Intel and GM or studying primates in Africa.

Anthropologists work in deserts, cities, schools, even in underwater archaeological sites. To become an anthropologist you usually have to complete a degree in science, arts, social science or international studies at university with a major in anthropology preferably at honours level , followed by a postgraduate qualification in anthropology.

Most of anthropology therefore is not a hard science because its subjects are not hard. People are notoriously flexible and yet surprisingly inflexible, changing and continuous, and the study of people by people makes for some tricky politics.

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Ben Davis October 23, How does anthropology differ from other disciplines? What distinguishes anthropology from other studies of human and human societies? Anthropology and Other Social Sciences Anthropology shares certain interests and subjects of study with other fields of social science, especially sociology, psychology, and history, but also economics and political science.

Anthropology also differs from these fields in many ways. They would be embedded in military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. They can show how different people interpreted and dealt with the same problem. Earning a degree with concentrations in anthropology and psychology provides you with the interdisciplinary knowledge to better understand human behavior in a cultural context.

This prepares you for jobs in counseling, marketing, education, health care and industrial psychology. Psychology studies individual behaviour in social environments whereas social anthropology studies groups of individuals. The field of psychology is an academic and applied science. Anthropology concerns the study of various disciplines as they relate to the study of humans within a society.

Historical archaeologists, who specialize in the study of historical cultures, also study written documents. But all anthropologists primarily study people, their societies, and their cultures. See also History and Historiography.

In addition, anthropology examines some topics also studied in economics and political science. But anthropologists focus on how aspects of economics and politics relate to other aspects of culture, such as important rituals.

Anthropologists who specialize in the study of systems of exchange in small-scale societies may refer to themselves as economic anthropologists. Next Page.