The history of anthropology

The research objects of early anthropology were limited to anthropometry and anatomy. But after Sir edward tylor, anthropology began to pay attention to the pan-cultural comparison of artifacts, in other words, it was an indoor study of natural history. Later, in the United States, Franz Boas, the "father of cultural anthropology" who was a geologist, advocated the "four branches" of anthropology and criticized this "armchair anthropologist", so that the research object of anthropology gradually turned to the living tribal (especially American Indian) culture, including their language, peer behavior and history.

The most important change is the contribution of bronislaw malinowski, a British social anthropologist born in Poland. Around AD 1930, he initiated ethnology written through participatory observation as the basis of anthropological research. Under his revolutionary creation, anthropologists (especially cultural anthropologists) began to study and record various cultures (especially small tribal cultures) by going to local and indigenous life in person and even participating in local activities. Almost at the same time, ruth benedict's long-distance research based on contact with literary works, movies and foreigners' visits has become another way to study cultures that cannot be observed.

This mainstream anthropological study of "primitive" tribal culture was gradually challenged after the mid-1960s. First, after the end of World War II, with the arrival of the army, the attitude of the British and American countries towards the colonies changed to laissez-faire and encouraged them to stand on their own feet, and the "traditional tribes" recognized in the past were rapidly modernized, resulting in the "anthropology of salvation" since Malinowski (that is, recording these as quickly as possible before the impact of modernization). Secondly, the earliest anthropologists who advocated participating in observation died one after another, and with the encouragement of governments, the number of anthropologists increased greatly, making a new generation of anthropologists gradually rise. For these reasons, the research object of anthropologists is developing in the following directions:

(1) Some anthropologists, especially those influenced by Marxism, began to study historical anthropology by combining literature and ethnographic materials. In this regard, Eric Wolff's Europe and People Without History is a masterpiece.

(2) Some anthropologists have returned to their own countries to conduct research among minority domestic sub-cultural groups (gangs, homosexuals, urban communities of ethnic minorities, etc.). ).

(3) Most scholars still study the tribal culture of the Third World. The difference is that they began to pay attention to the adjustment and changes of these tribes affected by modernization.

(4) Taking Claude Levi-Strauss as the representative, combining linguistics, philosophy and psychoanalysis, we study the concentric wisdom and symbol of * * * in various cultures, thus extending the unique discipline of theological interpretation and influencing other disciplines of philosophy and sociology with the theory of structuralism.

In the 1 980s, influenced by post-modernism and feminist movement, cultural anthropologists re-examined various field studies that often emphasized science and quantification, and developed several new research objects, including:1,and established a new historical anthropology with cultural concepts as the main axis through text analysis; 2. Re-examine the dual value theory and combine it with feminist anthropology research; 3. Go back to the tribal areas in the past and interpret these cultures with new eyes.

Broadly speaking, the research object of anthropology today is no longer a specific and primitive foreign culture, but every culture that contains its own departure. Today's anthropologists are looking for more research objects besides repeating self-examination and introspection.