Anthropology from a General Audience Standpoint

Student Name
Professor
Course
Date
What is Anthropology?
In the advent of the mid-nineteenth century, anthropology was described as a discipline anchored on universities, professional and amateur societies, museums, and government bureaus. Anthropology has evolved to encompass concepts seeking to understand humans in terms of natural history, philology, antiquarianism, and moral philosophy. It depicts an imperfect infusion of these four models of inquiry (Bennett and Frow 25). In Europe and North America, anthropology has evolved to become a more interdisciplinary subject spanning a range of methodologies from positivistic and natural science to hermeneutic and historical. Its object is outwardly humanity within its historical, biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Anthropology has also developed institutionally as a subject incorporating four sub-fields of archaeology, anthropology, cultural or social anthropology, and linguistics – sub-fields that have to a certain degree replicated with the four models of inquiry from natural history to philology (Bennett and Frow 26).
Anthropology can also be described as the study of society and culture in what is referred to as socio-cultural anthropology. In this vein, socio-cultural anthropology helps elide the discrepancies between different traditions by integrating the distinct intellectual practices within the human species extensively conceived (Bennett and Frow 26). More importantly, anthropology seeks to understand societies and their social characteristics, including constructs such as complacency or arrogance in different communities (Bennett and Frow 27). Many social anthropologists used either exaggerations or erasures of dichotomizing tradition to institute the “cultural critique” framework, primarily directed at Western complacency or arrogance. It also includes understanding customary behavioral tendencies (Bennett and Frow 37).
The discipline has evolved to incorporate the term “public anthropolo...