Nature/Culture dualism is a well-known theoretical framework that anthropologists have exercised in their study of age-old questions such as, “What is a human”, “What is Nature”, and “What are the responsibilities of humans in the world”? Nature is all that is natural, or without human influence, and culture is all that humans have influenced in … Read more
The purpose of comparative method in social anthropology is to study varieties of form of social life and to understand human social phenomena. Franz Boas delineated two methods in the study of anthropology. First, was to reconstruct the history which means to understand the past and reconstructing theories in present. Second, was comparison of social … Read more
CHICAGO ETHNOGRAPHERS Ethnography is a field of research which includes studying cultural and social aspect from the lives of people. It includes participant observation as a main method of recording and analyzing narratives or accounts of people. Chicago Ethnographers provide us with a good example of the ecological aspect and to understand human behaviour through … Read more
Social science becomes a part of our lives as soon as we enter the sixth standard in our school. We get introduced to social science through the divisions of subjects like History, Geography, and Civics. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, an introductory phase. In reality, the world of Social Science is … Read more
The Original Affluent Society: On the Hunter-gatherers and their “affluent” society Overview An affluent society can be defined as a society which is characterized by the availability of the benefits of material prosperity. In the year 1966, in a symposium held in Chicago, organized by Richard Lee and Irven DeVore, named Man the Hunter, the … Read more
Fondly known as Leeladee, Leela Dube was an anthropologist, sociologist, feminist, teacher and above all a mother and a homemaker. Along with Irawati Karve, Vina Majumdar, and Lotika Sarkar, she worked in anthropology when the field did not even recognize women as a subject in male-dominated academia. She explains gender biases through her own examples, … Read more
Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism Darwinism is the theory of biological evolution. According to this theory, species develop themselves through natural selection of some phenotypic variations which are inherited. These inherited variations help the individuals to compete, survive and reproduce. Isolation doesn’t play a role here. Neo-Darwinism, on the other hand, is an altered explanation of Darwin’s … Read more
