Why anthropology? It’s just another social science. Why pay attention?
The majority of people hear the word anthropology and know that it is somehow synonymous with culture.
What is culture? It is a tool that shapes human behavior. It informs and creates our norms, patterns of thought and perceptions of reality.
“There is a tendency for us to think that what we know, what we perceive, is solely a function of two things: our cognitive tools–our senses–and the physical reality that provides the stimuli for the senses. What we fail to realize, what we find difficult to admit as human beings is that what we know is as much a function of our cultural and social setting as it is of our senses or the physical world outside us. As anthropologists have argued, human beings are active creators of their worlds, not simply passive receptors of experience.”
– Dr. Richard Robbins, Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Plattsburgh
Culture is what makes us social beings. We are more than animals responding to primal instincts. Society gives us order, purpose, ideas, thoughts and advances that can only be accomplished by many people thinking together. Behavior modification is central to creating cohesion, unity and cooperation. We need to be shaped to an extent. Norms, values, and beliefs are what do this.
Many people study what makes up reality, from philosophers to scientists. The thing that I find most powerful about anthropology is that it is not studying something that is happening to us, like the physical environment that we come into contact with or the neurons firing in our brain. Anthropology is the study of humans and how they create the world in which they live. This is one of the few areas in which we do control the outcome. Through our interactions and through our choices, through our language and the building of metaphors, we create meaning. Anthropology shines a light on how much of a role we play in our reality. And not just an individual role, but a communally experienced movement. The beliefs and ideas that people have inside of them come from the social teaching and learning that takes place from the moment they enter the world. Your perception of the world has come to be as a direct result of how others interact with you and how you in turn react to them.
Sometimes the cultures and norms that we adapt to feel like a box to fit into and as though we have no choice but to follow along. Religion has increasingly been given a negative connotation for this reason. I have noticed that as people look back on human history they see how belief systems have swept people up and along for the ride, and led people to blind following and morally questionable actions. Belief itself is not intrinsically dangerous. It is how people use or follow that system that will determine the way it is played out. The power of belief to lead people in one direction shows what an important factor it plays in our world as social creatures, whether bad or good. We take for granted the active agency we have in the world around us and that we are the creators of these beliefs. It is not religion that shapes people, but people that use, mold, and change a belief system by being human, by being agents of change. More important than the beliefs themselves are how these beliefs shape people’s daily lives.
“For the past fifty or so years anthropologists have increasingly shifted from thinking about forms of culture as a “code” from which people take marching orders to a view of culture as a form of social action, highlighting how people create and transform ideology and social structure through social action (including speech). Treating religious belief as a form of social action moves us from a conception of religion as a form of brainwashing to taking seriously how people actually use religion, even transforming it through their lived practices.”
-Dr. Kerim Friedman, Anthropologist at Savageminds.org
As human beings, it is important to understand these three principles:
- We need to be shaped and we are being shaped.
- What is shaping us?
- What role do we play in creating the world that we all live in?
From these ideas, we can become empowered about the choices we make and the way we live. We have a symbiotic relationship with culture. We have grown alongside each other throughout human history. It is such a powerful tool that bends with us as we bend with it.
How can we create a world that fits our needs and standards? What values do we want to live by?
Participate in this dance with culture. Create change through your attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. If humans have been doing it for thousands of years, so can you.
