[LINK] "Why the world needs World Anthropology Day"

[rfmcdonald]

Savage Minds' Alex Golub wrote yesterday about the importance of anthropology, on what turns out to have been World Anthropology Day.

Today is World Anthropology Day, a global celebration of all things anthropological. The American Anthropological Association beta-tested this new holiday last year as ‘National Anthropology Day’, and we had a splendid time celebrating with delicious recipes and reminiscing about Alessandro Volta (and more). But ‘world anthropology day’ is a better fit, not only because it is more inclusive, but because it helps point out just how tight the fit is today between the world and anthropology.

Anthropology — and I’m using the term here to mean the American version of it that I practice — is just about a hundred years old. It’s been stretched, shredded, critiqued, defended, and expanded on like the Winchester Mystery House. And while there have been a lot of fair criticisms of the discipline over the years, it’s fundamental approach and findings seem more relevant than ever. Partially this is because they have stood the test of time, but partially it’s because the world of today needs them now more than ever.

At its heart, anthropology’s core finding still largely stand: Human beings are a single species. There are not naturally distinct ‘races’ some of which are superior to others. For most of history human beings have been, on the whole, connected rather than isolated — most of our customs and cultures were borrowed from other places. All human groups must meet the challenge of making a living, but our culture displays a more or less coherent degree or patterning or structure which cannot be reduced to genetic or environmental factors.

In fact, it’s hard to come up with human universals. Sex matters everywhere — but it can range from a loving affirmation of connection to a thrilling display of mastery over a humiliated other. All cultures make ‘art’ — except for this to work you have to define art so broadly that it just sort of means ‘stuff’. Everyone dies, but everyone does different things with the body. Everyone needs to need, but not eating or only eating certain things are a remarkably common part of culture. And in fact, starving one’s self is a surprisingly common thing to do. Human life is precious, which is why some people insist it must be preserved, while others exult in taking it. Everyone needs to sleep — although I think they have a pill for that now. Even basic things like ‘marriage’ are extremely hard to define when you look at everything in the ethnographic record that looks like marriage.

Anthropology tells us that we basically share a common composition, but have a bewildering variety of learned behavior. It teaches us that people who are different from us are not an inferior species of faux-human, nor are they mad, pathological, or sick. They’re just different.