As a discipline, anthropology has numerous specialist sub-fields and is closely allied to other human sciences. In this chapter we have assembled brief descriptions of some of the main areas of specialisation. The following accounts have been written by experts in the different fields and are accompanied by short bibliographies which also give an indication of the content and level of the works cited.

Archaeology and Anthropology

Matthew H. Johnson University of Durham

Archaeology is the study of past human societies through their material remains. As such, it can be seen as one branch of anthropology. Indeed, in North America archaeology is taught as one of the four subfields of anthropological study. Many of the 'big questions' studied by archaeologists are of general anthropological interest. The issues of joint concern include: the study of early hominids and of the origins of Homo sapiens; the transition between gatherer-hunter ways of life and of settled agriculture; social evolution and the 'rise of social complexity', in particular the origins and development of early state societies. Archaeologists employ a range of techniques to find out about past human groups. In addition to excavation, these include surveying landscapes, examining buildings and analysing artefacts. They frequently use parallels with contemporary societies in their interpretations, for example when asking questions about past trade networks, agricultural systems or religious belief.

Traditionally, archaeology has been concerned with the distant past. In recent years, however, the archaeology of more recent historical periods and the study of material culture in the present have become increasingly important. Archaeologists have asked what material things can tell us of recent and modern societies. The subdiscipline of 'ethnoarchaeology' studies societies and their material culture in the present. Archaeology and cultural anthropology increasingly share a range of common theoretical concerns including gender, symbolism, the role of narrative and questions of history and cultural identity.

Art and Anthropology

Jeremy Coote University of Oxford

The anthropology of art studies and analyses the wide range of material objects produced by people around the world. These are considered not merely as aesthetic objects but are understood to play a wider role in people's lives, for instance in their beliefs and rituals. The materials studied include sculpture, masks, paintings, textiles, baskets, pots, weapons, and the human body itself. Anthropologists are interested in the symbolic meanings encoded in such objects, as well as in the materials and techniques used to produce them.

The anthropology of art overlaps with art history, aesthetics, material culture studies, and visual anthropology. However, the anthropological approach to art is distinguished by its focus on the social processes involved in making objects. So, whereas art historians might be interested in the work and lives of named individuals, anthropologists of art are more concerned with the role and status of the artist in the wider community. Another central concern of this branch of the discipline has been to analyse the form and function of objects and to explore the relations between these and aspects of the wider society.

Since the 1960s in particular, anthropologists have produced increasingly sophisticated analyses of visual materials. More recently, closer attention has been paid to the different ideas of aesthetic value in different societies. Increasing attention has also been paid to the ways in which material objects made in one sphere come to have value in another. For example, there have been a number of recent studies of the tourist and art markets as well as of the role of museums.

Children, Childhood and Anthropology: the study of the early years of human life in different cultural settings

Allison James University of Hull

The anthropology of childhood is a relatively new field for anthropological study which emerged in Britain during the 1970s and contrasts with the earlier culture and personality studies conducted by American anthropologists such as Margaret Mead during the 1940s and 50s. These studies were primarily interested in exploring how processes of socialisation and cultural transmission take place during childhood. However, in these accounts, little attention was given to children's own active role in these socialising processes. The focus was instead on the mechanisms through which culture passed between the generations.

Contemporary work on childhood, by contrast, sees children as social actors in their own right and seeks to document their perspectives on, and participation in, the social world. This approach acknowledges that children experience different kinds of childhood in different societies and questions whether childhood should be seen as a cultural universal. Contemporary anthropological studies of childhood also recognise that, although children may not occupy central social, political and economic roles in society, it is important to see that they can and do make an active contribution. This may take place through, for example, their membership of peer groups and of families and their participation in leisure, work and schooling. An anthropology of childhood seeks to understand the different social worlds of children and how children learn about the adult social world to which they will eventually belong.

Development and Anthropology: the study of the impact of development on traditional societies and communities

Paul Sillitoe University of Durham

Development refers to the strategies which aim to transfer resources and assistance from the world's economically richer nations to poorer nations. This transfer can occur either directly (known as bilateral aid - eg the UK government's Department for International Development) or indirectly (known as multilateral aid - eg the UN's various agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organisation). Development is a somewhat unhappy notion because it implies improvement, which is not always the experience of those subjected to economic development programmes. Anthropologists have demonstrated how technological and economic innovations invariably bring other changes in their train, which may not be perceived by all those caught up in them, in the short-term at least, as desirable or in their interests. Distressing social consequences of development can more than cancel out any material benefits. The disturbance and bewilderment experienced by people when changes proceed swiftly have been well documented by anthropologists.

The realisation that development programmes have been responsible for undesirable and unsustainable change, often involving a considerable waste of resources, has promoted a fundamental re-think of the very idea of development. Previously, governments and international agencies imposed interventions on the so-called ignorant poor who were thought to demand modernisation. Economists, technocrats and policymakers dominated this process and anthropology had scarcely any meaningful part to play other than as critic of the sometimes devastating consequences. The field of applied anthropology was marginal to the carrying out of these programmes. Today, development agencies are increasingly interested in facilitating initiatives which promote the participation of the poor and, with the assistance of anthropologists, are paying closer attention to indigenous systems of knowledge and understanding. Non-government organisations have played a prominent part in promoting this grass-roots perspective. It is a perspective which offers anthropology a central role in development practice.

Ecological Anthropology: the study of humans, resources and environments

Tim Ingold University of Manchester

Ecological anthropology studies the relations between human beings and their environments. Its foundations were laid by Julian Steward in the mid-twentieth century. Steward emphasised the dynamic, two-way nature of the culture-environment relation, and the importance of the concept of adaptation in understanding it. Steward distinguished 'cultural' from 'biological' ecology on the grounds that the former was about the adaptation of culture as a system existing outside of individual human organisms. By contrast, in the so-called 'new ecology' of the 1960s, culture was seen as the means of environmental adaptation of human populations. Theories developed in animal ecology were considered applicable to humans as well. Drawing on one such theory, of group selection, ecological anthropologists focused on how aspects of cultural behaviour maintain balance or 'homeostasis' in the relations between a local group and its environmental resources, and so promote its long-term survival.

In the 1970s and 1980s, ecological anthropology was overtaken by sociobiology. Emphasising the gene rather than the group as the unit of selection, sociobiologists argued that the adaptive role of cultural behaviour is to contribute to the representation of individuals' genes in future generations. One recent offshoot of sociobiology, 'evolutionary behavioural ecology', is dedicated to showing how adaptive strategies established through natural selection are played out under variable environmental conditions. For example, studies of human foraging have explained the relationship between food procurement patterns and energy returns. During the 1990s, however, a quite different trend has emerged in ecological anthropology. This approach looks at the totality of relations existing between persons and their environments and privileges neither genetics nor culture in explanations of human action and perception.

Economic Anthropology: the study of systems of production and exchange

James G. Carrier University of Durham

Economic anthropologists study processes of production, circulation and consumption of different sorts of objects in social settings. 'Objects' includes material things, as well as what people do for each other (such as provide labour and services) and less visible objects (such as names, ideas and so forth). The settings range from small and intimate social units like households through intermediate ones, like firms, villages or local markets, to very large entities like regional systems of ceremonial exchange or global systems of advertising and consumption.

While the settings and processes that are studied vary tremendously, most economic anthropologists approach them in two main ways. One approach is concerned with social context: what sorts of people make, give, take or consume which sorts of things, and in what sorts of situations do they do so? In a sub-Saharan African village, who is it who tends food crops - men or women, old or young, married or single, and so forth? In England, which sorts of households are likely to have computers, and which household members are likely to use them? Another approach is concerned with cultural context: how do different sorts of people understand their economic activities, the objects involved and the people with whom they carry out those activities? When an artisan sells something to a buyer, how does each party think about their relationship and the objects that they exchange?

Thus, while economic anthropologists study economic processes, their approach is different from that of economists. Economists usually restrict themselves to monetary transactions and try to develop formal, abstract models of economic systems. Economic anthropologists, on the other hand, usually are concerned with all forms of production, circulation and consumption, monetary or not. Further, they are concerned less with developing formal models and more with trying to describe and understand economic actions in their social and cultural context.

Ethnicity and Anthropology: the study of ethnic identities and interactions

Tamara Kohn University of Durham

Ethnicity is a term used to express differences between groups of people. In socio-cultural anthropology, the study of ethnicity tends to look at relationships between groups that see themselves, and are considered by others, to be culturally distinctive. For example, some anthropologists look at the various ways people express their differences from others (through markers such as language, dress, religious belief, food, ideas about shared history, etc). Others look at the relations between different ethnic groups in multicultural societies in times of peace and war/conflict. While other disciplines (eg political science, economics, history, etc) have concentrated on the larger global forces which influence ethnicity, anthropologists have tended to begin with the inside, 'experienced' view of the people they have lived and worked with. If ethnicity is generally concerned with how groups set themselves apart or derive a sense of 'we' or 'us', race has been more concerned with how people set other groups apart by setting up distinction between 'us' and 'them'. This setting apart involves the stereotyping of others and their practices, and is often the basis of racism, discrimination and violence. Anthropologists are interested in the ways that the sentiments and ideas associated with ethnicity and race are expressed in everyday life.

Family and Kinship: the study of the social organisation of human reproduction

Tony Good University of Edinburgh

Kinship has always been central to social anthropology. The interest in this topic grew out of nineteenth century debates in which families in 'traditional' societies were seen as evolutionary precursors of Victorian families. Even after anthropologists began studying other societies in their own right rather than treating them as living relics, kinship and the family retained their importance. This is hardly surprising, as kinship is associated quite literally with matters of life and death. An individual's family and relatives usually constitute their most important social network.

However, anthropologists have never fully agreed on what kinship is. Historically, there was a clear division between those who saw it as based on descent links between parents and children, and those who stressed relationships created by marriage. In part, this difference in emphasis reflected geographical differences, with Africa and Europe roughly exemplifying the first model, and Asia, the second. Moreover, 'family' has a range of meanings even in the contemporary UK. Family might mean simply parents and children resident under the same roof or it might be used to refer to a large number of people related by birth and marriage.

The view that relatives have 'blood' or some other physical attribute in common is very widespread in human society. However, kinship relationships are distinct from biological relationships. As human physiology is the same everywhere, variations in kinship ideas and practices must be social and cultural in character. Much current academic and lay thinking about kinship and family relationships is being challenged by recent developments in reproductive technology.

Gender and Anthropology: the study of the experience and constructions of gender differences within and across cultures

Judith Okely University of Hull

Early twentieth century anthropologists presumed that the social and political differences or divisions between men and women were 'natural'. The pioneering anthropologist Phyllis Kaberry, who did fieldwork among Australian Aborigines in the 1930s, depicted women as 'active agents'. Although her material reveals women not to be subservient, nonetheless they are generally subordinate relative to men. Margaret Mead, who also commenced fieldwork in the 1930s, while not concerned with subordination, demonstrated that ideals of femininity and masculinity vary enormously between groups. Her ideas continue to be relevant.

Thanks to the Womens' Liberation Movement of the 1970s, a younger generation of women began to question the masculinist orthodoxies in social anthropology, both in the traditions in fieldwork and the literature. An important distinction which began to be made was that between sex as a biological given and gender as culturally variable. In this way, it was argued that divisions of labour and different roles assigned on the basis of gender were no longer accepted as biologically inevitable. Whilst sex at birth is relatively fixed, the meanings and behaviour associated with physical, sexual differences were seen as fluid and varied across cultures. In the 1990s, the dichotomy is held to be less clear, but even in the 1970s it was always recognised that human biology could also be culturally transformed and manipulated.

From the mid-1970s, a number of important volumes by women anthropologists made women more visible and also raised key questions about gender and anthropological theory. Contrary to subsequent caricatures in later literature, this strategy never implied that women should be studied separate from men and gender. Neither was it suggested that women could be studied separate from men, nor did the material suggest that women were universally the same. The vast cross-cultural range of the early volumes already displayed differences among women. Although masculinity is only recently being studied in detail, gender studies aim to explore the full ranges of gender categories, including androgyny, in different cultural contexts.

The impact of gender studies is also apparent in relation to field work. Early texts by women such as Elenore Smith Bowen and Hortense Powdermaker demonstrated the importance of personal experience, individual identity and social relationships in writing anthropology. Once marginalised, these texts explored the ideas which are now central to the discipline.

Literature and Anthropology

Helen Kanitkar School of Oriental and African Studies, London

Only recently have anthropologists turned their attention to novelists indigenous to societies they study, recognising at last that these writers are themselves useful informants who provide a way through to a deeper understanding of other cultures, and a further channel of communication between observer and observed. The power of all literature to carry and convey traditional values, as well as to challenge them, has been recorded already, and indigenous literatures provide an immediate, empathic introduction to new cultural experience of a type which cannot be acquired any other way. Frequently, tales are told in the first person, a literary device which makes them more involving and effective for readers.

Though these novels have great value, students of anthropology should nevertheless approach them warily. The writers are not anthropologists scrupulously noting and annotating their observations in the field for future analysis; readers cannot ask questions, pursue their own interests, nor crosscheck information gleaned. The novelist's purpose is not that of the social scientist and the material used by a writer is not collected or described sequentially; rather, composite characters and accumulated impressions are gathered from diverse scenarios and built up through the author's evaluative interpretation to represent the social tensions and co-operations that are the stuff of anthropological research. The novelist is a channel linking two rivers of cultural tradition; but as the nature of a channel can affect the water passing through it, so novelists' perceptions may change or modify their subject matter, often deliberately. They may present things not as they are, but as the novelist would like them to be, thus, through the small dramas of daily life, usefully pointing an anthropologist towards processes of social change. Anthropologists are now keenly aware of the influences of the 'self' in their ethnographic writing, and struggle to avoid them, but novelists do not, and, it may be argued, should not. If a novel is being read in translation there is yet another interpretive filter through which representations must pass, and readers therefore need extra awareness when enjoying translated works.

In spite of these cautions, the 'little ethnographies' that intersperse these novels provide valuable and meaningful first glimpses of the cultures within which they originate, encouraging readers towards the satisfaction of personal encounter, the real excitement that anthropology offers.

Medical Anthropology: the comparative study of systems of health and healing

Roland Littlewood University College, London

Medical anthropology is a good example of how anthropologists have been able to relate the natural sciences to the humanities. It is the study of how people in different cultural settings experience health and illness. Such experiences are examined in the light of a particular community's knowledge about sickness and misfortune, in relation to broader moral and religious ideas. Recent examples of the kinds of studies undertaken by medical anthropologists include research into the impact of AIDS on Central African societies, the consequences of the traumas of war on families in Sri Lanka and Guatemala, the impact of the new reproductive technologies (for example, in vitro fertilisation) on British notions of 'the family', the impact of malnutrition on Brazilian ideas of children's illness, the appearance of new illnesses like multiple personality disorder and chronic fatigue (Gulf War Syndrome) and the effects of migration on the mental health of ethnic minority groups.

At the moment, medical anthropology is trying to maintain its cultural interest in questions of knowledge, meaning and politics in the broader discipline of anthropology without becoming simply an 'applied' sub-discipline. Graduates who have studied medical anthropology are attracted to careers in international aid and social services, and health professions such as nursing and clinical psychology.

Performing Arts and Anthropology: the cross-cultural study of art, music and dance

Felicia Hughes-Freeland University of Wales, Swansea

The anthropology of art has focused on material objects. Less attention has been given to physical performance (music, dance, theatre) despite pioneering work by anthropologists such as Victor Turner in recent decades. Anthropological approaches to performance are different from performance studies and the field of performance. Anthropologists explore the relationship between society and the dramatic and artistic representations which it produces. Anthropological approaches to performance reflect a range of anthropological concerns: social structure, function, meaning, identity and experience. The study of performing arts also has much in common with the ethnography of ritual, a richly documented field, but not always one in which the elements of performance are given their due recognition. As such, anthropological studies of performance are useful for teaching students about socio-cultural diversity as well as the role of different theoretical perspectives in the discipline. The anthropology of performance is a relatively new field of enquiry, and therefore no simple introductions or general readers are as yet available. However, many researchers have produced papers and chapters in edited volumes. Below are identified some of the most useful.

Political Anthropology: the study of systems of power and social control in small scale societies and communities

Ray Abrahams University of Cambridge and
Simon Coleman University of Durham

In the West, we are used to the idea of government within the framework of the state and through the medium of specialised political and legal institutions (eg parliament, police and law courts). Such forms are now found world-wide, but this has not always been so, and even today many peoples living within modern states rely to a great extent on other mechanisms for the maintenance of law and order. In societies where people live in closely-knit communities, and rely heavily on each other for economic assistance, the local maintenance of good social relations can be a matter of life or death. Many ways of dealing with offences and of settling disputes may be used. For example, in some societies community tensions are released through the use of ritualised insults. In others, divination is employed to discover the sources of conflict and aggression between people.

Political anthropology examines and compares these diverse systems of social control. It also explores the power structures of societies, including the extent of consensus and the patterns of equality or inequality within them. It examines the ways in which leaders establish or bolster their authority through tradition, force, persuasion, and religion. It asks whether a society can have a legal system even without formal courts and written laws. It is also interested in the ways people resist excessive domination, both passively and through Robin Hood-style banditry and other means.

One key area of study for political anthropology has been the effect of colonialism on subject peoples, and the ways in which western legal systems have been adopted and also adapted to their needs by non-western peoples. Another area of interest has been the role of ceremonial and ritual, for instance in the installation ceremonies of rulers, as a way of giving government an aura of legitimacy.

As with other areas of anthropology, the study of diverse institutions can also lead us to a broader-based understanding of our own and other western social systems. Political anthropology has had interesting insights to offer us on such issues as national identity, ethnic conflict, the meaning of monarchy, and why people sometimes take the law into their own hands.

Religion and Belief Systems: the study of how people understand the world through their beliefs and practices

Simon Coleman University of Durham

People living in the West tend to have a clear idea of what religion should look like: it tends to take place in a building set aside for the purpose (a church, synagogue, mosque, temple etc), revolves around appeals to a higher, all-powerful deity and involves the articulation of beliefs (often set down in texts) to which the general population may or may not subscribe. Anthropologists have studied such religions, but they have also examined contexts where religious practice looks very different. In many cultures and societies, the idea of a single God may not be present, and the notion of reading a sacred book like the Koran or the Bible would seem very strange, not least because writing and reading may not play any part in people's lives. Even the western notion of 'belief' does not make much sense in contexts where ideas about gods and spirits are taken for granted, and not challenged by other faiths or the conclusions of the natural sciences.

Anthropologists of religion are not concerned with discovering the truth or falsehood of religion. They are more interested in how religious ideas express a people's cosmology, ie notions of how the universe is organised and the role of humans within the world. Many study rituals which incorporate symbols, and note how these often help to bring communities together in times of crisis or special points in the calendar. The actions of religious specialists, whether these are priests, prophets, shamans or spirit mediums are also examined. In many societies, such specialists have important political and economic as well as religious roles to play.

Visual Anthropology

Marcus Banks University of Oxford

A common introduction to anthropology is through ethnographic film. Readers may well be familiar with television series such as Disappearing World and Under the Sun. These films are made by anthropologists or professional film-makers and show life in non-European societies. They are valuable in revealing a more rounded representation of the issues that anthropologists normally investigate - particularly with respect to ritual, music, dance and other areas where a purely written description cannot convey the richness of the experience. Teachers of anthropology have also found film to be valuable for conveying a sense of the work that anthropologists actually do in the field.

However, visual anthropology is much more than ethnographic film. It encompasses a much wider study of visual systems. Most anthropologists produce visual representations in the course of their work (often photographs, but also videos, maps, drawings and diagrams) and all societies make visible aspects of their social life and their cultural understandings. Visual anthropology is concerned with understanding the production and consumption of all these forms. Visual anthropology clearly overlaps with the anthropology of art, but also includes the study of local photographic practice and increasingly the study of local television and film production.

2. Specialist areas and related disciplines

Archaeology and Anthropology

Suggested Readings

Art and Anthropology

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Children, Childhood and Anthropology: the study of the early years of human life in different cultural settings

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Development and Anthropology: the study of the impact of development on traditional societies and communities

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Ecological Anthropology: the study of humans, resources and environments

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Economic Anthropology: the study of systems of production and exchange

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Ethnicity and Anthropology: the study of ethnic identities and interactions

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Family and Kinship: the study of the social organisation of human reproduction

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Gender and Anthropology: the study of the experience and constructions of gender differences within and across cultures

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Literature and Anthropology

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Medical Anthropology: the comparative study of systems of health and healing

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Performing Arts and Anthropology: the cross-cultural study of art, music and dance

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Suggested reading

Political Anthropology: the study of systems of power and social control in small scale societies and communities

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Religion and Belief Systems: the study of how people understand the world through their beliefs and practices

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Visual Anthropology

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