• Study of past cultures primarily through their material remains (think Indiana Jones)
• Seeks to recontruct the daily lives and cutoms of people who lived in the past but also to trace cultural changes and offer possible explanations for those changes
• Most archologist deal with prehistory (Time before written record). Historical archology is similar but its focus os on the remains of recent popluations who left written records.

• Anthropological study of languages

• study of language emergence and evolution

• the study of how languages change over time and how they may be related (historical linguistics)

• Also concerned with how contemporary languages differ especially in the construction (descriptive or structural linguistics)

• study of how language is used in social contexts (sociolinguistics)

• the study of existing and recent cultures
• seeks to understand how and why people today and in the recent past differ in their customary ways of thinking and acting. In general, ethnology is converned with patterns of thought and behavior, such as marriage customs, kinship organization, political and economic, religion, folk art, and music as well as how these patterns differ.

• Anthropology may help people become more tolerant.
• Anthropological studies can show us why other people are the way they are, both culturally and physically. Customs or actions that appear improper or offensive to us may be other people's adaptation to particular enviromental and social conditions.
• Discovering knowledge of our past achievements may give us insight and an ability to solve similar problems in the future.

Father of Modern Anthropology

Boas almost single-handedly brought abou the decline of "race theory" in America as well as trained the first American Anthropologists including Robert Lowie, Alfred Kroeber, Edward Sabir, Melville Herskovits, and Maragret Mead

1. Symbolic Interactionism

2. Structural Functionalism

3. Social Conflict Theory    

aka theoretical approach

A basic image of society that guides thinking and research

• A theoretical framework in which society is viewed as composed of groups that compete for scarce resources
• Key insight is that society is built off and from class struggle. Capitalists versus the proletariat model
• Some neo-conflict theorists go a little further suggesting that it is not just about property owners and workers but more about authority, power that people consider to be legitimate, also called legitimate power. 
• Karl Marx
• Those with vs. Those without

Functionalism is a theoretical framework that sees society as a single unit composed of many interrelated parts (structures) that function for the good of the whole. In essence, each part performs a task that helps to maintain society's equilibrium.

A product of positivism (Auguste Comte). Important to this perspective is the notion that society is like that of an organism, each part functions for the good of the whole.

1st Orientation Developed

i.e. Racism is good because it creates in-group solidarity.

i.e. Aids is good because it teachs us to practice safe sex.

• A theoretical perspective in which society is viewed as composed of symbols that people use to establish meaning, develop their views of the world, and communicate with one another; sees society as a product of the everyday interactions of individuals
• Most popular and recent
• individuals create and define symbols in order to interact

the things to which we attach meaning

i.e. notebook

i.e. fork

1. Parents

2. Peers

3. Religion

4. Mass Media

5. Education

Particular sequence of change and adaptation of a particular society in a given environment; individuals and groups in different areas look and behave differently due to enviromental (weather, altitude, etc) differences

1. Variation (every species is composed of a great variety of individuals, some of which are better adapted to their environments than others; without variation, one characteristic could not be chosen/favored over another

2. Heritability (offspring inherit traits from their parents, at least in some degree and in some way)

3. Differential Reproductive Success (production of more offspring to better suited populations, which causes a greater frequency of adaptive traits to show up in subsequent generations)

1. Liberal (believe women should advance through individual effors and not as a collectiv whole; individuals should be free to pursue their own interests)

2. Socialist (believe problem is centralized in the inequality of the economy and the patriarchal family it has producted; believes liberal feminism to be inadequate

3. Radical (believes liberal feminism to be inadequate; believe patriachy to be so firmly entrenched in society that only reproductive technology can help by seperating procreationf with the female as vessel