Home 
Contact 
Profile 
Videos 
Paper prepared by Prof. Omar Hasan Kasule Sr. MB ChB (MUK), MPH (Harvard) DrPH (Harvard) Chairman, Institutional Review Board - KFMC
DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION - 1
• Anthropology is one of the sciences that study human beings. It is divided into 2 sub-disciplines: physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. Physical anthropology studies human physical characteristics in the modern and in the past eras. Cultural anthropology studies human culture.
• Anthropology by its very nature is comparative since understanding comes from comparisons. The commonest comparisons are based on race and culture. Scientific definitions of race and culture are still elusive. Culture and race are not correlated.
• Anthropology became an important discipline when Europeans occupied and controlled many parts of the world. They desired to understand their subjects in order to control them more effectively. There was also a streak of racism by studying ‘primitive’ societies, the Europeans could reinforce their feelings of racial superiority.
DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION - 2
• The subjects of the study were referred to as ‘primitive’, ‘tribal’, ‘traditional’, ’pre-literate’, ‘pre-historical. Anthropology as a study of differences extended its reach to even industrialized societies whose people were not uniform in culture.
• Methods of anthropology developed while studying primitive societies were thus employed in industrialized countries.
• Philosophical anthropology seeks to unify empirical anthropological data to understand the human. Among the issues covered is the concept of human nature and how humans are distinguished from other creations.
• Supporting disciplines: Pre-historic archeology studies primitive societies either existing or past. Linguistics is related to cultural anthropology. Knowledge of language is necessary to understand the people studied because the language carries their culture, history, religion, and thought. Sociology is the twin sister of anthropology; whereas sociology studies modern societies, anthropology studies traditional societies. Cultural anthropology also involves the study of political science, economics, psychology, history, and geography.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT - 1
• Before being defined as an academic discipline in Europe in the 1 9th century, anthropology was practiced as a living reality by all societies as they tried to understand themselves. The explanations were often mythical.
• In the 19th century, Europeans in control of vast territories and in contact with many cultures were forced into serious anthropological study and research. There was interest in comparing races, cultures, languages, and societies as a whole.
• The theory of evolution first proposed in 1840 and later developed further by Charles Darwin in 1859 is considered the starting point of modern anthropology.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT - 2
• Cultural anthropology set itself the task of classifying societies and cultures. It had an underlying assumption of linear development of human society with primitive societies being at an earlier stage of development than modern societies. It was assumed that humans were basically the same and would go through the same experiences over time.
• In the 19th-century information on non-European cultures accumulated rapidly being brought back to Europe by colonists, traders, missionaries, and soldiers. They formed the basis for anthropological theories advanced by cultural anthropologists.
• The linear development concept was modified by the observation of cultural diffusions from one person to another. In the 20th century, primitive societies that had been the subject matter of 19th-century anthropology started to disappear or to change with modernization. Anthropology became an applied science used to understand and maybe facilitate interaction between western and non-western societies.
PARADIGMS AND METHODS
ISLAMIC EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRITIQUE
ISLAMIC DISCIPLINE INTRODUCTION