stupid question: anthropology--what is it?

[sabana15]

Ok, so I know this is a realllyyyy stupid question, but I'm having a hard time understanding what anthropology grad students do, how important your adviser is, etc. There are TONS of resources out there for other disciplines (like comp sci), but not nearly as many for anthro and so I'm trying to decide how I evaluate (any) offers I get. [no, i haven't heard anything, but here's hopin'!]

My question to y'all is what is the life of an anthropologist like?

How important is your adviser (how big of a role does s/he play in your life)?

Will you need to be on the anthropology faculty or are there jobs available at smaller universities that might not have anthro departments?

Are there any great websites/blogs out there that talk about the life of an anthropologist or an anthro grad student?

FWIW, I'm switching fields from the sciences to anthro and am looking at a couple physical/bio anthro programs but I'm not sure how to evaluate them. One of the programs has a superstar prof whose research I've read and was very influential, but i'm not sure will be sticking around at this program much longer. The other program is very strong overall, but there's no one person whose work I know in-depth.

Any/all advice is welcome!

[barry_86404]

Well with anthro they like you to have ba from one school masters from a different one and then phd from completely different one. Physical/biological anthro is within 10 thousand year arch. is after 10 thousand years. Culture is the study of cultures.The adviser is really important. They can open doors for you or they can close doors and more famous the better.

[Tonights]

Physical/biological anthro is within 10 thousand year arch. is after 10 thousand years. .

Buh? You know about historical archaeology, right? Protohistoric archaeology? Ethnoarchaeology? Industrial archaeology? There's no cut-off date for archaeology - physical anthropology and archaeology aren't different ages of the same discipline, they're totally different. I mean, there is overlap, but they're not anywhere near the same. My specialty is protohistoric lithic technology, which is within the last 200-300 years, but certainly wouldn't come even close to being considered physical or biological anthropology - you know, being as it's flaked stone and not anything that's come from a human body.

[miratrix]

"culture is the study of cultures"? that sure clears things up!

seriously though, those are good questions, but i bet because of the differences in fieldwork and the scientific vs. cultural orientation of different subfields, grad school experience and job prospects vary a lot. spending a year or two living in the amazon has to result in a very different grad school experience than spending several summers digging up a 300 year old village, for instance. physical/bioanth is the only subfield my undergrad didn't have at all, so i really can't help here, i'm sorry!

[poetaguerrera]

Like everyone else here said, anthropology is an interdisciplinary field that studies various aspects of culture (that is, how people exist/what they do/how they do it/why they do it, etc). Every discipline can be broken down into further disciplines and many of them cross bridges with non-anthropological and even non-social science disciplines.

The 4 main subfields are cultural, biological/physical, archeological and linguistic.

I study cultural anthropology, but I started off as an archaeology major also interested in primates (biological) and languages. I guess, I'm like the poster-child for anthropology. For me, it's a discipline that allows me to exercise my short-attention span because one day I can study epidemiology, then a year later look into social movements, and still wonder about code-switching or even what primate tool usage means for us.

You can further break down anthropology into environmental anthropology, medical anthropology, political anthropology, and other things.

This is why I love it as a discipline as I stated above.

Now to answer your other question. What does an anthropologist do? Well-- our lives primarily revolve around research and deconstruction of past ideas and reconstruction of them as well. Anthropologists are interested in not only what people did but why they did it and how it impacts our life experiences and what does that mean for the future. It's a sister discipline to sociology and history.

Now, unless you plan on being a researcher or a professor, it almost makes no sense to pursue a PhD. Most anthropologists spend their time doing research about various subjects/ places/ eras. Many are professors. Others work for different companies doing various types of research--even consumer marketing. Ever wonder how advertisers know how to market to a tribe in the middle of Zimbabwe? I call these corporate anthropologists, and admittedly not my favorite of anthropologists.

I think anthropologists generally tend to be "leftist" thinkers because we come in contact with the most difficult aspects of society often visiting "third world" countries and places that have been destroyed by imperialists and colonialism. As a discipline anthropology has done a lot of deconstructing and restructuring of its theories and methodologies. The first anthropologists like Lewis Henry Morgan were racists hired by people who used the discipline to validate their claims to colonialism and the subjugation of peoples. But that's another story. I, personally, don't study "the other." My research is based on my own community and understanding the social movements led by them. Many anthropologists, however, do study other cultures that they are unfamiliar with. I like to problematize this.

I could write a novel.

So in summation-- anthropologists are mostly researchers and professors.

In the following fields, you'll be likely to see some of these things being studied:

Archaeology : the mayan ruins - understanding 2012; pyramids in egypt..digs baby lots of digs.

environmental anthropology: the effect of love canal on the people that lived near by

linguistic anthropology: how 1st generation american born koreans use code-switching to communicate with their parents and peers; the development of sign language in nicaraguan deaf children without education

biological anthropology: think early jane goodall; studying chimpanzee tool usage; studying human genetic development and adaptation to environments

medical anthropology: understanding how menopause is perceived cross-culturally

and last but not least:

socio-cultural: doing ethnographic research in New Orleans to see how victims of Hurricane Katrina's lives have been affected; studying prostitution in Lima Peru; studying religious rituals in a tribe; researching concepts of gift-giving; kinship relationships..I could go on and on..hah

Hope this clarifies things for anyone who reads it.