What Is Anthropology? | Anthropology Graduate Explains Subfields, Key Terms, Jobs, & More!

hello everyone welcome or welcome back

to my channel my name is Olivia and I

make videos about anthropology every

single Sunday and today I am talking

about the biggest question that I could

probably talk about on this channel and

that is what is anthropology and you may

be surprised that it's a little more

complicated than you might think so on

my channel I have many videos about

anthropology taking a deep dive into

keywords different themes that you might

need to know the different topics within

anthropology but today I am going to be

sharing with you guys the broad

definition of anthropology and give you

a taste of all the things that make

anthropology anthropology so the first

thing that we're going to start with is

this basic definition that you would

find if you were to Google anthropology

so according to Google anthropology is

the study of human societies and

cultures and their development but let

me tell you that this definition leaves

out so much now the one thing that I do

want you to take away from this Google

definition that's probably the biggest

and most basic thing when it comes to

the field of anthropology is that

anthropology is the study of humans now

the Greek root word anthrop means human

and ology tends to mean the branch of

knowledge so when you put these two

things together you have the branch of

knowledge concerning humans so

anthropology more broadly is the science

of human beings and I mean I'm a human

you're a human I think this should be

interesting to everybody so now we're

gonna go beyond this basic Google

definition and I want to dive in more

deeply into what really makes

anthropology anthropology all right so

this might be obvious but humans are a

really really broad area of study

there's a lot that you could learn about

people and so anthropology as a growing

field for a long time scientists and

anthropologists were trying to figure

out how to break it down into something

more manageable and so anthropology

today is broken up into four subfields

and basically what I mean by this is

anthropology because it's so broad the

things that anthropologists study have

been broken down into four different

categories now these subfields the four

main subfields of anthropology are

biological anthropology cultural

anthropology linguistic anthropology and

Archeology these four subfields together

create the entire field that is

anthropology now each one of these

subfields takes a very specialized

approach when it comes to understanding

human beings and if you decide to enter

the field of anthropology you

unfortunately because the nature of the

subject is so broad you can't be an

expert in every single thing so what

anthropologists do or what students of

anthropo apology do is they tend to pick

one field or one subfield of

anthropology that stands out the most to

them and specialize in it so during my

time as an undergraduate student I

specialized in biological anthropology

this is the part of anthropology that

really stood out to me that grabbed my

attention so my course load was very

biased in that I was taking a lot more

biological anthropology courses than

other like cultural and linguistic

anthropology courses but a little more

on that later now I don't want to

complicate things too early on in this

video so now we're going to switch gears

a little bit and I want to give you guys

a basic introduction into each one of

the main four anthropology subfields and

I want you guys to pay attention because

if one of these subfields does stand out

to you that could be a clue as to which

area of anthropology you might want to

enter into if this is something that

interests you okay yeah all right so the

first subfield that we're going to be

talking about is biological anthropology

now as I mentioned earlier in the video

biological anthropology is the one that

definitely excites me the most it's also

known as physical anthropology so if you

ever hear someone talking about physical

anthropology you can generally assume

that that's pretty synonymous with

biological anthropology and biological

anthropology is the study of human

biology and evolution now once again

this is really broad there is a lot that

gets covered in biological anthropology

but some of the big things that you

might learn as a student are natural

selection The evolutionary history of

homo sapien so I remember in one of the

introductory courses that I took I had

to do a lot of memorizing of all our

ancient ancestors there's Homo habilis

homo heidelbergensis homo neanderthalis

Australopithecus all that kind of stuff

and guys I have forgotten a lot so it's

a lot of understanding the past our

human past biologically and

evolutionarily speaking but there's also

more modern Fields within biological

anthropology including forensics

molecular anthropology so looking at

like how our bodies interact with

disease and so much more so that's

biological anthropology it's amazing I

highly encourage you guys to go check it

out now cultural anthropology I think is

what people tend to associate the most

strongly with the field of anthropology

I think people don't always know that

Linguistics and biology are involved in

anthropology but cultural anthropology I

think tends to get the most attention

and is the most understood when it comes

to the field but cultural anthropology

is the study of human societies human

cultures and their development so one of

the biggest forms of research within

cultural anthropology is something

called ethnographic field work so you

have anthropologists immersing

themselves in in a different part of the

world this could be a different

Community a different culture completely

opposite side of the world the country

whatever it is and trying to understand

this culture or a facet of a certain

culture more deeply so I actually during

college had the opportunity to read an

ethnography which is the book for this

kind of research ethnographic field work

the research goes into a book called an

ethnography I had the opportunity to

read an ethnography written by a

cultural Anthropologist who studied

marriage systems in a specific region of

China in the 1960s and 70s I believe and

so I think that gives you a good idea of

what a cultural Anthropologist goes to

do they're trying to understand a

specific group of people their Customs

their Traditions why or why not people

make certain decisions I did want to say

that cultural anthropology research gets

done in a multitude of ways I just think

that this kind of research the

ethnographic field study is the most

popular and most well known so that's

what I wanted to talk about in this

section where we describe cultural

anthropology really quickly if any of

these subfields are sounding interesting

to you I do have more in-depth videos on

my channel going into each of them

in a lot more detail so if you want to

check those out I will leave them in the

description box down below but now on to

linguistic anthropology now linguistic

anthropology is a really amazing

subfield in the field of anthropology

and it basically examines how language

impacts human societies and cultures but

also how we impact language language is

an ever-growing ever-changing thing that

exists

all over the world and in many ways is

what sets humans apart from other

species so to get to study something and

examine something that's so uniquely

human is a really amazing opportunity

and something that I think often does

get overlooked when it comes to the

value of anthropology and understanding

human societies now the fourth and final

subfield of anthropology that I do think

is very well known similar to cultural

anthropology is the field of archeology

now archeology is the study of human

past through material culture and

cultural remains I think people often

forget that archeology is you know

understanding humans and human cultures

through the physical items that get left

behind within the archaeological record

this is called material culture and

trying to understand not only what the

physical purpose of these items were for

the people who use them but also the

meaning that gets conveyed through

through certain items that we find in

the archaeological record

so an example of this might be gosh I

did not prepare an example

an example of this might be people's

homes right from an ancient civilization

so maybe some homes were meant for

higher status individuals not only

understanding that this home has a

physical purpose being it's where people

live but also understanding that certain

homes represent higher status and convey

meaning within the society and within

that culture now obviously these are

things that are very difficult to

extract and extrapolate because we don't

have access to a lot of these societies

and civilizations but it creates this

really interesting question and one that

in a lot of ways will never answer and

that is you know who are the people of

the past what did they value what did

they do and how did we start there and

get to where we are today so once again

archeology really just is an amazing

more historically focused part of

anthropology that's definitely still

alive and thriving today now finally I

wanted to throw in here the fifth

subfield what Olivia there's only four I

know technically guys there's four but

there's one fifth subfield of

anthropology that often gets left out of

these introductory videos which is

exactly why I wanted to mention it here

and so there is this official unofficial

depends on who you ask but I think it's

pretty official fifth subfield of

anthropology called applied anthropology

now this is really important and I'm

going to tell you why so I've talked to

you guys about anthropology more broadly

the four subfields

but what does any of that matter right

anthropology is a research field why

does any of that research matter in any

of those subfields if we're not doing

anything with it right apply it

anthropology is applying what we've

learned from biological anthropology

cultural anthropology linguistic

anthropology and Archeology applying

what we've learned from each of these

subfields into action into our current

communities and current cultures all

around the world so let's say you did an

anthropological study on smoking and the

impacts of that on a community and we

learned that it was bad sorry guys I'm

running out of brain power as we

approach the end of this video

if we can look at that anthropological

study and say wow what can we do with

this conclusion to actually impact

people's lives improve people's lives

for the better that's the whole field of

Applied anthropology it's using what

we've learned to actually make changes

in real cultures and real communities

all over the world and I think applied

anthropology is so important I have

talked about it before on this channel

it's amazing and wonderful and I think

everyone should appreciate it and

respect it so closing out this video you

guys we are all humans which in itself I

think is a reason to care about

anthropology anthropology allows us to

understand ourselves it allows us to

understand people on the complete

opposite side of the world it creates

this you know understanding for our

similarities and our differences and is

such an important field that seriously

gets overlooked all the time now if any

of this sounded interesting to you guys

I have over a hundred videos on my

channel talking about anthropology deep

dives into these subfields into key

terms into my personal experience as a

UCLA anthropology student

everything that you can think of so if

you want to take the plunge and learn

more about anthropology don't forget to

go check out any of those videos on my

channel also don't forget to like And

subscribe because I mean who doesn't

want to be a part of a fun little nerdy

anthropological Community we have a good

time over here and I love talking to

everybody in the comment section down

below so yeah I hope you guys are having

a great week a great day and I will see

you all next Monday all right you guys

bye

foreign