Sam & Steph

There are many more important things to highlight and I am sure that others will place other concepts above these, but these are mine right here and now.

3. While there are many tools in anthropology, perhaps one of the most important for studying culture is to remove oneself from an ethnocentric perspective of the world and understand the beliefs, motives, and behaviors of others through their cultural explanations of the world.

2. Anthropology is both a science and a part of the humanities. Anthropology can serve to understand the human condition, documentthe human condition, and improve the human condition.

1. Anthropology may be seen broadly as the study of the human condition... how did we get here? why do we live in the ways we live? what is it like to be human? We can study these using all sorts of methods, leveraging biology, our material remains and artifacts, language, culture, and society.

About a decade ago, I graduated with a bachelor's in anthropology (and linguistics). For this project, I am finally revisiting many of my old readings and textbooks for the first time. As I go through these, I see several key things I want to highlight about the field.

(Sam)

The concept of culture within the social sciences has had many definitions. At its core, culture refers to shared beliefs, customs, language, and values. We share our culture via our food, clothes, the tools we use, the objects we produce, the art we create, and the stories we tell.

(Sam)

Quote Source: The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft, Third Edition, by Stein & Stein

We may go about our lives assuming that the ways we think, act, or believe are normal. However, there is a certain relativity surrounding what is indeed 'normal.' As we look at cultures around the world, we begin to see that our ways of life are just a few among countless permutations.

I encountered this quote when going through an anthropology textbook:

"It is often said that the aim of anthropology is to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange."

(Sam)