Anthropology
Photo: Alan Mann
Anthropology is the worldwide study of human cultures and biology. Our cross-cultural perspective and field research methodology extend our vision beyond familiar social contexts and experiences, challenging culture-bound theories of human nature, rationality and values. Today, in an increasingly global world, a broadly-based perspective on human diversity is an urgent priority. The study of anthropology cuts across a number of disciplines. Historians, comparative political scientists, literary critics, psychologists, physicians, biologists, linguists, archaeologists and others regularly draw on anthropological research and theory. Anthropology faculty and students are active in interdisciplinary research on such topics as nationalism, religion, race and ethnicity, gender, ritual, language, law, violence, refugees, medicine, science, media, literature, human origins, and the interrelation of history and culture. Recent graduates have gone on to graduate school in anthropology and other fields, as well as to professional schools in business, medicine, education and law. Anthropology is also an asset for work in international affairs, financial services, communications, public health, media and market research, and public policy.
What Students Say
• What is anthropology?
• What can you learn from it?
• What is it like being an anthropology major?
• What are common misconceptions about anthropology majors?
• What kind of internships and international experiences have majors had?
• How will Anthropology majors save the world?
• Why would anyone want to date an anthropology major?
• What can you learn from it?
• What is it like being an anthropology major?
• What are common misconceptions about anthropology majors?
• What kind of internships and international experiences have majors had?
• How will Anthropology majors save the world?
• Why would anyone want to date an anthropology major?
Anthropology has four sub-areas: cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics.
Cultural anthropology, the focus of Princeton's department, takes an interpretive approach to the social worlds that people create and inhabit. According to Clifford Geertz, anthropology is the interpretive study of culture, in which people's lived behavior can be taken as a type of "text" to describe and analyze. Geertz wrote: "Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning" (The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 5). As an interpretive mode of study, cultural anthropology may be considered either a "science," a "humanity," or a "social science," depending on whom you ask.
At first glance, the common understanding of anthropologists, as researchers who go live in "remote" cultures, will appear to some as outdated. That is no longer the only route for an anthropologist (though of course it is one of them). While travel to far corners of the globe is certainly one of the many perks of being an anthropologist, it is not a requirement. Often, there are just as fascinating cultures right in our backyard. The word "culture" should be understood in the broadest of ways - it can mean the culture in, say, Tanzania or Japan, but it can also just as easily describe the culture of education in America or the culture of high cuisine in France. Even the culture surrounding circuses would be worth investigating as an anthropologist!
Physical anthropology involves the study of human bodies and evolutionary history. Archaeology involves the study of places where humans have lived or traveled, and linguistics involves the study of languages.
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What can you learn from it?
You can learn how to encounter and analyze another culture and interact respectfully within it. You will be better prepared to understand your own way of life, as well as the daily lives of other people, with respect to everything: food, clothing, religion, literature, philosophy, art, education, science, technology, etc.
More than anything, anthropology offers you a new way of thinking and understanding issues and events taking place in the world around us. The style of research challenges you to take up an issue (be it the stigma of AIDS in the USA or development work in Zambia) and come at it from every angle. In a way, anthropology is very much a combination of many fields—to understand a single issue you often have to understand a variety of economic, political, social, historical issues that all play a role. The challenge, but also excitement of anthropology is that it requires you to think in an interdisciplinary manner.
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Princeton anthropology majors write one JP and a senior thesis. A JP proposal is due in the fall, and the JP itself is due in the spring.
Every anthropology student has great freedom in choosing topics for independent work. Indeed because the field is so encompassing almost any topic is worth investigating from an anthropological perspective!
Original fieldwork for the senior thesis should be planned and completed by early fall of the senior year, or hopefully the summer before senior year, so that's a detail to keep in mind. However, one does not have to do fieldwork for a thesis in the Anthropology Department, though of course original fieldwork is one of the most exciting aspects of being an anthropology major. There is always the option of doing library-based research especially for those who choose to focus on physical anthropology.
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Some consider us "fluffy humanities people," who belong to a field that is so broad that it becomes ill-defined and loses rigor by allowing a wide range of "evidence" and styles of argument. These may be liabilities in the eyes of some, but they are strengths in the eyes of others: people who appreciate anthropology's approach probably agree that human cultural diversity is too broad to be bound by a single set of scientific metrics or methods, and that dealing skillfully with complexity--"gray areas" rather than black-and-white truths--is a valuable ideal.
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The department is very accommodating to students who wish to take a semester abroad. Junior Fall or Spring is recommended, and independent work advising can take place via email. Students are warned to bring the books and materials they need to finish an independent work project with them if they travel abroad, since foreign universities may simply not have the resources one would wish for. The Study Abroad Office has great advice for students wishing to plan an international experience.
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Anthropology students observe, interpret, and report what they find happening "on the ground" in whatever social situation they choose to study. Their interdisciplinary approach aims to create a loyal description of reality. Books and articles produced by anthropologists, set loose upon the world, may be read and appreciated by anyone, and can help people in positions of power better understand the effects their choices are making, and imagine the possibility of different choices.
Anthropology majors are in essence translators - not translators between Chinese and Swahili, but between different cultures. Let's take one example: a woman refuses to take her prescribed medicine after coming home from the hospital. Why? It is here where an anthropologist comes in, trying to understand why the woman chooses not to, what about her history makes her wary or indifferent to a doctor’s orders. Expand this scenario out and you have the basis of the modern movement to transform patients in the US from being seen by doctors as simply bodies with ailments to individuals with families, worries, and histories all of which, when understood, can help ensure more effective treatment. Or to take another case: how do you fix the public school system in American cities? Some might argue that more money is the answer, others might demand better teachers, still others might point to new curricula. Anthropologists look at all of these aspects, but they might also look at how the students and families themselves understand the benefits of education. They might compare the teaching curricula with the lessons and skills required by the pupils in their daily lives. Only with this fuller, diverse research can a more complete solution to the issue of inner-city schooling be obtained. To boil it down, anthropologists have everything to do with understanding the world, helping others to understand it, and helping them use that new understanding to encourage more successful collaboration.
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Cultural anthropologists look for the "edges" of taken-for-granted common-sense knowledge. You can expect an anthropology student to have original and quirky opinions on everyday social phenomena, and to give a "second look" to details other people may not care to notice. Think of them as English majors for the book on whose pages we are all living together. Furthermore, anthropology students may be able to tell you fascinating stories of their own fieldwork and their travels into strange territories both foreign and domestic, but they are also great listeners, and may enjoy listening to you talk about yourself. Last, but not least, because students of anthropology have such broad perspectives and experiences, you can think of them as "the most interesting people in the world."