Month: May 2023
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LIVING CULTURES OF MAN: EVOLUTIONARY LADDER
A new line of research that took social and cultural anthropologists to our primitive contemporaries8 gave prime focus to living cultures. Those following the evolutionary approach regarded these primitive communities/tribes living in isolated existence as the contemporary representatives of the culture that we ‘moderns’ might have lived. Their approach can be illustrated thus: Figure 4.3 Evolution…
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BEGINNINGS OF CULTURE
Preliterate societies, with no written history, passed on information from one generation to another through oral communication. Anthropologists working with them had the difficult task of documenting their material and non-material culture. Archaeologists working on long-disappeared cultures unearthed the origins of culture by developing the skills to read or hear stories from fossils, and from…
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MAN—THE CULTURE-BEARING AND CULTURE-BUILDING ANIMAL
It is only Man whose behaviour is largely learnt and, therefore, differs from society to society. He has an enormous capacity to learn, to forget, and to relearn. A child of Indian parentage brought up, say, in an African tribal setting, will acquire the culture of the place of his habitation; similarly, a Nuer or a…
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Introduction
Living in groups is a characteristic that humans share with other animals, particularly primates. Some animals lower than Homo Sapiens (meaning intelligent being) are also found to be gregarious, having some sort of group life. Even ants are found to have social organization! What distinguishes Man from other biological beings, however, is his capacity to build culture.…
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SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
There are three ways to act and interact: The first type of action is obviously a non-social action. The second path, of conflict, is not only wasteful, but also precarious, and a threat to community living. It is the third option that makes for living together. Any group, including society, is able to survive by…
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THE TERM SOCIOSPHERE
The term sociosphere is much broader and all-encompassing. It means the entire range of social interactions, beginning with the casual meeting of two individuals to more formal rendezvous between individuals, between individuals and groups, between groups within a society, and between societies. Social formations beyond societal/national boundaries are regarded as ‘epigenetic’—built over the normal body2—but…
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Introduction
If one were to ask anyone about the subject matter of Sociology, the most likely response would be that it is the study of society. The more sophisticated respondents may further generalize and say that it studies the ‘social’ or the ‘social sphere’, or the Sociosphere, contrasting it with the Biosphere or the Atmosphere.1 However, not many people are clear as…
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FORMALIZATION OF THE DISCIPLINE
The previous sections suggest that any new discipline is a product of a multitude of interactions between different disciplines, covering the various fields of the physical sciences, biological sciences, arts and humanities, and other social sciences. The interdisciplinarity of such attempts produces a new discipline. Thus, any new speciality should be regarded as a hybrid…
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THE CONTRIBUTION OF PIONEERS
Those who laid the foundations of sociology crossed the frontiers of their disciplines to make forays into the hitherto unexplored territory that came to be called Sociology. Entering this terrain from different vantage points, they created their own road maps and pathways. In technical terms, these are called ‘approaches’. Whenever a new discipline is founded,…
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THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
The twin disciplines of Sociology and Social Anthropology arose out of ideological concerns: support for colonization, and reorientation of Western society in the face of industrialization. Colonization demanded a justification of the superiority of the colonizer over the colonized, and industrialization demanded a new equation between the owners and the labouring class. With shipping, and…