Anthropology
Anthropology is the collective name for a group of sciences concerned with discovering what it means to be human. The central concept linking these subdisciplines, and providing the real subject of anthropological knowledge, is the idea of culture. For anthropologists, cultures are systems of ideas, beliefs, attitudes, expectations, and shared assumptions that distinguish one people from another and that members of a society take for granted. Most professional anthropologists are cultural, social, or medical anthropologists. These specialists typically do research in one or two topical fields such as social organization, kinship analysis, ritual systems, health, anthropological linguistics, or technology; most of them also concentrate on the cultures of major world areas where they have done field work, for example, Central America, East Africa, Southeast Asia , etc. Anthropological archaeology is also a popular sub-field; professionals in this field use material remains recovered from former human settlements to describe and explain extinct cultures. The third group of specialists, physical anthropologists, uses the fossil evidence of human evolution and biological evidence of living populations to explain the physical adaptations and limitations of humanity.
Cognate Requirements (PDF: opens in a new window)
Please see the current IDS Handbook for additional information.
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