Biocultural anthropology

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Biocultural anthropology can be defined in numerous ways. It is the scientific exploration of the relationships between human biology and culture. [1] "Instead of looking for the underlying biological roots of human behavior, biocultural anthropology attempts to understand how culture affects our biological capacities and limitations." [1]

Contents

History

Physical anthropologists throughout the first half of the 20th century viewed this relationship from a racial perspective; that is, from the assumption that typological human biological differences lead to cultural differences. [2] After World War II the emphasis began to shift toward an effort to explore the role culture plays in shaping human biology. The shift towards understanding the role of culture to human biology led to the development of Dual inheritance theory in the 1960s. In relation to, and following the development of Dual-inheritance theory, biocultural evolution was introduced and first used in the 1970s. [3]

Key research

Contemporary biocultural anthropology

Biocultural methods focus on the interactions between humans and their environment to understand human biological adaptation and variation. [9] Contemporary biocultural anthropologists view culture as having several key roles in human biological variation:

While biocultural anthropologists are found in many academic anthropology departments, usually as a minority of the faculty, certain departments have placed considerable emphasis on the "biocultural synthesis". Historically, this has included Emory University, the University of Alabama, UMass Amherst (especially in biocultural bioarchaeology) , and the University of Washington , each of which built Ph.D. programs around biocultural anthropology; Binghamton University, which has a M.S. program in biomedical anthropology; Oregon State University, University of Kentucky and others. Paul Baker, an anthropologist at Penn State whose work focused upon human adaptation to environmental variations, is credited with having popularized the concept of "biocultural" anthropology as a distinct subcategory of anthropology in general. [12] Khongsdier argues that biocultural anthropology is the future of anthropology because it serves as a guiding force towards greater integration of the subdisciplines. [13]

Reception and criticism

Modern anthropologists, both biological and cultural, have criticized the biocultural synthesis, generally as part of a broader critique of "four-field holism" in U.S. anthropology (see anthropology main article). Typically such criticisms rest on the belief that biocultural anthropology imposes holism upon the biological and cultural subfields without adding value, or even destructively. For instance, contributors in the edited volume Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Reflections on the Disciplining of Anthropology [14] argued that the biocultural synthesis, and anthropological holism more generally, are artifacts from 19th century social evolutionary thought that inappropriately impose scientific positivism upon cultural anthropology.

Some departments of anthropology have fully split, usually dividing scientific from humanistic anthropologists, such as Stanford's highly publicized 1998 division into departments of "Cultural and Social Anthropology" and "Anthropological Sciences". Underscoring the continuing controversy, this split is now being reversed over the objections of some faculty. [15] Other departments, such as at Harvard, have distinct biological and sociocultural anthropology "wings" not designed to foster cross subdisciplinary interchange.

Biocultural research has shown to contain a few challenges to the researcher. "In general we are much more experienced in measuring the biological than the cultural. It is also difficult to precisely define what is meant by constructs such as socioeconomic status, poverty, rural, and urban. Operationalizing key variables so that they can be measured in ways that are enthnographically valid as well as replicable. Defining and measuring multiple causal pathways." [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Dual inheritance theory (DIT), also known as gene–culture coevolution or biocultural evolution, was developed in the 1960s through early 1980s to explain how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Genes and culture continually interact in a feedback loop, changes in genes can lead to changes in culture which can then influence genetic selection, and vice versa. One of the theory's central claims is that culture evolves partly through a Darwinian selection process, which dual inheritance theorists often describe by analogy to genetic evolution.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Principles of Biocultural Anthropology". spot.colorado.edu. Archived from the original on 2018-07-02. Retrieved 2016-10-13.
  2. 1 2 3 Goodman, Alan H.; Thomas L. Leatherman, eds. (1998). Building A New Biocultural Synthesis. University of Michigan Press. ISBN   978-0-472-06606-3.
  3. ↑ "Biocultural Evolution–An Overview". The Biocultural Evolution Blog. 2013-05-22. Retrieved 2016-12-20.
  4. 1 2 Dufour, Darna L. (2006-01-01). "Biocultural approaches in human biology". American Journal of Human Biology. 18 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1002/ajhb.20463. ISSN   1042-0533. PMID   16378343. S2CID   23008131.
  5. ↑ Mascie-Taylor, C. G. Nicholas; Yasukouchi, Akira; Ulijaszek, Stanley (2010-03-17). Human Variation: From the Laboratory to the Field. CRC Press. ISBN   9781420084740.
  6. 1 2 "medanth - Cultural Consonance". medanth.wikispaces.com. Archived from the original on 2018-02-04. Retrieved 2016-12-20.
  7. ↑ "Bio-culture approach" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-01-22.
  8. ↑ "Obesity".
  9. ↑ "Biocultural Anthropology - Anthropology - Oxford Bibliographies - obo" . Retrieved 2016-12-20.
  10. ↑ Geary, David C.; Flinn, Mark V. (2001). "The evolution of human parental behavior and the human family". Parenting: Science and Practice. 1 (1): 5–61. doi:10.1207/S15327922PAR011&2_2.
  11. ↑ Hruschka, Daniel J.; Lende, Daniel H.; Worthman, Carol M. (2005). "Biocultural dialogues: Biology and culture in Psychological Anthropology". Ethos. 33: 1–19. doi:10.1525/eth.2005.33.1.001.
  12. ↑ Bindon, James R. (2007). "Biocultural linkages — cultural consensus, cultural consonance, and human biological research". Collegium Antropologicum. 31 (1): 3–10. PMID   17600914.
  13. ↑ Khongsdier, R. (2007). "Biocultural approach: The essence of anthropological study in the 21st century". Anthropologist. 3: 39–50.
  14. ↑ Segal, Daniel A. (2005). Sylvia J. Yanagisako; James Clifford; Ian Hodder; Rena Lederman; Michael Silverstein (eds.). Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Reflections on the Disciplining of Anthropology. Duke University Press. Archived from the original on 2007-09-03. Retrieved 2019-06-09. introduction: Archived 2007-08-09 at the Wayback Machine reviews:
  15. ↑ Anthropology departments instructed to form combined unit
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