Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
Theodora Kroeber was an American writer and anthropologist, best known for her accounts of several Native Californian cultures. Born in Denver, Colorado, Kroeber grew up in the mining town of Telluride, and worked briefly as a nurse. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, for her undergraduate studies, graduating with a major in psychology in 1919, and received a master's degree from the same institution in 1920.
Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through 1947. Kroeber provided detailed information about Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi people, whom he studied over a period of years. He was the father of the acclaimed novelist, poet, and writer of short stories Ursula K. Le Guin.
Eric Robert Wolf was an anthropologist, best known for his studies of peasants, Latin America, and his advocacy of Marxist perspectives within anthropology.
Sociocultural evolution, sociocultural evolutionism or social evolution are theories of sociobiology and cultural evolution that describe how societies and culture change over time. Whereas sociocultural development traces processes that tend to increase the complexity of a society or culture, sociocultural evolution also considers process that can lead to decreases in complexity (degeneration) or that can produce variation or proliferation without any seemingly significant changes in complexity (cladogenesis). Sociocultural evolution is "the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure that is qualitatively different from the ancestral form".
Alfonso Caso y Andrade was an archaeologist who made important contributions to pre-Columbian studies in his native Mexico. Caso believed that the systematic study of ancient Mexican civilizations was an important way to understand Mexican cultural roots.
Feminist anthropology is a four-field approach to anthropology that seeks to transform research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge, using insights from feminist theory. Simultaneously, feminist anthropology challenges essentialist feminist theories developed in Europe and America. While feminists practiced cultural anthropology since its inception, it was not until the 1970s that feminist anthropology was formally recognized as a subdiscipline of anthropology. Since then, it has developed its own subsection of the American Anthropological Association – the Association for Feminist Anthropology – and its own publication, Feminist Anthropology. Their former journal Voices is now defunct.
Regna Darnell is an American-Canadian anthropologist and professor of Anthropology and First Nations Studies at the University of Western Ontario, where she has founded the First Nations Studies Program.
Legal anthropology, also known as the anthropology of laws, is a sub-discipline of anthropology follows inter disciplinary approach which specializes in "the cross-cultural study of social ordering". The questions that Legal Anthropologists seek to answer concern how is law present in cultures? How does it manifest? How may anthropologists contribute to understandings of law?
Cora Alice Du Bois was an American cultural anthropologist and a key figure in culture and personality studies and in psychological anthropology more generally. She was Samuel Zemurray Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone-Radcliffe Professor at Radcliffe College from 1954. After retirement from Radcliffe, she was Professor-at-large at Cornell University (1971–1976) and for one term at the University of California, San Diego (1976).
Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin was an award-winning anthropologist, folklorist, and ethnohistorian.
Hugh Gusterson is an English anthropologist at the University of British Columbia and George Washington University. His work focuses on nuclear culture, international security and the anthropology of science. His articles have appeared in the LA Times, the Boston Globe, the Boston Review the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Foreign Policy, and American Scientist. He is a regular contributor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and has a regular column in Sapiens, an anthropology journal.
Claire Nader is an American social scientist and a sister of Ralph, Laura, and Shafeek Nader.
Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera is an American cultural anthropologist. She is a tenured Associate Professor at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies teaching in the American Cultural Studies curriculum. Her prior experience includes her work as assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at both Dartmouth College and Drake University. She is a member of the Latin American Studies Association, American Anthropological Association, and Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Her research is published in journals and books such as Beyond El Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America. Other publications include reviews of scholarly work. Her academic accomplishments and research pertain to the field of Latinx national migration, indigenous communities in the United States and Mexico, and the U.S.-Mexican borderlands.
Monica Heller is a Canadian linguistic anthropologist and Professor at the University of Toronto. She was the president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) from 2013 to 2015.
Kathryn Ann Woolard is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She specializes in linguistic anthropology and received a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Mary Margaret Clark (1925–2003) was an American medical anthropologist who is credited with founding the sub-discipline of medical anthropology.
Barbara L. Voss is an American historical archaeologist. Her work focuses on cross-cultural encounters, particularly the Spanish colonization of the Americas and Overseas Chinese communities in the 19th century, as well as queer theory in archaeology and gender archaeology. She is an associate professor of anthropology at Stanford University.
Anna Hadwick Gayton (1899-1977) was an American anthropologist, folklorist and museum curator. She is most recognized for her role in "compiling and analyzing Californian Indian mythology" and was elected President of the American Folklore Society in 1950.
