The Polar Elements of Anthropology

There are TWO polar elements that make up Anthropology. These are the Organic evolution of Humans and the Second is the Superorganic (or Culture).

The First is the Organic pole that focuses on humans and their evolution as a species. It makes up the core of Paleoanthropology as carried out by archaeologist and paleontologist focused on early humans.

The Second is the Superorganic pole that focuses on the ideational or cultural domain of humans living in supraorganic or social groups. It makes up the broad areas of Social/Cultural anthropology and Linguistic Anthropology.

One must also remember that between the poles there comes a blending of elements. Physical anthropology, for example, ranges from the study of the similarities and differences in the physical body of individuals to the effects of physical reproduction (genes) on a supra-organic population. Linguistics, in the broader sense as semiotics, deals not only with the encoding of sound patterns, but also on the range of behavioral communication activities performed by individuals that melds into the superorganic (meanings) of cultures.

The former is existential in the sense that its evidence is physical and real in the form of archaeological sites, bones, tools, and features. The latter is ideational in the sense that it is expressed through language and behaviors. These are the ways that the members of the social unit express themselves and their meanings through their behavior and their works (technologies).

To ignore the former is to ignore the fact that humans are part of the natural evolution of life on the planet. To ignore the latter is to ignore the importance of culture as the mechanism through which humans have risen to the point of the dominant species on the planet. To ignore the middle ground is to ignore what has and will make us human.

The emergence of technology, or transorganic behavior, as the human method for solving survival problems and transmitting the solutions across generations is the link between the organic and superorganic poles. It is also the glue that holds us together as a self-aware and self-reflective species.

Updated version 8 14 2018

What is the difference between Ethnography and Anthropology?

Ethnography and Anthropology are terms that sometimes get confused in the public's mind. This is in part due to the role ethnography plays in cultural and social anthropological research. And in part by the dominance of the socio-cultural sub-field in the organization and teaching of anthropology. What I want to do here is attempt to clarify the difference and interdependence of these two terms. 

Ethnography is a method of study and data collection involving a trained observer documenting the life of an extant people or group using a participant/observe strategy. It also refers to the product of such research which takes the form of a monograph organizing, describing, and analyzing the data collected. Ethnography is the method most common used by social and cultural anthropologist to collect qualitative data, although it is also used by archaeologist and biological anthropologist for certain types of problem that require data from living people or people living in a natural environment.

Anthropology is the scientific discipline that focuses on the human species, its origins, its evolution, distribution, commonalities and diversity in the way human organize and adapt over time and space. It is self reflective since humans are both the subject of the study and the instigators of the study. Anthropology is the coalescence of the social science movement begun in the late 18th and early 19th century when Western (European) society began to apply the ideal of science to study itself. That is when social philosophy began to shift from a subjective focus to an objective one regarding mankind. Anthropology took on the problem of the study of the non-European and non-literate (no written history) peoples that Europeans encountered in their commercial and imperial expansion out of Europe.

Ethnography became the method adopted to gather first hand information to document the lives,societies, and cultures of the peoples encountered. In a way it is the same approach as a field biologist or primatologist uses except that human have language and express both their emotions and the reasoning through language. Fieldworkers who learn the language are capable of participating as well as observing the life and culture of their subjects. Language also enables a degree of interaction between observer and subject that is not possible in the case of field biologist. Thus the anthropologist can, through ethnography gain a deeper understanding of his/her subject than the field biologist, At the same time, the ethnographer can never be certain how much of what is observed is as meaningful to the subjects as it may seem to the observer since the observed is also observing the observer and reacting to him/her. This is a far more intimate relationship than one finds in most science. It might be equated to the medical researcher using her/himself as the guinea pig.

Short answer Anthropology is a discipline Ethnography is a method