Biological anthropology

About: Biological anthropology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1126 publications have been published within this topic receiving 12757 citations. The topic is also known as: biological anthropology & somatology.

The Anthropological Theory of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Abstract: Among the numerous titles awarded to Blumenbach for his deserts in the field of scientific activity, the one which crops up with the greatest frequency is that of “father of anthropology”, in recognition of the fact that he was the first university professor, and not only in Germany, to introduce the animal “man” into a dissertation on natural history.1 His first printed work was in effect a treatise entitled De generis humani varietate nativa, the third edition of which was also translated into German and caused no mean stir.2 Blumenbach’s biographer defined “die physische Anthropologie der Kristallisationskern seiner Thatigkeit”.3 Blumenbach appeared on the scene towards the close of a century which had been attempting, through debate on biology and physical anthropology, to find an answer to the problem of the classification of the various forms of humanity using concepts such as genus, race and variety. He also established a connection between the two concepts of race and environment by emphasizing the idea of historical development. This idea was to prove of fundamental importance for the evolutionary theories of the 19th century,4 even though the assignation of a time-scale to nature put paid once and for all to that biblical chronology which still formed an essential part of Blumenbach’s thought.

The rise of social anthropology

Abstract: INTRODUCTION: A SCIENCE OF ANTHROPOLOGY? Social anthropology studies the construction and mechanisms of social systems, as well as the interactions among these systems, their members, and the larger environment. Social anthropology embraces a spectrum of theoretical approaches, including but not limited to evolutionism, diffusionism, and functionalism. The evolutionary approach of early social anthropologists differs from the evolutionary theory that today’s biologists espouse. Contemporary biologists reject the view that evolution is progressive, whereas nineteenth-century evolutionists believed that human societies evolve from ‘primitive’ forms to those represented in their own ‘advanced’ European civilisations. Diffusionists, in contrast to evolutionists, see new social forms arising, either spontaneously or in response to internal or external pressure, in the context of a particular social and environmental setting. Once a new form takes hold, it may spread to other groups. The diffusionist research programme emphasises locating the original source of an idea and tracing its spread. Functionalism eschews the historical (or pseudohistorical) character of the other two approaches, and focuses on the functions served by various social institutions or the functional interrelationships among the constituent parts of a larger social system. Social anthropology as understood in this chapter is one of the four main fields of anthropology, and includes what is often called ‘cultural anthropology’. The other fields are physical anthropology, which studies how modern humans came to assume their present physical form and how their biological characteristics determine their relationships to the rest of their environment; archaeology, which studies humans by examining the remains of their material culture; and linguistic anthropology, which studies human development and diversity by investigating the history and structure of languages.

p ř íšeří aneb antropologická věda v n ě mecku 20. a 3 0. let

Abstract: The article presents the complicateted world of German anthropology in the twenties and the thirties of the 20 th century. The Denkwelt of anthropology in this period is shown as ambiguous, without a u nifying idea where more approaches to the study of race and its political application were involved. German anthropology during the Third Reich era is as a w hole often considered to be an exemplary case of ideologically contaminated and politically exploited science. Even common textbooks dealing with the history of anthropology support such viewpoints by bonding together racial ideologies and racial anthropology. Such oversimplifying attitudes suffer from several inaccuracies. First, the development of anthropological concepts in this period is to be interpreted rather in the context of the history of scientific (in particular biological) theories than of the history of ideologies. To achieve this, we prefer the contextual rather than the more common diachronic approach for treating this matter. Second, German anthropology did not consist solely of blumenbachian physical anthropology - other branches of anthropology bordering on eugenics, genetics and genealogy have to be taken into account. Third, the "race concept" of the Weimar and Third Reich anthropological science was an extremely complicated issue, which cannot be reduced to the level of mere continuity of blumenbachian anthropology or even chamberlainian / l apougian /g obineauian racial ideologies. Fourth, physical "racial anthropology" (not to be misconstrued for racial ideologies) as such was of minor importance for the practical social arrangements of the Third