sandr010

Indus Valley Civilization is known mainly from two archeological sites of Harappa and Mohenjodaro.Other important sites are Chanu Daro,Kalibangan,Lothal,Amri and others.Harappa is situated on the banks of River Ravi at the distance of 160 kms from Lahore.Mohenjodaro is located in the Larkana district of Sind.It seemed to have flourished around 2500 BC. The most prominent feature is the citadel built of burnt brick on a hill on the western side of the city.There also located a structure called Great Bath.It comprised of large rectangular pool.At each end were steps leading into the water and the base was made of neatly fitted bricks coated with pitch to make them watertight.At the foot of the citadel lay the workers quarters which were small houses of wood and mud on brick foundations divided into blocks by narrow streets.The more spacious residential quarters of the citizens lay to the east. In Harappa granaries were massive structures.The warehouse consisted of 12 granaries arranged i...

The British Government in India segregated the tribes into backward  areas through the institution of system of  excluded area and partially excluded area.The excluded and partially excluded areas were changed into scheduled areas and tribal areas after independence. Art 244 of Constitution of India contains the provisions for the control and administration of scheduled areas  and scheduled tribes in all the states  other than Assam,Meghalaya,Tripura and UT of Mizoram.The latter was governed by Provisions of the 6th schedule. The Governors of the states which has scheduled areas are required  to submit annual reports on the administration of the scheduled areas to the President of India.The collector of the district in which the scheduled area lies acts as an agent to the Governor and administers the scheduled area following the provisions laid down in the Constitution of India.

The theory of Purushartha is concerned with understanding the conduct of affairs of an individual in relation to family and society.The four division of Purushartha are Dharma,Artha,Kama and Moksha.Dharma stands for moral law in society and is the basis of values.It is a regulative principle with bearing on duties and rights. Artha refers to acquisition of worldly prosperity.Apart from satisfying the needs  of his family,man has to lend a helping hand to the poor in society.Kama refers to desires of which sex drive is important.It helps to propagate the human species.Moksha stands for salvation is the ultimate end of human life.It liberates the person from worldly ties and leads to bliss signifying the merger of atman with Brahman.During the Brahmacharya ashrama dharma is learnt.Artha and Kama are important in Grihastha Ashrama.In the ultimate Vanaprastha ashrama worldly pleasures  are avoided and steps are taken to attain moksha.Purushartha has moral and ethical values of Hin...

In primitive societies before money came into use,exchange of  products between people took place.It is known as barter system.A tribe which produced goods in excess of its requirements made over the excess goods to another tribe in exchange for the goods produced by them. The transaction of goods was at three levels including reciprocity,redistribution and commercial exchange.Reciprocity was based on mutual understanding of the needs of two groups.When a group produced goods in excess of its own requirments it gifted the excess to others.The receiving group gave a helping hand to the other group in times of need. Redistribution involves accumulation of goods for subsequent distribution.Commercial exchange involved prices subject to supply and demand involving goods and transactions in labour,land,rental and credit. Most commercial transactions or trade are based on money with standard value acceptable to all.Money is used not only in commercial transactions but also in non commerc...

It is generally agreed that in India there should be economic development of tribes without destroying their culture and customs.Several committees constituted by the government since independence gave their recommendations for improving the welfare of the tribes. A number of schemes aimed at improving the lot of tribes have been included in Five Year Plans.Tribes are distributed over vast area of land and their problems also differ from place to place.It is important to take steps for their welfare area wise.In this context the tribal subplan is significant. In a particular state,predominant tribal districts,areas of residence and tribal population need to be determined by planning integrated development projects.The date collected enable planners and officials to formulate development plans that will create synthesis with the modernization and traditions of tribes.

Homo Habilis emerged between 2.3 and 2.5 million years ago.They had brains that were large compared to their  body size.Their faces protruded less,teeth smaller,legs longer and arms shorter.They produced stone tools.They lived in grassland,hunted small animals and scavanged the remains of large animals.Stone rings found in Olduvai Africa suggest that Homo Habilis built shelters for protection against cold weather and predators.The earliest remains of Homo Habilis are from Africa but it is disputed since a variety of fossils from China and Indonesia are more than 1.8 million years old.The tools are also traced in Pakistan and France.This suggest that Homo Habilis spread out from Africa. Homo Erectus Homo Erectus was a human species found in Asia,Africa and Europe and were present between 1.8 million and 200,000 years ago.the body size of Homo Erectus was larger than Homo Habilis.The average brain size  was also larger at 1000 cubic centimetres.They were not the first to walk up...

India has many tribes and constitutes 7% of Indian population.Their culture,institutions,values,beliefs and way of life was so different from others that a special policy was required to integrate them in Indian society.British always had followed the isolation policy.India's first Prime Minister,Jawaharlal Nehru advocated a five point tribal policy which was the first step towards integration of tribals into the society.He stressed on the freedom of tribals to develop their own genius,preservation of rights in land and forests and continuance of traditional tribal institutions. Integration means combination of diverse elements of perception leading to happy synthesis of culture.In pursuance of this policy many common programmes for tribals were undertaken.In recent years several legislation and policy decisions were taken to give ownership of land and forest produce to them.The reservations in educational institutions and other government set up is another step in direction o...

Religion is an expression of collective consciousness.It provides opportunity for integration and solidarity of the society.The object of science is to study the universe in its material aspect while religion has as its immediate object god and supernatural life.Despite the advancement of science ,religion performs a valuable function for both society and the individual which cannot be negated by substituting scientific explanations for religious explanations for the universe.Religion is based on faith and rituals whereas in science it emphasizes on facts,proofs, verification and observations.Science believes in empirical truth whereas religion believes in non empirical truth.Science emphasizes on the known aspect and religion focus on the unknown or supernatural aspects.

Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus offers several new perspectives of social structure when it was published in the year 1966.He has brought the method of structuralism in his study of caste system.The chief elements of his methodology are Ideology and structure Dialectic transformational relationship and comparison Indological and structuralist approach Cognitive historical approach Defining ideology he writes it designates a more or less unified set of ideas and values.Indian civilization is a specific ideology whose components are in a binary opposition to that of west modern against traditional,holism against individualism,hierarchy against equality,purity against pollution status against power etc this opposition is basis for comparison at the level of global ideology within the specific ideology of the caste system.The opposite is between the principles of purity and pollution.Apart from ideology and structure,the notion of hierarchy has a pivotal place in Dumont's study of caste...

In contemporary India ,joint families are fast losing their importance due to urbanization and globalization and majority of families have turned nuclear in nature.Livein relationship are also gaining acceptance among vast majority of people.The loosening bonds of traditional normative patterns are responsible for this trend.The majority of couples marry after a certain period or when they have children.Relaxation of previously intolerant attitudes towards homosexuality has been accompanied by a growing tendency of courts to give custody of children to mothers living in gay relationships.People staying single is also increasing due to several factors like trend towards late marriages where people are giving due importance to their career rather than marriage.The rising trend of divorce and the growing number of old people in the population whose partners have died.However most of these trends are visible in urban centres and metro cities whereas the rural areas still...

Islam is a monotheistic religion infused with egalitarianism.It is based on casteless and class less premise with stress on brotherhood.But in India,Muslims from the time of their settlement got divided into groups with graded status resembling the Indian caste system. With reference to Uttar Pradesh,Louis Dumont noted the presence of Ashraf or nobles the descendants of the immigrants divided into four kinds and common people of Indian origin meaning converts.The latter have always distributed along the lines of their original caste.Ashrafs belong to the four tribes of the same blood Saiyads,Sheik,Pathan and Mogul.Among Ashrafs there is no endogamous division though marriage is within a small circle.Among non-Ashrafs status is broadly distinguished as converts of superior caste,professional groups like artisans of Hindus,converted untouchables.These groups are endogamous like Hindu castes and many of them continued to follow their original Hindu customs.In South India ,converts even re...

The evidences of Upper palaeolithic period has been found in India in states of AndhraPradesh,Uttar Pradesh,Karnataka,Jharkhand,Maharashtra and in Madhyapradesh.It is also found in some places in West Bengal.The most convincing evidence for the period is found at Kurnool and Chittoor districts of Andhrapradesh.But there is absence of stratigraphic evidence. Tool types made mainly of bones discovered at Betamcherla caves in Kurnool.Here stratigraphic evidence in the form of mesolithic tool types in the top with Upper Palaeolithic tool types below has been discovered.In Chittoor district at Renigunta near Rallakalva river tool types representing Upper paleolithic culture have been discovered such as blades,burin,points,scrapers and choppers and flakes.At Yerragondapalem in Prakasam district many tool types representing upper Paleolithic culture have been discovered.In Uttar Pradesh at Belan valley stratigraphical evidence for the presence of upper paleolithic culture seems to have been d...

In biological theory of genetic evolution adaptation refers to psychological or behavioural changes which result in increased chances of survival in a given environment.The genetic quality of the human race can be improved through positive eugenics involving reproduction among those considered by society as desirable and by negative eugenics involving discouragement of reproduction among those with genetic defects. Genetic counselling helps people to get necessary genetic and medical information along with information on social,economic and psychological aspects.Genetic screening can help the future generation to get rid of many undesirable inherited diseases.Screening may be done in the prenatal stage.Many chromosomal abnormalities can be detected at prenatal stage.Avoidance of marriage help in elimination of diseases related to recessive genes.In the transformation technique introduction of genetic information from external sources is involved.DNA technology has helped in correcting ...

In society people whose vision is limited to his or her own desires and needs are generally not effective  in dealing with other people.Such individuals are egocentric and not suited to develop cultural and social relationship between people of different attitudes in society.A person who judges other cultures solely in terms of his or her own culture  is ethnocentric  and this attitude defined  in a person is ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism infuses a feeling that one's own group has values and a pattern of values superior to all others.When this is defined there is generalised contempt for the members of other groups.Manifestation of ethnocentrism may make a person to adopt an attiutude of superiority or even hostility towards others.Ethnocentrism in society may be expressed by discrimination,verbal aggression or hostility .An ethnocentric person cannot do anthropological work as one has to be free from all biases and subjectivities.It cannot hinder one's understanding ...

Organic evolution is defined by the development of organisms from simple and homogeneous to complex and heterogeneous forms.It is a continuous and never-ending process  from the time life appeared  on the earth millions of years ago.A multitude of life forms appeared  in the geological past  and many species  became extinct some of them terminally due to changes in the environment.Studies on fossils and living animals and plants bear out a continuous development in which each stage grows out of the one before.It seems as though organic evolution unfolds forces that have been always defined ever since life first appeared.In physical anthropology the concept of evolution is traced from the first  appearance of primitive  organisms  through stages of development of many species ending with the appearance of Homo Sapiens. Jean Baptiste Lamarck held that acquired characteristics could be inherited and that individuals who in their lifetime de...

Peter Metcalf in his book  Anthropology states that one of Boas's most outstanding students was Edward Sapir.His overview of the field of linguistics called Language (1921)where he expanded on the basic insight that the sounds of language form a system at several different levels.At the most fundamental level any given language makes use of only some of the noises that a human mouth can make.But competence in speaking does not consist of getting noises exactly the same every time which is not human but rather of observing certain distinctions between noises. For example there are languages that make no distinction between the popping noises that can be made with the lips what are technically called plosives.For speakers of those languages it would be hard to even hear the difference between the English words plot and blot.In their own language a plosive in any particular utterance might vary between p/b without risk of misunderstanding.That is the contrast is not signific...

Anthropologists are using ideas outside the field of anthropology especially from the fields of sociology and linguistics.The other fields are literacy criticism,philosophy and political theory.Anthropologists are using the idea of discourse as used by the French philosopher Michel Foucault who talked about knowledge and power built into the framework of the discourse. Anthropologists influenced by Foucault sometimes replace the old idea of culture with the idea of discourse and its added implication that powerful groups may through discourse exercise control over less powerful groups.This shows that anthropology is not a closed system.It takes from other ideas and get enriched in return.

Clifford Geertz initiated a theoretical assumption where he emphasizes not only the idea of  translation but also the idea of ethnographic writing as a genre within literature.A key concept according to Alan Barnard is the thick description including ethnographic details,different informants interpretations,the ethnographer's interpretation etc.  This approach is reflected in the collection Writing Culture (1986) edited by James Clifford and George E Marcus.Geertz's emphasis has led to a greater awareness of good and bad writing in Anthropology.It also sparked debate on the creative role of the anthropologist as a writer.However it also obscures the importance of the people and society under study putting undue focus on anthropologist.There is hardly any comparison of the description.

Communitas is defined by Victor Turner for an unstructured realm of society where often the normal ranking of individuals is reversed or the symbols of rank inverted.This sense of community characterizes  rites of passage. Culture Circle is a cluster of related culture traits or the geographical area where these are found.This idea was fundamental to German-Austrian diffusionists. Crow terminology is a type of kinship terminology in which the father's sister's daugher is called by the same term as the father's sister or more generally one in which ego calls several members of his or her father's matrilineal kin group by the same term. Discourse in Anthropology often means not just a way of talking or writing but one that implies special knowledge or relations of power. Four fields approach in Anthropology as having four branches- social or cultural anthropology,anthropological linguistics,prehistoric archaeology and biological or physical anthropology. Emic is related t...

Compadrazgo is defined as a fictive kin relationship between the god parents of a child and the parents of the child.It is common in certain Roman Catholic societies.

According to Alan Barnard in Investigating Human Social Life,evolutionist anthropologists  are those interested in how cultures and societies change and develop from simple to complex.The evolutionist perspective was most prominent in the late 19th century but it gained popularity in the late 20th century. It presupposes the following assumptions- Humankind is basically inventive.Therefore one idea procedure or tool may be invented more than once. Humans everywhere think in much the same way.Therefore the same things will be invented in different places across the globe. Evolutionists can be divided in four camps: Unilinear evolutionists (from the mid 19th century) hold that there is a precise line of evolution ,the same everywhere.For example according to Sir John Lubbock religion evolved from atheism to fetishism to nature-worship or totemism to shamanism to idolotry to theism. Universal evolutionists (from the early 20th century) hold that only general trends are the same everyw...

Diffusion is the transmission of things from one culture,people or place to another.The essence of diffusion is contact and interaction.The biblical framework of explanation,developed vigorously in the 16th and 17th centuries is diffusionist.The dispersion of mankind with the fall of the tower of Babel provides a genealogical that is biological and social diffusionary connection between all people.Diffusion also underpins the development of language studies especially in the work of Orientalist Sir William Jones on the Indo-European language group and of the German Max Muller who worked on comparative philology but was a proponent of the idea that all humanity shares the same mentality. Diffusionism is also major theme in the work of Fredrich Ratzel who was the first to divide the world into culture areas.His work influenced Tylor.The work of Leo Frobenius (1873-1938) and Fritz Graebner (1877-1934) on the concept of Kulturkreise or culture circles was an important influence on Boas. In...

British anthropologist Lucy Mair defined sorcery as a sort of legitimate evil,a harmful spiritual activity which might be objectionable but was at least understandable in so far it was related to social values.She writes,'All these ideas belong to the field of legitimate action against misbehavior .In some circumstances  one might include in this field the use of magic-charms and spells  and objects believed to have mystical power.In the language of anthropologists  harmful magic is generally called sorcery and most sorcery is thought to be illegitimate.But it is possible in Africa to buy from a sorcerer protective magic which will keep thieves of your property and in parts of New Guinea different families are believed to own different kinds of harmful magic with which they protect their own food crops.It is also possible in Africa after something has been stolen to get a sorcerer to make magic which will injure the unknown thief if he does not make restitution....

Man has been defined as a complex of certain biological and socio-psychological drives.An individual human being is not in a position to satisfy all the needs himself.He must cooperate with other fellow human beings and engage in organized behavior.A solitary isolated human being will probably lose his existence  or failing that happening immediately will lose his humanity.So the need for forming associations which is the coming together of groups of human beings to engage in organized behavior for a designated goal and in conformity with a designated set of rules and norms must have come naturally to man as that for satisfying hunger and allied needs the two set of needs being inter dependent.An association is to be differentiated from a community in so far the former is deliberately formed and depends upon human initiative and action for its emergence whereas the latter emerges spontaneously out of physical proximity and a consciousness of kind. Age,sex,occupation,rank ...

According to some anthropologists,belief in mana  is the beginning of religion.It is a supernatural power and exists as a quality or attribute of objects.Such a religious complex of beliefs has been found among the Indian tribe of Munda,Ho and other cognate tribes of Chota Nagpur.They use the term bonga to designate this power and quality. Among the Ho the bonga are understood as powers indefinite and impersonal;they do not seem to have any objective appearance or existence.The overall supremacy of the bonga over Munda life shows only the extent of anthropomorphism.The impersonal bonga use the medium of dreams to foretell,day dreams being used for fore warning about bad things.Bonga is manifestation of a vague supernatural power one that is the cause of all energy. Differences between individuals,differences of power,prestige and so on are regarded to be due to the degree of the bonga power possessed by a person.Anything that is new requires a new adjustment and anything ...

Anthropologists have arrived at some generalizations which can be attributed to Culture.Kroeber has drawn attention to two aspects of culture called eidos and ethos.Eidos is the formal appearance of a culture derived from its constituents.Contrasted with the aggregate of constituents is ethos,the disposition of a culture which determines its quality,its main themes and interests.According to Bateson each culture can be said to have two aspects the first consisting of the total emotional emphasis of a culture called ethos and the second consisting of the emphases resulting from a cognitive processes operative within a culture called eidos.  Kluckhohn says that not everything in a people's life may be yielded to us and added to our knowledge merely through sensory observation.Such regularities as may be perceived with the aid of the eye and the ear are the explicit items of a culture.There may be other items which would be perceived by us only after being specially trained for l...

Jajmani System as a term was introduced into Indian social anthropology and sociology by William Wiser.In his contribution based on his study in a village in Uttar Pradesh he described how different castes interacted with one another in the production and exchange of goods and services.With variations this system existed throughout the country. According to the Jajmani System there is exchange of goods and services between landowing higher castes  and landless service castes.The service castes are traditionally weavers,leather workers,blacksmiths,goldsmiths,barbers,washermen and so far constituting a group of artisans serving the community.The landed higher castes jajman or the patron and the service castes are jajman.The jajmani system is based on agricultural system of production and distribution of goods and services .It is the link between the landowing high caste groups and occupational castes. Oscar Lewis mentions that each caste groups within a village is traditionally bound...

In 1930 Robert Red field ( 1897-1958) published Tepoztlan: A Mexican Village where he combined Boasian functionalism with evolutionist and German sociological traditions to focus on the normative rules that governed social behavior.He produced an idealist representation of a village where people lived in peaceful harmony. Red field developed the concept of the Great and Little traditions the urban-folk continuum. Red field's distinction is between the literate ,urban(great) culture of the elite and the largely oral and informal 9(little) tradition of the peasant community.Elements from the little tradition are constantly being taken up and reworked by the Great Tradition.In time these filter back down to be reinterpreted or transformed in the folk tradition,in accordance with local customs and values. Tepoztlan was revisited by Oscar Lewis,in Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlan Restudied (1951) where he used a  processual approach that focus...

A group of radical American anthropologists wrote a series of essays in Reinventing Anthropology in 1969 which was edited by Dell Hymes.This was motivated by the general political climate of the 1960s - the war in Vietnam,civil rights issues and protests in US.It called for a programme of reform in Anthropology and became part of the contemporary discourse of anthropology. Reinventing Anthropology's reform elements led to multiple interpretations and approaches. Reporting back meant not only the study of the impact of colonialism on the other but studying its consequences within the west a rather different approach to the routine anthropology within western society. Reflexive anthropology made the process of studying visible by a change in methods of recording and writing field data to enable the voice of the studied to be heard and let them speak for themselves.It has become the self-scrutiny of the anthropologist. Advocacy anthropology led to the switch from disengaged to engaged...

According to anthropologist Alan Barnard,one of the main characteristic of recent ethnography is the emphasis on Reflexivity.The ethnographer reflects on his role as ethnographer.Ethnographers are more subjective regarding ethnography less as an objective account of an alien society and more as an attempt to bridge the divide between cultures.Reflexivity today is activity undertaken during fieldwork.It is also a style of writing.While anthropologists welcomes the notion of Reflexivity when it became popular in the 1980s,it has advantages as well as disadvantages. Advantages of Reflexivity Being aware of possible biases introduced by the ethnographer. Expressing findings with due modesty. Disadvantages of Reflexivity An ability to make firm,objective statements about the society or culture An overemphasis on the ethnographer rather than the people.

Margaret Mead did her fieldwork on Samoa and Manus in the Pacific with latmul and Mundugamor( Papua New Guinea),on Bali( Indonesia) amd with both native and Euro Americans.Mead was interested  in childhood and adolescence,sexuality and the relation between personality and culture.Mead advocated the use of ethnography in educating the American public about the significance of culture in creating adolescent truma.Her most famous contribution was her study of adolescent sexuality in Samoa.Her Samoan informants did not have adolescent traumas whereas Americans did.She saw  what had formerly been regarded as a universal adolescent truma simply as an aspect of American culture.According to Mead's account Samoan girls had sex with their boyfriends and had no guilt feelings or other hang-ups about it.They did not have any disputes with their parents who simply turned a blind eye. In 1983 Derek Freeman published Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropologica...

Bride wealth is a form of marriage exchange involving giving cash or goods by the bridegroom's kin to the bride's  kin to settle a marriage.A person can claim compensation for violation of conjugal rights only when bride wealth had been paid.If a marriage is terminated , bride wealth has to be returned to the giver. Bride wealth enables the husband to have economic,domestic and conjugal rights over wife.It enables the wife to hold her husband accountable for violation of conjugal rights.The rights of both help to keep the husband and wife together but divorce is known in societies where bride wealth is prevalent. Dowry is giving cash and goods by the bride's kin to the bridegroom's kin.The dowry may be a part of the inheritance of family property by the bride.It may help the bride to set up home or keep it as an insurance for future needs.In India the dowry system has put serious threat to the social fabric of society.Pressed and ha...

In the beginning  tribal religions in India were termed as animism in various census reports and books.Animism was applied as most basic form of religion in which magic is the predominant element.It conceives of man as passing through a life surrounded by the company of powers and elements mostly impersonal in character.Some of these are regarded as presiding forces over the various departments of life each force having its sphere of influence.Thus there may be a spirit presiding over various diseases,spirits dwelling in rocks and mountains,trees or associated with river and waterfalls and so on.These are propitiated to ward off the dangers associated with their influence. Among the Korwa there is a spirit presiding over crops,one over rainfall,cattle besides there are several spirits which govern the attitude of Korwa towards their neighbors,towards the priests and the headman of the affairs of the tribe.Thus animism carries with a belief in benevolent as well as malevolent s...

Cognitive Anthropology is a sub field of cultural anthropology and is concerned with relationships among language,culture and cognition.Cognitive psychology,structural linguistics and structural anthropology have influenced the development of cognitive anthropology.It sees culture as a system of knowledge and concepts.They are concerned with the accurate description of ethnographic reality.So they consider that words used by people for significant objects and phenomena,alternative meanings to words and variations in meaning according to the context of communication need to be carefully recorded. Studies in cognitive anthropology in the 1960s gave importance to the classification of the natural world in other cultures as also to other systems of zoological or botanical knowledge.This approach named ethnoscience led to the generation of a flow of folk taxonomy studies.Linguistics have influence on cognitive anthropology.The influence can be seen from the emphasis placed on the r...

Robert Red field described concept of style of life as consisting not of culture but of all that may be regarded as most fundamental and permanent about a culture which has persisted in time.It would include ways of securing a living in so far as these play a role in the shaping of the conception of what  constitutes the good life. Style of life emphasizes explicit and implicit judgement about the constituents  of right conduct.Also included are the tastes and performances which invest a people with their own peculiar individuality.Redfield compares his style of life to Lionell Trilling's manners which the latter has defined as the implicit,explicit and unutterable expressions of value.

Joint family is prevalent in India sanctioned by tradition,history,myth and religion.It is a collection of more than one primary family on the basis of close blood ties and common residence.Consequently there can be two types of joint family- matrilocal joint family like that of Nayar and the Patrilocal joint family as in Central Indian tribes and all Hindus. In both these family types, the offspring female in the case of matrilocal and male in the case of patrilocal do not as a general rule leave their families of origin on their marriage.Such families are basically amalgam of several families of origin and procreation.Such members of a joint family as do not have to leave their family of origin on marriage may not lose completely the membership of  their original families thus bringing about the dual membership. D N Majumdar and T.N Madan in 'An Introduction to Social Anthropology'

Julian H Steward introduced ecological anthropology in his Theory of Culture Change in 1955.He argued that environment and technology play a major role in determining the social organization of culture and can be correlated with an evolutionary framework. The main concepts of ecological anthropology are Adaptation- the ability to respond to environmental stress Means of subsistence- the method of exploiting an environment such as fishing,hunting,gathering,herding or agriculture. Ecological niche- the set of resources  used in a particular environment.Different people may exploit different ecological  niches in the same environment. Carrying capacity- the maximum number of people following a particular means of subsistence who can exist in a particular environment.Sometimes this supposes a specific means of subsistence. Social organization refers to the activities of members of a society.It is related to the idea of society as social structure (the positions people occupy in re...

In 1960s under the influence of functionalism,the focus in studies of anthropology was solely on the abstraction 'society',  the individual actor had disappeared from the view.This view was criticized by many anthropologists and argued that social outcomes were obviously the result of individual choices.So the objective of actor centered approaches was to understand the social situations that individuals confronted in everyday life and how they chose to invest their limited resources of time,energy,wealth and influence. The case in point was explained by the ethnographic account by Fredrik Barth a British trained Norwegian anthropologist who studied the Swat valley in Eastern Afghanistan in 1959.Petty Lords or Khan were constantly at war and the nominal king of Swat could not control them.There were noble lineages and clans but they fought among themselves  as vigorously as with outsiders.Barth explains how the game of being a Khan was played.Each had perso...

Religion,belief,ritual and symbolism are linked to major interest of anthropologists which is art.The anthropology of art has been concerned with material objects such as sculpture,masks,paintings,textiles,baskets,pots,weapons and the human body itself.These are not seen merely as aesthetic objects, appreciated for  their beauty but as playing a wider role in people's lives. The anthropological study of art include the symbolic meanings encoded in such subjects as well as the materials and techniques of their production.In many societies the artist is not specially recognized as an individual creator nor are their works distinguished as part of a separate high culture.Artistic production is often general to large number of people being collective rather than individual.The concepts of creativity and innovation can vary tremendously in different cultures.          Merryl Wyn Davies and Piero in 'Introducing Anthropology A Graphic Guide'