• Question: what is a anthropologist?

    Asked by anon-247472 to Dan on 10 Mar 2020. This question was also asked by anon-247484, anon-247485.
    • Photo: Dan Brunsdon

      Dan Brunsdon answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      I think I answered this question already, but I’ll paste the answer I gave here too so you can more easily read it 🙂

      Anthropology is one of those studies where no one has heard about it but once you explain it people go “ohh that’s quite interesting!”. In short, it’s the study of people and culture. Usually you do this through comparisons between cultures. This is because a lot of things that we accept as facts of the way our society works are actually cultural constructs. You can see this best by comparing different communities. For example, a society where men are the head of the house hold compared to a society where women are the head of the house hold, to show that dividing work and money by gender isn’t set in stone. This can be applied to our understandings of everything that’s a cultural construct, from race, to gender, to fashion, to social status, and everything inbetween!

      Anthropologists try and understand a situation by trying to view it from an ‘insiders perspective’, which basically means seeing things from some one else’s point of view. We can then apply this to studies of the economy, of religion, or to health. As a medical anthropologist, I use this approach to try and understand why a certain disease is spreading and what can be done to stop it. For this it’s very important that you place people at the centre of your study, and actually speak to them to hear their thoughts and opinions, as it’s their lived experience you need to understand!

      If you’re interested in learning more, here is a neat website that will give you more details:
      https://www.discoveranthropology.org.uk/about-anthropology/what-is-anthropology.html

      And there’s even a whole day organised in London for people to hear about anthropology and see what kind of work they do. It’s called London Anthropology Day and the website with more info is here:

      Home

      It’s on the 19th of June and it’s free to attend, so I would recommend if this area of work sounds interesting to you 🙂

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