INVITATION TO ANTHROPOLOGY

Hello, why I post this content ?
first, now I'm an anthropology's student in Diponegoro University *WOW it take so long since my last post are when I'm in first grade in Senior High School -maybe- I'm forget lol*
then, I remember, my teacher give us much book about Anthropology and now I really want to share with you all about Anthoropology.

-SKIP-

INVITATION TO ANTHROPOLOGY

by Doughlas L. Oliver

(Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University)

HABITS

Cultural anthropologists are concerned more with habits than with random acts of behavior. every human has some habitual ways of behaving-acting, thingking, feeling, etc.-that are unique, some, that are like those of some other persons, and some that are like the rest of mankind's. Some of these habits are inherited, in the literal sense of being conditioned by genetic compositions. For example, as far as is known, all humans blink in reaction to sudden bursts of light, whereas the genetic combination that results in color blindness is more limited in distribution, and the genetic combination that produces a potential Einstein probably occurs only once.

The remainder of human habits are learned; and here again there are some learned habits that may be common to all mankind (or, for example, to all human females, or all males, or all persons of same age), some that are distinctive of particular social aggregates of humans, and some that are limited to particular individuals as a result of every individual's somewhat unique life experience.

In connection with much of the behavior of an individual, or of a whole population, it is not difficult to distinguish habits that are learned from those that may be determined wholly or mainly by genetic factors. One can, for example, be fairly sure without too much inquiry or reflection that the habit of calling one's parent father is learned; but what about the habit of stepping over the lines in a sidewalk? the sidewalk part of this behavior is, of course, learned, but the compulsiveness manifested in the behavior may well be wholly or partly inherited. In this connection, one of the findings that is being continually confirmed by anthropological inquiry is the extraordinary extent to which human behavior may be shaped by learning; even nausea and sneezing are subject to such conditioning. Perhaps no two Tahitians (or Polish peasants or upper-class Englishmen) sneeze in exactly the same way; but all or most Tahitians (or Polish peasants or upper-class Englishmen) sneeze in some ways differently from the rest of mankind.

Anthropologists concern themselves with all there habitual behavior-inherited or learned: panhuman, individual, or group-shared-although they have devoted most attention to those learned habits that are shared by relatively small co-residential social aggregates of people-by bands, villages, tribes, and the like.

Like most other animals, man is first and foremost a social creature. He is always and everywhere to be found associating with other humans. For the human infant the social universe may be no larger than his family, but for most adults the numbers of associates are invariably many more. In our own complex urban centers a person's main association, outside his family, may take place miles away from his residence-in the office, factory, club, and church-but for much of mankind a person's social life is enclosed within a community, a social aggregate made up of individuals who normally reside together in face to face association.

It is in the study of such communities that anthropologists have developed their more or less distinctive techniques and theories for investigating and explaning habitual behavior. Let us look at the way an anthropologist goes about his business of studying such a community.

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