Anthropology is divided into three subfields:
- Sociocultural Anthropology
- Biological Anthropology
- Archeology
SOCIOCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY - Sociocultural anthropologists interpret the content of particular cultures, explain variation among cultures, and study processes of cultural change and social transformation. UC Davis sociocultural anthropologists conduct research on most areas of the world, focusing on topics that include: human ecology; gender relations; culture and ideology; demography and family systems; race, class and gender inequality; resistance movements; colonialism, neocolonialism, and development; and cultural politics in the West.
BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY - Biological anthropologists study a variety of aspects of human evolutionary biology. Some examine fossils and apply their observations to understanding human evolution; others compare morphological, biochemical genetic, and physiological adaptations of living humans to their environments; still others observe behavior of human and nonhuman primates (monkeys and apes) to understand the roots of human behavior.
ARCHAEOLOGY - Archaeologists study the material remains of present and past cultural systems to understand the technical, social and political organization of those systems and the larger culture cultural evolutionary process that stand behind them. The UC Davis program in archaeology emphasizes research in California and the Great Basin, but also supports the study of hunter-gatherer systems in general, and is engaged in such research in Australia Alaska, Peru, Greenland, Western Europe, North and South Africa, and northern Asia.
The Role of Anthropology in Studying Tourism. : -
Anthropology has expanded and changed radically by including within its purview the study of tourism. In spite of the ubiquitous nature of traveling in anthropology, tourism and travel became subjects worthy of discussion in anthropology relatively recently, in Europe in the 1930s and in the United States in the 1960s (see Introductory Works). Two main reasons explain this paucity of attention. First, anthropologists argued that their experience and motivations for being in a distant location could not be compared to that of tourists, and they believed that, in many instances, they were being unfairly associated with the tourists they encountered in these faraway places. Second, anthropologists considered tourism a subject not serious enough to discuss intellectually and ethnographically. Although in practically every ethnographic field site anthropologists encountered at least occasional tourists, they were perceived to be an undesired nuisance and given scant or no attention. In spite of this inauspicious beginning, the anthropological scholarship on tourism has contributed greatly to tourism studies. Anthropologists have made important contributions to the understanding of tourism’s impact on host communities; the impact of travel on an individual; the power relationships in tourism developments; heritage and culture commodification; types of tourism and tourists; and the relationships between tourism and ethnicity, identity, material culture, nationalism, and the environment, among others.
Introductory Works - In general terms, the field of tourism studies has tended to be fragmented and rarely interdisciplinary, as scholars approach it from within their own disciplinary boundaries (Echtner and Jamal 1997). In anthropology, the study of tourism began in Europe in the 1930s. In the United States, it is agreed that the study of tourism was launched with publication of Nuñez 1963, an article about “weekendismo” in Guadalajara, Mexico. At this time, researchers in other disciplines (such as sociology, ecology, leisure and recreation studies, and political science) became interested in analyzing tourism as well. In 1977, Valene Smith published the influential edited volume Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, which was reedited in 1989 (see Smith 1989). This volume marked the beginning of a more serious interest in tourism and travel in anthropology. Geography, history, and sociology are other disciplines in the social sciences in which practitioners have studied the tourism industry. For instance, geography concerned itself with tourism long before anthropology (in the 1930s), and geographers have produced essential contributions, particularly concerning nuanced understandings of place and space. Sociologists have produced a typology of tourism, the concepts of “staged authenticity” and “site sacralization” (see MacCannell 1999) and the figure of “the stranger” in modern society (Bauman 1991) among other important concepts, while historians have studied travel and tourism since the 1930s. In addition, the fields of business, management, and economics have long addressed the topic of tourism from an epistemological approach that differs from that of the social sciences.
ANTHROPOLOGY OF TOURISM -
Before the recognition of anthropology of tourism as a serious field of study many sociologists and anthropologists attempted to explore the elements of this subject. Durkheim has perhaps been the most successful anthropologist to establish the relationship between the individual and the society. His works have been applied to tourism by Nelson Graburn.
In his book The Elementary Form of Religious Life, Emile Durkheim
({1912}1915) has said that all religious belief must have emanated as a sort of collective representation of society in the form of totemic symbols. Rituals and prayers done at the time of the periodic festivals, are devoted to the totemic spirit. At this time a collective representation of totemic clan members occur when all the clan people come together at one place and pray. Here the feelings of the people are heightened and a mystic feeling about togetherness arises. It is in these collective ceremonies that man first experienced religious beliefs. In other words, the group is god to the individual, according to Durkheim.
In a similar classic work, The Rites of Passage (1909, 1960 {Eng Ed.}) in anthropology Arnold van Gennep theorised about the transition from one social category to another during the so called life cycle which usher individuals through the crucial crises of their lives such as birth, puberty, marriage, parenthood, advancement to a higher class, occupational specialisation and death. He discovered that the ceremonies for all these life cycles could be subdivided into three stages.
- Separation: the individual would first be ritually removed from the society as a whole. This involves break of an individual from his or her old group of status. The rituals concerning this phase symbolise the loss of the old status.
- Transition: He would then be isolated for a period and be in complete seclusion from the remaining society. In this stage the individual though cut off from the old status is yet to be incorporated in the new group acquiring new status.
- Incorporation: He would finally be incorporated back into the tribe in his new status. The rituals and symbols of this phase are those of rebirth.
The association between the two fields does not have a long historic background. The first anthropological study of tourism was undertaken by Nunez in 1963, while the validation of tourism as an appropriate field of anthropological study was perhaps first undertaken by Cohen in the late 70s (2004). Although Cohen’s main focus initially was how tourism is relevant to sociology, this had strong implications for later anthropological involvement.
In 1993, Przeclawski proposed an interdisciplinary approach to the study of tourism, in which issues can be examined from different viewpoints. This approach stressed that tourism is a very complex phenomenon, encompassing issues that are:
Economic (to do with supply and demand, business, and markets),
Psychological (such as need and motivation),
Social (roles, contacts, and ties),
Cultural (where it can transmit knowledge, and be a factor in change)
To understand this complexity, an integrative, interdisciplinary approach seemed appropriate and important to provide a holistic view of tourism. ‘Anthropologists, and other social scientists, argue that people, rather than business lie at the heart of the need to analyse tourism’ (Burns 1999:88). This is evidenced by the fact that tourism is widespread in human society. There are very few places left on our planet that have not been reached by tourists, and increasingly fewer people Tourism who have not travelled. Subsequently, tourism has the potential to affect all of humankind. In addition, tourism involves contact between cultures and subcultures as tourists travel to places outside their normal places of work and rest, to places very different from their own. One can also not deny that tourism contributes to the transformation of societies and cultures. Although tourism may not be the sole cause of such transformations in the society, but without doubt is one of the main reason, regardless of the size or location of the society or culture being transformed.
Tourism is essentially an applied topic. It involves real people in real situations. To satisfy the needs of tourism studies anthropological contributions need to become more applied both in its theoretical orientation and its practical reality Gardner and Lewis (1996: 158-160) discuss the application of anthropological methodology, skills and expertise in the development context, arguing a place for anthropologists to ‘work within’ the large industries that impact on the lives of indigenous people. Anthropology needs to meet this challenge in the tourism arena. The future challenge for anthropology is to increase its contribution; to expand its analytical work on tourism. As the practice of tourism becomes more focused on hosts (Burns and Sofield 2001), not just as objects or commodities but as active participants, the demand grows for anthropology to apply its specialised knowledge and generate new theoretical frameworks. Such application can assist not only the host communities, but also the tourists and the tourism operators that comprise the whole tourism system. In anthropology, the wide range of possibilities for the study of tourism is only being realised. Ultimately, anthropology is about people and so is tourism.
