Mekelle university

Anthropology department

Module Name: Anthropology (Anth1012)

Credit Hours: 2

For 1st Year Regular Students

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 Unit One
Introducing Anthropology and Its Subject Matter
Contents of the Unit
 The major topics to be treated in this unit include:
• Definitions, historical developments, scope, and sub-fields of
anthropology.
• It also addresses topics such as misconceptions about anthropology and
the relation of anthropology with other fields of study.
 Up on the successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
• define anthropology and explain the concepts in anthropology,
• understand the historical development of anthropology,
• express the scope and subject matter of anthropology,
• internalize the unique features of anthropology,
• get cleared with the misconceptions held about anthropology,
• differentiate anthropology from other disciplines,
• appraise the relevance of anthropology in our life.
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 1.1 Definition, Scope and Subject Matter of Anthropology

1.1.1 Definition and Concepts in Anthropology

• To begin with its etymology, the term anthropology is a
compound of two Greek words, ‘anthropos’ and ‘logos’, which
can be translated as human being/mankind and
reason/study/science respectively.
• So, anthropology means reason about humans or the study or
science of humankind or humanity.
• Moreover, man has two important characteristics: biological and
cultural.
• It is very important to understand that the biological and the
cultural characteristics are inseparable elements.
• Culture influences human physical structures and the vise-versa.
• Hence, if we take it literally, anthropology is the study of humans.
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• Other fields also study human beings.
• What is it that distinguishes anthropology from all of these disciplines?
• Anthropology is the study of people-their origins, their development, and
contemporary variations, wherever and whenever they have been found.
• It is a broad scientific discipline dedicated to the comparative study of
humans as a group, from its first appearance on earth to its present stage of
development.
• Of all the disciplines that study humans, anthropology is by far the broadest
in scope.
 In more specific terms, anthropology is the science which:
 investigates the strategies for living that are learned and shared by people
as members of human social groups;
 examines the characteristics that human beings share as members of one
species (homo sapiens) and the diverse ways that people live in different
environments;
 analyses the products of social groups: material objects (material cultures)
and non-material creations (religion/beliefs, social values, institutions,
practices, etc.). 4
• Anthropology is an intellectually challenging, theoretically ambitious
subject, which tries to achieve an understanding of culture, society and
humanity through detailed studies of community life, supplemented by
comparison.
• Anthropology seeks to explain how and why people are both similar and
different through examination of our biological and cultural past and
comparative study of contemporary human societies.
• The ultimate goal of anthropology is to develop an integrated picture of
humankind-a goal that encompasses an almost infinite number of questions
about all aspects of our existence.
• We ask, for example, what makes us human? Why do some groups of people
tend to be tall and lanky, while others tend to be short and stocky? Why do
some groups of people practice agriculture, while others hunt for a living?
• As a matter of simplicity and brevity, anthropology primarily offers two kinds of
insight.
• First, the discipline produces knowledge about the actual biological and cultural
variations in the world;
• Second, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives enabling
practitioners to explore, compare, understand and solve societal problems. 5
 1.1.2 The Historical Development of Anthropology
• Like the other social sciences, anthropology is a fairly recent discipline.
• It was given its present shape during the twentieth century, but it has important
forerunners in the historiography, geography, travel writing, philosophy and
jurisprudence of earlier times.
• If we restrict ourselves to anthropology as a scientific discipline, some would
trace its roots back to the European Enlightenment, during the eighteenth
century;
• others would claim that anthropology did not arise as a science until the 1850s;
yet others would argue that anthropological research in its present-day sense
only commenced after the First World War.
• Never can we avoid such ambiguities.
• It is beyond doubt, however, that anthropology, considered as the science of
humanity, originated in the region we commonly call-the West‘, notably in
three or four-Western‘ countries: France, Great Britain, the USA and, Germany.
• Historically speaking, this is a European discipline, and its practitioners, like
those of all European sciences, occasionally like to trace its roots back to the
ancient Greeks.
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• The present academic anthropology has its roots in the works and
ideas of the great ancient and Medieval Greek, Roman, and Hebrew
philosophers and social thinkers.
• These people were interested in the nature, origin and destiny of
man, and the morality and ethics of human relationships.
• While the roots of anthropology can be generally traced through the
history of western culture as far back as ancient Greek social
philosophical thinking, the discipline did not emerge as a distinct
field of study until the mid-nineteenth century.
• Generally speaking, anthropology as an academic discipline was
born during the 19th century, out of the intellectual atmosphere of
Enlightenment, which is the eighteenth century social and
philosophical movement that emphasized human progress and the
poser of reason, and based on the Darwinian Theory of Evolution.
• By the late 1870s, anthropology was beginning to emerge as a
profession.
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• A major impetus for its growth was the expansion of western colonial powers
and their consequent desire to better understand the peoples living under
colonial domination.
• During its formative years, anthropology became a profession primarily in
museums.
• Anthropologists of the early 1900s emphasized the study of social and
cultural differences among human groups.
• Here, many of the indigenous peoples of non-western world and their social
and cultural features were studied in detail and documented. This approach is
called ethnography.
• By the mid-1900, however, anthropologists attempted to discover universal
human patterns and the common bio-psychological traits that bind all human
beings. This approach is called ethnology.
• Ethnology aims at the comparative understanding and analysis of different
ethnic groups across time and space.
• In Ethiopia, professional anthropologists have been studying culture and
society on a more intensive level only since the late 1950s.
• Almost inevitably, the initial emphasis was on ethnography, the description of
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specific customs, cultures and ways of life.
 1.1.3 Scope and Subject Matter of Anthropology
• The breadth and depth of anthropology is immense; there no time and space
left as far as man exists.
• In other words, the temporal dimension covers the past, the present and
even the future.
• In terms of the spatial dimension, anthropology studies from Arctic to
Desert, from Megapolis to hunting gathering areas.
• The discipline covers all aspects of human ways of life experiences and
existence, as humans live in a social group.
• Anthropology touches upon all aspect of human conditions as far as there is
a relation between human beings themselves, and humans and natural
environment.
• A crucial part of the anthropological project also consists in conceptualizing
and understanding similarities and differences between social systems and
human relationships.
• As one of the foremost anthropologists of the twentieth century, Claude
Lévi-Strauss, has expressed: “Anthropology has humanity as its object of
research, but unlike the other human sciences, it tries to grasp its object 9
• In other words, anthropology studies humanity with its all aspects of
existence, and in its all means of differences (diversities) and similarities
(commonalities).
• Wherever human beings live, there is always anthropology.
• The discipline also accounts for the interrelationships between different
aspects of human existence, and usually anthropologists investigate
these interrelationships taking as their point of departure a detailed study
of local life in a particular society or a delineated social environment.
• Although anthropologists have wide-ranging and frequently highly
specialized interests, they all share a common concern in trying to
understand both connections within societies and connections between
societies.
• Anthropologists strive for an understanding of the biological and
cultural origins and evolutionary development of the species.
• They are concerned with all humans, both past and present, as well as
their behavior patterns, thought systems, and material possessions.
• In short, anthropology aims to describe, in the broadest sense, what it
means to be human (Peacock, 1986). 10
 1.2 Unique Features of Anthropology
 Anthropology is unique in its scope, approach, focus and method of study.
 Anthropology has a broad scope. It is interested in all human beings, whether
contemporary or past, ''primitive'' or '' civilized''.
 It is interested in many different aspects of humans, including their phenotypic
characteristics, family lives, marriages, political systems, economic lives,
technology, belief systems, health care systems, personality types, and languages.
 No place or time is too remote to escape the anthropologist's notice. No dimension
of human kind, from genes to art styles, is outside the anthropologist's attention.
 Indeed, Anthropology is the broad study of human kind, around the world and
throughout time.
 The second important feature is its approach. In its approach anthropology is
holistic, relativistic, and focused one.
 Holistic, in a sense, means that it looks any phenomena from different vantage
points.
 Accordingly, anthropology considers culture, history, language and biology
essential to a complete understanding of society. Anthropology seeks to
understand human beings as whole organisms that adapt to their environments
through a complex interaction of biology and culture. 11
 The concept of relativism is highly appreciated in anthological studies.
 Anthropology tries to study and explain a certain belief, practice or
institution or a group of people in its own context.
 It does not make value judgment, i.e., it does not hold the position that
a given belief or practice is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
 Anthropology's comparative perspective helps to understand
differences and similarities among human beings across time and place.
 Another important perspective is a way of looking at people's ideas.
 It considers insiders' views as a primary focus of any anthropological
inquiry.
 Anthropological studies give attention to how people perceive
themselves and understand their world; how a particular group of
people explain about their action, or give meaning to their behavior or
cultural practices.
 This is what anthropologists call an emic perspective.
 It helps to understand the logic and justification behind group behavior
and cultural practices.
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 Another important unique feature of anthropology is its research
approach.
 Anthropology is highly dependent on qualitative research to understand
the meaning behind any human activity.
 Extended fieldwork, participant observation, in-depth and key
informant interviews and focus-group discussion are qualitative
research instruments to explore change and continuities in human
societies.
 Ethnographic fieldwork is an important strategy which normally
requires spending a year or more with research subjects and document
realities occurring across time.
 For most anthropologists, fieldwork is a process requiring them to-tune-
in; hangout; and hang-on to the societies and cultures they are interested
to study.
 Focusing more on the local than the big social processes has been
another exclusive approach in the discipline.
 Paying great attention to local or micro-social processes certainly helps
us to better understand big changes in societies. 13
 1.3 Misconceptions About Anthropology
 Due to lack of appropriate awareness about the nature, scope and subject
matter of the discipline, different misconceptions are held about anthropology.
 One misconception about anthropology is related to the area of its study.
• It is said that anthropology is limited to the study of "primitive" societies.
• Indeed, most of the works done by anthropologists during early periods
focused on isolated, so called "primitive", small scale societies.
• However, anthropologists nowadays study most advanced and most complex
societies as well.
 Another misconception is that anthropologists only study the rural people and
rural areas.
 As a matter of fact, most of the studies conducted during the formative years
(when it was undergoing a process of development to be become a separate
fields of study) of the discipline focused on rural areas.
 But now, anthropologists are also interested in the study of urban people and
urban areas.
 There is a distinct sub-discipline devoted to the study of urban societies
called-Urban Anthropology-which focuses on urban areas and complex cities. 14
 It is also wrongly misconceived that anthropology is the study/analysis
of fossil evidences of the proto-humans like that of Lucy/Dinkinesh.
 It is true that anthropology is interested in the question of the origin of
modern human beings.
 However, this does not mean that anthropology is all about the study of
human evolution.
 It studies both the biological and the cultural aspects of humans and
examines the existing human physical and biological variations and
cultural diversity.
 It is also misconceived that the purpose of anthropology is to study and
preserve communities far from development and obsolete cultural
practices in museums.
 Rather, anthropologists‘ duties are to support those communities'
capacity to empower themselves in development processes.
 They assist peoples' initiatives instead of imposed policies and ideas
coming from outside and play active roles in bringing about positive
change and development in their own lives.
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 1.4 The Relationship Between Anthropology and Other Disciplines

• Anthropology is similar with other social sciences such as sociology,

psychology, political sciences, economics, history, etc.
• Anthropology greatly overlaps with these disciplines that study human
society.
• However, anthropology differs from other social sciences and the humanities
by its broad scope, unique approach, perspective, unit of analysis and
methods used.
• In its scope, anthropology studies humankind in its entirety.
• In its approach, anthropology studies and analyzes human ways of life
holistically, comparatively and in a relativistic manner.
• The perspective is also fundamentally empirical, naturalistic and ideographic
[particularising] than nomothetic [universalising] one.
• In its method of research, it is unique in that it undertakes extended
fieldwork among the study community and develops intimate knowledge of
the life and social worlds of its study group/society through employing those
ethnographic data collection techniques such as participant observation, key
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informant interview and focus group discussions.
 1.5 Contributions of Anthropology
 By studying anthropology, we get the following benefits, among others.
 First, the anthropological perspective, with its emphasis on the comparative
study of cultures, should lead us to the conclusion that our culture is just one
way of life among many found in the world, and that it represents one way
(among many possible ways) to adapt to a particular set of environmental
conditions.
• Through the process of contrasting and comparing, we gain a fuller
understanding of other cultures and our own.
• Anthropology also helps us better understand ourselves or our own ways of
life.
• As a mirror of human life, by studying others, we can better understand
ourselves. Hence, it gives an opportunity to understand and to be critical about
the ways of lives of our own community.
 Second, anthropology gives us an insight into different ways and modes of life
of human society (social and cultural diversity), which helps to understand the
logic and justification behind group behavior and cultural practices.
• Knowledge about the rest of the world is particularly important today because17
the world has become increasingly interconnected.
 Through its distinctive methodology of long-term, intensive, participant-
observation research, cultural anthropology offers a unique perspective
on how local cultural groups are engaging with the processes of
globalization.
 Because of its relativistic approach, anthropology helps us to be more
sensitive to and appreciative of cultural diversity and variability.
 It helps us to avoid some of the misunderstandings that commonly arise
when individuals of different cultural traditions come into contact.
 Anthropology helps us fight against prejudice and discriminations.
 It helps us fight against ethnocentrism: the belief that one's own culture
and one's own way of life is superior to others‘ cultural, social and
material lives.
 This arises from ignorance about other ethnic groups and their ways of
lives.

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 Anthropology, in its applied perspective, is also used as a tool for
development.
• Paying attention to local conditions is crucial to solve community problems.
• The application of anthropological knowledge and research results has
become important element to ensure people‘s rights in development and to
be able to sustain a project‘s life.
• Anthropologists are better equipped with the knowledge, skills and methods
of identifying the needs and interests of local people for the betterment and
change of their lived experiences.
• It recognizes the advantages of consulting local people to design a
culturally appropriate and socially sensitive change, and protect local
people from harmful policies and projects that threaten them.
• In general, anthropology is able to suggest sound solutions to all things
human.
• For example, it is often applied in areas of Environmental Change, Health
and Nutrition, Globalization, Social Justice and Human Rights, cultural
resource management (CRM) and Cultural Dimensions of Civil and
Religious Conflicts.
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 Unit Two
Sub-Fields of Anthropology

 This Unit deals with the major sub-fields of anthropology.

 Anthropology is often divided into four major subfields:

 Archeology
 Physical/Biological Anthropology
 Linguistic Anthropology and
 Socio-Cultural Anthropology

Each sub-field of anthropology is further divided into a number

of specialization areas some of which are indicated in Fig.1.

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Figure 1: Branches of Anthropology

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 2.1 Archaeology
 Archaeology studies the ways of lives of past peoples by excavating and
analysing the material culture/physical remains (artifacts, features and eco-facts)
they left behind.
• Archaeologists study artifacts to get clues about values, beliefs, and norms; in
general, about the cultures of societies that existed in the past.
• Artifacts are material remains made and used by the past peoples and that can be
removed from the site and taken to the laboratory for further analysis.
• Tools, ornaments, arrowheads, coins, and fragments of pottery are examples of
artifacts.
• Features, like artifacts, are made or modified by past people, but they cannot be
readily carried away from the site.
• Archaeological features include such things as house foundations, ancient
buildings, fireplaces, steles, and postholes.
• Eco-facts are non-artifactual, organic and environmental remains such as soil,
animal bones, and plant remains that were not made or altered by humans; but
were used by them.
• Eco-facts provide archaeologists with important data concerning the environment
and how people used natural resources in the past. 22
 Archaeology has also its own subfields or areas of specialties.
 The most important ones include -Prehistoric Archaeology,
Historical Archaeology and Ethno-archaeology.
 Prehistoric archaeology investigates human prehistoric cultures.
 It focuses on entire period called prehistory- between 6,000 years
ago and the time of the first stone tools (the first artifacts), around
2.5 million years ago.
 Historic archaeologists help to reconstruct the cultures of people
who used writing and about whom historical documents have been
written.
 Historic archaeology takes advantage of the fact that about 6,000
years ago, some human groups invented language and began to
write down things that can tell about the past.
 Historian archaeologists work together with historians to interpret
artifacts of societies of the recent past.
 Ethno-archaeologists study material culture of current societies (e.g.,
pottery products) to understand the cultures (life styles) of past
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societies.
 2.2 Linguistic Anthropology
 Linguistic anthropology generally focuses on the evolution of
languages by studying contemporary human languages as well as those
of the past.
 It studies how language is used within a society, and how the human
brain acquires and uses languages.
 It tries to understand languages variation in their structures, units, and
grammatical formations.
 It gives special attention to the study of unwritten languages.
 Language is a key to explore a culture.
 Indeed, linguistic anthropology or anthropological linguistics studies
human language as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural
practice in its social and cultural context, across space and time.
 Linguistic anthropology is divided into four distinct branches or areas
of research:
 Structural or Descriptive Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Ethno-
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Linguistics, and Socio-linguistics.
☺ Structural /Descriptive Linguistics: studies the structure of linguistic patterns.
 Structural linguistics studies grammatical patterns of languages to identify the similarities and
differences among contemporary languages.
 It examines sound systems, grammatical systems, and the meanings attached to words in
specific languages to understand the structure and set of rules of given language.
 Every culture has a distinctive language with its own logical structure and set of rules for
putting words and sounds together for the purpose of communicating.
 In its simplest form, the task of the descriptive linguist is to compile dictionaries and grammar
books for previously unwritten languages.
♦ Ethno-linguistics (cultural linguistics): examines the relationship between language and
culture.
 Cultural linguists explore how different linguistic categories can affect how people categorize
their experiences, how they think, and how they perceive the world around them.
♫ Historical linguistics: deals with the emergence of language in general and how specific
languages have diverged over time.
 It focuses on the comparison and classifications of different languages to differentiate the
historical links between them.
 Socio-linguistics: Sociolinguistics examines how the use of language defines social groups.
 It investigates linguistic variation within a given language.
 No language is a homogeneous system in which everyone speaks just like everyone else.
 One reason for variation is geography, as in regional dialects and accents.
 Linguistic variation also is expressed in the bilingualism of ethnic groups. 25
 2.3 Socio-Cultural Anthropology
♦ This branch of anthropology is called differently in different parts of the
world.
 It is called cultural anthropology in North American universities;
ethnology in countries such as Germany; and social anthropology in
other countries including the United Kingdom and Ethiopia.
 The name socio-cultural anthropology, however, appears to be more
commonly used to refer to this largest sub-field of anthropology.
 Socio-cultural anthropology studies contemporary societies and cultures
throughout the world.
 In the past, however, mainly social anthropologists from the Western
world conducted ethnographic fieldworks in non-Western societies in
Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania.
 Many of the classical ethnographies of African societies were produced
by ethnographers from the then colonial countries: France and Great
Britain (currently the United Kingdom).
 Famous anthropologists such as Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes
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conducted ethnographic research in the British colonies.
• Currently, socio-cultural anthropologists conduct fieldworks all over the
world including in urban-industrial societies.
• Indigenous anthropology or ‘anthropology at home’ has also emerged as
more and more anthropologists have begun doing fieldworks in their own
societies.
• Society is the group of people who have similar ways of life, but culture
is a way of life of a group of people.
• Society and culture are two sides of the same coin.
• Socio-cultural anthropology describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains
social, cultural and material life of contemporary human societies.
• It studies the social (human relations), symbolic or nonmaterial
(religious, language, and any other symbols) and material (all man-made
objects) lives of living peoples.
• Socio-cultural anthropologists engage in two aspects of study:
• Ethnography (based on field work) and Ethnology (based on cross-
cultural comparison).
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 Ethnography provides a comprehensive account of a particular community,
society, or culture.
• It describes the features of specific cultures in as much detail as possible
including local behavior, beliefs, customs, social life, economic activities,
politics, and religion.
• These detailed descriptions (ethnographies) are the result of extensive field
studies (usually a year or two, in duration) in which the anthropologist observes,
talks to, and lives with the people he or she studies.
• During ethnographic fieldwork, the anthropologist (ethnographer) gathers data
that he or she organizes, describes, analyzes, and interprets to build and present
that account, which may be in the form of a book, article, or film.
 Ethnology is the comparative study of contemporary cultures and societies,
wherever they may be found.
 It examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares the results of ethnographic data
gathered in different societies.
 It uses such data to compare and contrast and to make generalizations about
society and culture.
 Indeed, the primary objective of ethnology is to uncover general cultural
principles, the rules that govern human behavior. 28
 Ethnography Ethnology
Requires field work to collect data Uses data collected by a series of
researchers
Often descriptive Usually synthesizes ethnographic
data
Group/community specific Comparative/cross-cultural

 Socio-cultural anthropology uses ethnographical and ethnological approaches

to answer all sort of questions related to culture and human societies.
 To properly address emerging questions related to culture and societies, it has
been sub-divided into many other specialized fields as:
 Anthropology of Art, Medical Anthropology, Urban Anthropology, Economic
Anthropology, Political Anthropology, Development Anthropology,
Anthropology of Religion, Demographic Anthropology, Ecological
Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, etc.
 All of them are considered to be the applied areas of anthropology. 29
 2.4 Physical/Biological Anthropology
 Physical anthropology is a branch of anthropology that focuses on the
biological aspects of human beings.
 It has sub-fields such as biological anthropology, forensic anthropology,
primatology, paleoanthropology, population genetics, and human ecology.
 The subfields of physical anthropology are closely related to natural
sciences, particularly biology.
 There are two major areas of research in physical anthropology: 1)human
evolution, and 2) modern human variation.
• Research in human evolution shows that the origin of humanity is traced
back over 6 million years.
• Africa is found to be the cradle of human beings.
• Research findings indicate that East Africa, especially the Great Rift Valley,
is the origin of mankind.
• The oldest fossils of human ancestors were discovered in this part of the
continent. The discovery of fossils such as Lucy/Dinknesh (Australopithecus
Afarensis) in the Afar Region shows that Ethiopia is among African
countries regarded as the origin of human ancestors. 30
 Physical anthropologists study how culture and environment have
influenced biological evolution and contemporary human variations.
 Human biology affects or even explains some aspects of behavior, society,
and culture like marriage patterns, sexual division of labor, gender
ideology etc.
 The features of culture in turn have biological effects like the standards of
attractiveness, food preferences, and human sexuality.
 Biological variations such as morphology/structure, color, and size are
reflections of changes in living organism. Since change occurs in the
universe, it also applies in human beings.
• Human biological variations are the result of the cumulative processes of
invisible changes occurring in human life.
• These changes have been accumulated and passed through genes. Genes
are characteristics that carry biological traits of an organism, including
human beings.
• The major sources of biological variations are derived from the
interrelated effects of natural selection, geographical isolation and genetic
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mutations.
 Physical anthropology is essentially concerned with two broad areas of
investigation: human evolution and genetics.
• Human evolution is the study of the gradual processes of simple forms into more
differentiated structures in hominid.
• It is interested in reconstructing the evolutionary record of the human species
using fossils/bones.
• Human evolution is further divided into two specialties: Paleoanthropology and
Primatology.
• Palaeoanthropology (paleo meaning-old) is the study of human biological
evolution through the analysis of fossil remains from prehistoric times to
determine the missing link that connect modern human with its biological
ancestors.
• Primatology studies about primates or recent human ancestors to explain human
evolution.
• Primatologists study the anatomy and social behavior of such non-human
primate species as gorillas and chimpanzees in an effort to gain clues about our
own evolution as a species.
• Human genetics concerns to investigate how and why the physical traits of
contemporary human populations vary throughout the world. It focuses to
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examine the genetic materials of an organism such as DNA and RNA.
 2.4.1. Evolutionary and Paleo-anthropological Perspectives
on Human Origin
• One of the major questions anthropologists grapple with is the origins of
humankind.
• The fossil record preserves evidence of past life on Earth, tracing a
progression of simple one-celled organisms to increasingly diverse
forms.
• How did these different forms of life emerge and new species arise?
• The biological explanations for this process are the focus of this section.
• Comprehensive theories of evolution concerning the evolution of life
were developed only during the 19thcentury.
• Anthropologists today rely on scientific views of evolution in order to
explain human origins.
• Simply put, evolution refers to a process and gradual change in specie
over time.

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• In fact, evolution is used to describe the cumulative effects of three
independent facts.
• Importantly, these attributes of evolution can be observed in nature every
day. They are:
• Replication: The fact that life forms have offspring;
• Variation: The fact that each offspring is slightly different from its
parents, and its siblings; and
• Selection: The fact that not all offspring survive, and those that do tend
to be the ones best suited to their environment.

• The scientific explanation of human origin and the concept of evolution

are attributed to a series of discoveries of early modern period and the
works of handful of scientists in the physical/natural sciences.
• One of the prominent persons in this regard is Charles Darwin (1809-
1882), a British Naturalist of the period.
• Charles Darwin is known for his theory of natural selection in the
evolution of species and the idea of survival of the fittest. 34
• Today, anthropologists have accumulated a huge amount of data, much
of it based on studies of DNA, the molecule that shapes all Earth life, to
back the claims Darwin made in 1859.
• In doing so, anthropologists study humanity as a biological phenomenon
by raising questions such as:
• What species are we most and least like?
• Where and when did we fist appear?
• What were our ancestors like?
• Can we learn about human behavior from the behavior of our nearest
relatives, the chimpanzees and gorillas?
• Is our species still evolving? How do modern human genetics,
population growth, and other current issues play out from a biological
perspective?

• The answers to the above mentioned questions are the changes through
time of the properties of a living species. That is, evolution is the
foundation of the life sciences.
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 2.4.2 Anthropological Perspectives On Racial Types And
Human Physical Variation
• People come in many colors and shapes; people of the Mediterranean,
for example, are obviously darker-skinned than those of Scandinavia,
and natives of the Arctic are shorter and stockier than the tall, lean
Samburu of East Africa.
• Why is this? How did these variations come about, and what do they
mean for humanity as a species?
• The answer comes from the study of human biology by physical
anthropologists.
• Obviously, not all human beings look the same, so humans have spent
some time putting people of different colors, body shapes, and so on
into different categories sometimes called races.
• Biologically speaking, a race is a group of organisms of the same
species that share similar physical (and genetic) attributes and specific
geographic regions.

36
• In short, they‘re subdivisions of a single species- meaning they can mate
and have offspring that are healthy enough to have their own offspring-
exhibiting some characteristics reflecting their geographical origins.
• Just like any other living thing, human beings adapt to their environments
through an evolutionary process.
• We survive our environments not because we‘ve adapted to them
biologically, but with artifacts and complex behavior.
• In this respect, it should be noted that human bodies (human beings) have
adapted to certain conditions over time.
• Adaptation can be understood as a process (behavioral and/or biological)
that increases the likelihood of survival for an organism.
• An adaptation can be a mutation that confers an advantage.
• For example, a frog that has better-camouflaged skin than its siblings has
a lower chance of being snapped up by a fish, and therefore a stronger
chance to survive and have offspring that will carry the gene for better-
adapted camouflage.
• In humans, adaptations include complex behavior, such as making tools.
37
These behaviors aren‘t passed on genetically but rather culturally.
• Skin color-one of the most visible human characteristics-is a good example
of adaptation to a particular environment.
• The darkest skin appears in populations originating in tropical zones, such
as Africa and Asia.
• The lightest skin is traditionally found in northern Europe because over
time, natural selection favored darker skins in areas that received extensive
and more intensive sunlight, because individuals with lighter skin in these
areas were more prone to skin cancers.
• Darker skin, then, is an adaptation to the geographical conditions of Africa.
• What‘s the adaptive value of lighter skin? It has to do with vitamin D, of
all things.
• Vitamin D is a nutrient that helps human bones form properly. Without
enough vitamin D, deformities like the disease rickets, which normally
includes bowed legs and a misshapen pelvis, will occur.
• Lighter skin, then, is an adaptation to the geographical conditions of
Europe because over time, the prehistoric colonists of Europe who
happened to be born with lighter skin (simply by chance) had more
offspring, who themselves carried the genes for lighter skin. 38
• Another example of biological adaptation in human beings is the
difference of stature between arctic (such as Inuit) and East African (such
as Maasai) people.
• In biology, Bergmann’s rule indicates that in colder regions, warm-
blooded animals will have stockier bodies than their counterparts from
warmer regions, because stockier bodies are more efficient at retaining
body heat.
• In the cold Polar Regions, the Inuit have a short and stocky build; the
Maasai of East Africa have taller and more slender bodies that don‘t have
to retain so much heat-they actually have to dump excess heat in their hot
environment, which is facilitated by their body shape.
• Body stature in these cases is an adaptation to the geographical
conditions of hot African and the cold Arctic.

39
 Unit Three
Human Culture And Ties That Connect

3.1. Conceptualizing Culture: What Culture is and What Culture

isn't
 Definition of Culture
• The term culture is not used with consistent meanings.
• It is used with various meanings in common-sense.
• Anthropologists and sociologists define culture in different ways.
• Some of their definition have been quoted below:
• A widely accepted and the more comprehensive definition of culture
was provided by the British anthropologist Edward B. Tylor.
• He defined culture as- “a complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and
habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

40
• B. Malinowski has defined culture-as cumulative creation of man. He
regarded culture as the handiwork of man and the medium through
which he achieves his ends.
• Robert Bierstedt says,-Culture is the complex whole that consists of
everything we think and do and have as members of society.
• Combining several of these definitions, we may define culture as the
common way of life shared by a group of people.
• It includes all things beyond nature and biology.
• Culture, therefore, is moral, intellectual and spiritual discipline for
advancement, in accordance with the norms and values based on
accumulated heritage.
• Culture is a system of learned behavior shared by and transmitted
among the members of the group.
• Culture is a collective heritage learned by individuals and passed from
one generation to the other.

41
 3.2 Characteristic Features of Culture
a) Culture Is Learned:
• Culture is not transmitted genetically; rather it is acquired through the process of
learning or interacting with one‘s environment.
• More than any other species, human beings rely for their survival on behavior
patterns that are learned.
• Humans have no instinct, which genetically programmed to direct to behave in a
particular way.
• This process of acquiring culture after we born is called enculturation.
• Enculturation is specifically defined as the process by which an individual learns
the rules and values of one‘s culture.
b) Culture Is Shared:
• For a thing, idea, or behavior pattern to qualify as being-cultural it must have a
shared meaning by at least two people within a society.
• In order for a society to operate effectively, the guidelines must be shared by its
members.
• Without shared culture members of a society would be unable to communicate
and cooperate hence confusion and disorder world result. 42
c) Culture Is Symbolic:
• Symbolic thought is unique and crucial to humans and to cultural learning.
• A symbol is something verbal or nonverbal, within a particular language or culture that
comes to stand for something else.
• There would be no obvious, natural, or necessary connection between the symbol and
what it symbolizes.
• A symbol‘s meaning is not always obvious. However, many symbols are powerful and
often trigger behaviors or emotional states.
• For example, the designs and colors of the flags of different countries represent symbolic
associations with abstract ideas and concepts of nation, freedom etc.

d) Culture Is All-Encompassing
• Culture encompasses all aspects, which affect people in their everyday lives.
• Culture comprises countless material and non-material aspects of human lives.
• Thus, when we talk about a particular people‘s culture, we are referring to all of its man
and woman- made objects, ideas, activities whether those of traditional, old time things
of the past or those created lately.
• Culture is the sum total of human creation: intellectual, technical, artistic, physical, and
moral things. 43
e) Culture Is Integrated:
• Cultures are not haphazard collections of customs and beliefs.
Instead, culture should be thought as of integrated wholes, the parts
of which, to some degree, are interconnected with one another.
• A culture is a system, change in one aspect will likely generate
changes in other aspects. For example change in production
technology may bring change in lifestyles of the society and
ideologies.
f) Culture Can Be Adaptive and Maladaptive:
• Humans have both biological and cultural ways of coping with
environmental stresses.
• Besides our biological means of adaptation, we also use "cultural
adaptive kits," which contain customary activities and tools that
help us in managing everyday lives.
• People adapt themselves to the environment using culture.
• The ability to adapt to any of the ecological conditions, unlike other
animals, makes humans unique. 44
• Sometimes, adaptive behavior that offers short-term benefits to
particular subgroups or individuals may harm the environment and
threaten the group's long-term survival.
• Example: Automobiles permit us to make a living by getting us
from home to workplace.
• But the by-products of such "beneficial" technology often create
new problems.
• Chemical emissions increase air pollution, deplete the ozone layer,
and contribute to global warming.

g) Culture is Dynamic:
• There are no cultures that remain completely static year after year.
• Culture is changing constantly as new ideas and new techniques are
added as time passes modifying or changing the old ways.
• This is the characteristics of culture that stems from the culture‘s
cumulative quality. 45
 3.3 Aspects/Elements of Culture
• Culture is reflected through the various components such as values,
norms, languages, myths, customs, rituals and laws.
• Two of the most basic aspects of culture are material and nonmaterial
culture.

2.3.1 Material culture

• Material culture consists of human-made objects such as tools,
implements, furniture, automobiles, buildings, dams, roads, bridges, and
in fact, the physical substance which has been changed and used by
man.
• It is concerned with the external, mechanical and utilitarian objects.
• It includes technical and material equipment. It is referred to as
civilization.

46
2.3.2 Non –-Material Culture
• The term- “culture” when used in the ordinary sense, means-non-material
culture‘.
• It is something internal and intrinsically valuable, reflects the inward
nature of man.
• Non-material culture consists of the words the people use or the language
they speak, the beliefs they hold, values and virtues they cherish, habits
they follow, rituals and practices that they do and the ceremonies they
observe. It also includes
• Our customs and tastes, attitudes and outlook, in brief, our ways of acting,
feeling and thinking.
• Some of the aspects of non-material culture are listed as follows:
• Values, norms, beliefs
• Values are the standards by which members of a society define what is
good or bad, beautiful or ugly. Every society develops both values and
expectations regarding the right way to reflect them.
• Values are a central aspect of the non-material culture of a society and are
important because they influence the behavior of the members of a society.
47
 3.4 Cultural Unity and Variations: Universality, Generality
and Particularity of Culture
• In studying human diversity in time and space, anthropologists distinguish
among the universal, the generalized, and the particular.
• Certain biological, psychological, social, and cultural features are universal
(found in every culture), others are merely generalities (common to several but
not all human groups), and other traits are particularities (unique to certain
cultural traditions).

1) Universality:
• Universals are cultural traits that span across all cultures.
• Most are biological that distinguish us from other species – long period of
infant dependency, year-round sexuality, complex brain that enables use of
symbols and use of languages and tools.
• Social universals -life in groups-some kind of family organizes on social life
and depends on social interactions for expression and continuation of the
society.
• E.g. Incest taboo, exogamy (marriage outside one‘s group). 48
2) Generality:
• Generalities are cultural traits that occur in many societies but not
all of them.
• Societies can share same beliefs and customs because of
borrowing, domination (colonial rule) when customs and
procedures are imposed on one culture, or Independent
innovation of same cultural trait e.g., farming and nuclear family.
3) Particularity:
• Trait of a culture that is not widespread.
• Cultural particulars include the specific practices that distinguish
cultures form one another.
• For example all people become hungry but the potential food
sources defined as edible vary across cultures, i.e. what is
appealing to eat in one society may be considered repulsive or
simply unbelievable in another ( for example donkey meat in
Ethiopia). 49
 3.5. Evaluating Cultural Differences: Ethnocentrism,
Cultural Relativism and Human Rights

• The concepts of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism occupy

key position in anthropology.
A. Ethnocentrism
• The common response in all societies to other cultures is to
judge them in terms of the values and customs of their own
familiar culture.
• Ethnocentrism refers to the tendency to see the behaviors,
beliefs, values, and norms of one's own group as the only right
way of living and to judge others by those standards.
• Being fond of your own way of life and condescending or even
being hostile toward other cultures is normal for all people.

50
B. Cultural relativism:
• According to cultural relativism-we need to examine their
behavior as insiders, seeing it within the framework of their
values, beliefs and motives.
• The concept of cultural relativism states that cultures differ, so
that a cultural trait, act, or idea has no meaning but its meaning
only within its cultural setting.
• Cultural relativism suspends judgment and views about the
behavior of people from the perspective of their own culture.
• Every society has its own culture, which is more or less unique.
• Every culture contains its own unique pattern of behavior
which may seem alien to people from other cultural
backgrounds.
• We cannot understand the practices and beliefs separately from
the wider culture of which they are part. A culture has to be
studied in terms of its own meanings and values. 51
• Cultural relativism describes a situation where there is an attitude
of respect for cultural differences rather than condemning other
people's culture as uncivilized or backward.
 Respect for cultural differences involves:
• Appreciating cultural diversity;
• Accepting and respecting other cultures;
• Trying to understand every culture and its elements in terms of
its own context and logic;
• Accepting that each body of custom has inherent dignity and
meaning as the way of life of one group which has worked out to
its environment, to the biological needs of its members, and to
the group relationships;
• Knowing that a person's own culture is only one among many;
and
• Recognizing that what is immoral, ethical, and acceptable in one
52
culture may not be so in another culture.
C. Human rights:
• In today's world, human rights advocates challenge many of the tenets of
cultural relativism. Many anthropologists are uncomfortable with the strong
form of cultural relativism that suggests that all patterns of culture are equally
valid. What if the people practice slavery, violence against women, torture, or
genocide?
• Human rights: rights based on justice and morality beyond and superior to
particular countries, cultures, and religions.
• The idea of human rights challenges cultural relativism by invoking a realm of
justice and morality beyond and superior to the laws and customs of particular
countries, cultures, and religions.
• Human rights include the right to speak freely, to hold religious beliefs without
persecution, and to not be murdered, injured, or enslaved or imprisoned without
charge.
• Such rights are seen as inalienable (nations cannot abridge or terminate them)
and international (larger than and superior to individual nations and cultures). A
doctrine of universal human rights, which emphasizes the rights of the
individual over those of the community, would condemn such killings.
• Anthropologists respect human diversity. Most ethnographers try to be
53
objective, accurate, and sensitive in their accounts of other cultures.
 3.6 Culture Change

• There are no cultures that remain completely static year after year.
• Culture change can occur as a result of the following Mechanisms:

i. Diffusion-the process by which cultural elements are borrowed from

another society and incorporated into the culture of the recipient
group is called diffusion.
ii. Invention-the process by which humans innovate, creatively finding
solutions to problems is a third mechanism of cultural change.
iii. Globalization- The term globalization encompasses a series of
processes, including diffusion and acculturation, working to promote
change in a world in which nations and people are increasingly
interlinked and mutually dependent. 54
 3.7 Ties That Connect: Marriage, Family and Kinship
3.7.1 Marriage:
• Almost all known societies recognize marriage.
• The ritual of marriage marks a change in status for a man and a woman and the
acceptance by society of the new family that is formed.
3.7.1.1 Rules of Marriage
• Societies also have rules that state whom one can and cannot marry.
• Every society knows to anthropology has established for itself some type of
rules regulating mating (sexual intercourse).
• The most common form of prohibition is mating with certain type of kin that
are defined by the society as being inappropriate sexual partners.
• These prohibitions on mating with certain categories of relatives is known as
incest taboo.
• The most universal form of incest taboo involves mating between members of
the immediate (nuclear) family: mother-sons, father-daughters, and brother-
sisters.
• Marriage is, therefore, a permanent legal union between a man and a woman.
• It is an important institution without which the society could never be 55
sustained.
3.7.1.2 Mate Selection: Whom Should You Marry?
• In a society one cannot marry anyone whom he or she likes. There are certain strict
rules and regulations.
a) Exogamy: This is the rule by which a man is not allowed to marry someone from his
own social group.
b) Endogamy: A rule of endogamy requires individuals to marry within their own group
and forbids them to marry outside it.
c) Preferential Cousin Marriage:
• A common form of preferred marriage is called preferential cousin marriage.
• Kinship systems based on lineages distinguish between two different types of first
cousins, these are:
• Cross Cousins: are children of siblings of the opposite sex- that is one‘s mother‘s
brothers‘ children and one‘s father‘s sisters‘ children.
• The most common form of preferential cousin marriage is between cross cousins
because it functions to strengthen and maintain ties between kin groups established by
the marriages that took place in the preceding generation.
• Parallel Cousins: When marriage takes place between the children of the siblings of
the same sex, it is called parallel cousin marriage. Children of siblings of the same
sex, namely the children of one‘s mother‘s sister and one‘s father brother. The mate
may come either from one‘s father‘s brother‘s children or mother's sister‘s children.
56
d) The Levirate and Sororate
• The levirate- is the custom whereby a widow is expected to marry the
brother (or some close male relative) of her dead husband.
• Usually any children fathered by the woman‘s new husband are
considered to belong legally to the dead brother rather than to the actual
genitor.
• Such a custom both serves as a form of social security for the widow and
her children and preserved the rights of her husband‘s family to her
sexuality and future children.
• The sororate, which comes into play when a wife dies, is the practice of a
widower‘s marrying the sister (or some close female relative) of his
deceased wife.
• In the event that the deceased spouse has no sibling, the family of the
deceased is under a general obligation to supply some equivalent relative
as a substitute.
• For example, in a society that practice sororate, a widower may be given
as a substitute wife the daughter of his deceased wife‘s brother.
57
3.7.1.3. Number of spouses
• Societies have rules regulating whom one may/may not marry; they have rules
specifying how many mates a person may/should have.
 Monogamy: the marriage of one man to one woman at a time.
 Polygamy: i.e., marriage of a man or woman with two or more mates. Polygamy can
be of two types:
 Polygyny: the marriage of a man to two or more women at a time.
 Polyandy: the marriage of a woman to two or more men at a time
 Marriage of a man with two or more sisters at a time is called sororal polygyny. When
the co-wives are not sisters, the marriage is termed as non-sororal polygyny.

 Advantages and Disadvantages of Polygamous marrige:

• Having two/more wives is often seen as a sign of pristige.
• Having multiple wives means wealth, power, and status both for the polygnous
husband, wives and children.
• It produces more children, who are considered valuable for future economic and
poltical assets.
• Economic advantage: It encourages to work hard (more cows, goats..) for more wives
• The Drawbacks of Polygyny: Jealousy among the co-wives who fequently compete
for the husband‘s attenttion. 58
3.7.1.4 Economic Consideration of Marriage
• The economic consideration of marriage includes:

1. Bride Price: It is also known as bride wealth, is the compensation

given upon marriage by the family of the groom to the family of the
bride.

2. Bride Service: When the groom works for his wife‘s family, this is
known as bride service.

3. Dowry: A dowry involves a transfer of goods or money in the opposite

direction, from the bride's family to the groom‘s family.

59
3.7.1.5 Post-Marital Residence
• Where the newly married couple lives after the marriage ritual is
governed by cultural rules, which are referred to as post-marital
residence rule.

 Patrilocal Residence: the married couple lives with or near the relatives
of the husband‘s father.
 Matrilocal Residence: the married couple lives with or near the relatives
of the wife.
 Avunculocal Residence: The married couple lives with or near the
husband‘s mother‘s brother.
 Ambilocal/Bilocal Residence: The married couple has a choice of living
with relatives of the wife or relatives of the husband
 Neolocal Residence: The Married couple forms an independent place of
residence away from the relatives of either spouse.

60
3.7.2 Family
• Family is the basis of human society.
• It is the most important primary group in society. The family, as an
institution, is universal.
• It is the most permanent and most pervasive of all social institutions.
• Cultural anthropologists have identified two fundamentally different
types of family structure-the nuclear family and the extended family.

1. The Nuclear Family: Consisting of husband and wife and their children,
the nuclear family is a two-generation family formed around the conjugal
or marital union.

2. The Extended Family

• Extended families consist of two or more families that are linked by
blood ties. Most commonly, this takes the form of a married couple
living with one or more of their married children in a single household
or homestead and under the authority of a family head.
61
3.7.2.1 Functions of Marriage and Family
• Family performs certain specific functions which can be summarized as
follows:
1. Biological Function: The institution of marriage and family serves
biological (sexual and reproductive) function.
2. Economic Function: Marriage brings economic co-operation between
men and women and ensures survival of individuals in a society.
3. Social Function: Marriage is based on the desire to perpetuate one‘s
family line.
4. Educational and Socialization Function: The burden of socialization (via
processes of enculturation and education) of new born infants fall primarily
upon the family. 62
3.7.3 Kinship
• A significant concept in Anthropology –kinship is vitally important, because
kinship and family constitute the focal points in anthropological studies.
• Kinship is the method of reckoning relationship.
• In any society every adult individual belongs to two different nuclear families.
• A kinship system is neither a social group nor does it correspond to organized
aggregation of individuals.
• It is a structured system of relationships where individuals are bound together
by complex interlocking and ramifying ties.
• The relationship based on blood ties is called “consanguineous kinship”, and
the relatives of this kind are called “consanguineous kin”.
• The desire for reproduction gives rise to another kind of binding relationship.
• This kind of bond, which arises out of a socially or legally defined marital
relationship (marriage) is called “affinal relationship”, and the relatives so
related are called “affinal kin‟.
• A kind of relationship through adoption or God-parenthood is known as-
“fictitious kinship”
63
3.7.4 Descent
• Descent refers to the social recognition of the biological relationship that exists
between the individuals.
• The rule of descent refers to a set of principles by which an individual traces his
descent.
• There are three important rules of decent:
1. Patrilineal descent
• When descent is traced solely through the male line, it is called patrilineal descent.
• A man‘s sons and daughters all belong to the same descent group by birth, but it is
only the sons who continue the affiliation.
• Succession and inheritance pass through the male line.
2. Matrilineal descent
• When the descent is traced solely through the female line. It is called matrilineal
descent.
3. Cognatic Descent
• In some societies individuals are free to show their genealogical links either through
men or women.
• Some people of such a society are therefore connected with the kin-group of father
and others with the kin group of mothers. There is no fixed rule to trace the
succession and inheritance; any combination of lineal link is possible in such 64
3.8 Culture areas and culture contact
• Culture areas refers to a cluster of related cultures occupying a certain
geographical region.
• In the context of Ethiopia, we may come up with different culture are
in relation to subsistence. These are plough culture, Enset culture area,
and pastoral societies‘ culture area.
A. Plough culture area
• Plough culture area represents those parts of the country where
agriculture is predominantly the means by which subsistence is eked
out.
• Most of highland and central parts of the country serves as the
backbone of the economy is considered a plough culture.
• The area often called plough culture has been a subject of
anthropological inquires over the past seven decades starting from the
1950s.
• Some of the ethnographers who studied the area that we call plough
culture are Donald Levine, Allen Hobben, Fredrick Gamst and Jack
65
Bauer.
B. Enset culture area
• Enset culture area, on the other hand, covers a vast region in the
southern part of country.
• Enset cultivating regions of the present day SNNPRS such as the
Guraghe, Sidama and Gedeo areas constitute enset culture area.
• In this region, enset serves as a staple diet to the people who
make use the plant in a wide variety of forms for a living.
C. Pastoral culture area
• Pastoral culture area is found in the low land areas covering a
large section of the Afar in the northwest, Somali in the
southeast and Borena of southern of Ethiopia.
• As opposed to the above the cases, inhabitants of the pastoral
culture area rely significantly on their herds and cattle for a
living.
• Mobility of people and herds is a major characteristic feature of
the people occupying the pastoral culture area. 66
 Unit Four: Marginalized, Minorities, and Vulnerable Groups

4.1 Definition of concepts

• Marginalization is defined as a treatment of a person or social group as minor,
insignificant or peripheral.
• It involves exclusion of certain groups from social interactions, marriage
relations, sharing food and drinks, and working and living together.
• The nature and level of marginalization varies from society to society as a result
of cultural diversity.
• Vulnerability -the state of being exposed to physical or emotional injuries.

• People exposed to possibilities of attack, harms or mistreatment, and need

special support.
• Minority groups: refers to a small group of people within a community, region,
or country, in terms of language, religion, race……
4.2 Gender-based marginalization
• It is closely related to gender inequality which involves discrimination on
a group of people based on their gender.
• It involves exclusion of girls and women from a wide range of
opportunities and social services such as education, employment, property
ownership and inheritance.
• Women and girls are also vulnerable to gender-based violence such as
rape, child marriage, abduction/forced marriage, domestic violence and
female genital cutting/mutilation.
• There are some customary practices that affect the health and wellbeing of
girls and women. These practices collectively are called harmful
traditional practices (HTPs). examples: female genital mutilation/cutting
(FGM/C) and child marriage.
 4.3 Marginalized occupational groups
• The most marginalized occupational groups are tanners, potters, weavers
and ironsmiths.
• weavers produce cultural clothes highly demanded by thousands and
millions of people. People dress cultural clothes in different occasions
such as cultural festivals, days of nations and nationalities, weddings and
religious celebrations.
• Iron smiths make and repair iron articles without using machines. They
produce farming tools such as plough shares, sickles, hoes, and
household utensils (e.g., knives and axes)
• Tanners make leather products that serve community members.

• Potters produce pottery articles essential for food processing and serving
and fetching water.
 Cont.…
• Marginalization of despised occupational groups such as crafts-
worker is manifested in many ways in different parts of Ethiopia.
Type of Manifestations of marginalization
marginalization
Spatial  live on the outskirts of villages
marginalization  segregated at market places (outskirts of markets)
 Expected to give way for others and walk on the lower side of the road.
Economic  Excluded from certain economic activities including production and
marginalization exchanges.
 They have a limited access to land and land ownership.
Social  Excluded from intermarriage, membership of associations such as iddirs,
marginalization they do not share burial places with others;
 When they are allowed to participate in social events, they must sit on
the floor separately-sometimes outside the house or near the door.
Cultural  Labeled as impure and polluting; they are accused of eating animals that
marginalization have died without being slaughtered;
 considered unreliable, lacking morality, respect and shame.

Source:- Dena Freeman and Alula Pankhurst (2001),

 4.4 Age-based vulnerability

• Age-based vulnerability is susceptibility of people, especially

children and older people, to different forms of attack.
4.4.1 Children: Discrimination and vulnerability
 Both boys and girls are exposed to some harm and abuse in the hands
of older people. However, younger girls are exposed to double
marginalization and discrimination because of the gender.
 Girls are exposed to harmful traditional practices (HTPs) such as
female genital mutilation/cutting. Minor girls are also exposed to
early/child marriage in many parts of Ethiopia.
 According to international human rights conventions, child marriage
is regarded as violation of the rights of the child.
 UNIT FIVE:
INTER-ETHNIC RELATIONS, IDENTITY AND MULTICULTURALISM

5.1. Ethnic Groups and Ethnic Identity

Ethnic Groups
 Different definitions have been proposed to define “ethnic group‘.
 Max Weber (1978)“ is based on the belief in common descent
shared by its members, extending beyond kinship, political
solidarity vis-a-vis other groups, and common customs, language,
religion, values, morality, and etiquette”
 Anderson (1983), “as an imagined community that possesses a
character and quality”
 Schermerhorn (1996), “as a unit of population having unique
characteristics in relation with others, binding with common
language, myth of origin, and history of ethnic allegiance”
 Hutchinson and Smith‘s (1996) identified six main features that the
definition of an ethnic group, predominantly consists. This includes;
1. A common proper name, to identify and express the “essence” of
the community;
2. A myth of common ancestry that includes the idea of common
origin in time and place and that gives an ethnic group a sense of
fictive kinship;
3. Shared historical memories, or better, shared memories of a
common past or pasts, including heroes, events, and their
commemoration;
4. One or more elements of common culture, which need not be
specified but normally, include religion, customs, and language;
5. A link with a homeland, not necessarily its physical occupation by
the ethnic group, only its symbolic attachment to the ancestral land,
as with diaspora peoples; and
6. A sense of solidarity on the part of at least some sections of the
ethnic‟s population (Hutchinson and Smith, 1996:6-7)
Ethnic Identity
 ethnic identity is an affiliative construct, where an individual is
viewed by themselves and by others as belonging to a particular
ethnic or cultural group.
 An individual can choose to associate with a group especially if
other choices are available (i.e., the person is of mixed ethnic etc).
 Affiliation can be influenced by racial, birth, symbolic, and
cultural factors (Cheung, 1993).
 Racial factors involve the use of physiognomic(human face) and
physical characteristics, birth factors refer to "homeland"
(ancestral home) or origins of individuals, their parents and kin,
and
 symbolic factors include those factors that typify or exemplify an
ethnic group (e.g., holidays, foods, clothing, artifacts, etc.).
 Symbolic ethnic identity usually implies that individuals choose
their identity, however, to some extent the cultural elements of the
ethnic or racial group have a modest influence on their behavior
 Aspects of ethnic identity.
Objective and subjective aspects of ethnic identity
 Objective aspects refer to observable behavior, both cultural
and social, such as
(1), Speaking an ethnic language, practicing ethnic traditions,
(2), Participation in ethnic personal networks, such as family and
friendships,
(3), Participation in ethnic institutional organizations, such as
belief systems, social organizations etc.
The term Ethnicity
 The English origin of the term ‘ethnicity‘ is connected to the term ethnic,
which is much older and has been in use since the Middle Ages.
 The word is derived from the Greek term ‘ethnos‟ (which in turn, derived
from the Latin word ‘ethnikos‟), which literally means “a group of people
bound together by the same manners, customs or other distinctive features”
 In the context of ancient Greek, the term refers to a collectivity of humans
lived and acted together which is typically translated today as people‘ or
nation‘ (not political unit per say, but group of people with shared
communality)
 Contrary to its literal meaning however, ancient Greeks were using the term
‘ethnos‟ in practice to refer to non-Hellenic, people who are non-Greek
and considered as second-class peoples.
• What is obvious from this short history of the term is the fact that
‘ethnicity‘ contains a multiplicity of meanings.
• In other words, ethnicity is vague, elusive and vast.
 Conceptualizing Ethnicity and Ethnic group

 Scholars have been trying to conceptualize it from different perspectives

and as a result, different definitions have been proposed to define ethnic
group‘.
 As Weber an “ethnic group” is based on the belief in common descent
shared by its members, extending beyond kinship, political solidarity vis-
a-vis other groups, and common customs, language, religion, values,
morality, and etiquette (Max Weber, 1978).
 In other words, ethnic groups are those human groups that entertain a
subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities in
physical type, customs, memories of colonization and migration.
 It does not matter whether or not an objective blood relationship exists,
but whether it is believed to exist.
 Theories of Ethnicity: Primordialism, Instrumentalism and
Social Constructivism
Three Basic Anthropological Approaches for Understanding Ethnicity
 Unit Six
Customary and Local Governance Systems and Peace Making
• Indigenous and local governance
• Indigenous systems of governance have widely been employed to
maintain social order across Ethiopian regions.
• The role of indigenous governance was indispensable before the
advent of the modern state system.
• Some of the indigenous systems of governance have been well-
studied while many others have got little attention by scholars.
• Understanding of indigenous systems of governance helps us
know our cultures and will also help us enhance inter-cultural
understanding.
 Intra-ethnic conflict resolution institutions

• Conflicts and disputes exist in every society and community.

• Conflicts may arise between individuals, groups and communities within

the same ethnic group or different ethnic background.
• Peoples across Ethiopian regions have indigenous institutions and
mechanisms of conflict resolution and peace making.
• These institutions are parts of indigenous systems of governance.

• There are different indigenous institutions of conflict resolution and

peacemaking across regions and cultures in Ethiopia.
• Authors use different terms to discuss these indigenous institutions
(customary, dispute resolution mechanisms; traditional mechanisms of
conflict resolution; grassroots justice systems; and customary justice
institutions).
 Cont.…
• Indigenous/customary justice institutions have been widely used
across Ethiopian regions and cultures.
• With some exceptions, customary justice institutions include three
major components. The three components are 1) customary laws, 2)
council of elders, and 3) customary courts or assemblies.
 Customary law: refers to a body of rules, norms, and a set of
moral values that serve as a wider framework for human conduct
and social interactions. E.g. Sera of the Sidama, dere woga of
Gamo, Seera Addaa of the Oromo; Ye Siltie Serra of the Siltie,
Gordena Sera of Kestane Gurage).
 In most cases, customary laws are available orally. Some customary
laws are published in recent years. For example, the Sebat Bet
Gurage published their customary law named Kitcha: The Gurage
Customary Law in 1998. Similarly, Kistane/Sodo Gurage have a
written version of customary law known as Gordena Shengo.
 Cont.…
• Council of elders: refers highly respected and well-experienced
community members who have a detail knowledge of the customary
laws.
• Members of the elder‘s council are also known for their personal
qualities such as truthfulness and experience in settling conflicts.
• Elders often serve their communities on voluntary basis without any
payment. The number of the elders varies based on the nature of the
case. The institution of council of elders has different names in
various ethnic groups: Yehager Shimagile (Amhara), Jaarsaa Biyyaa
(Oromo), Baliqenet (Siltie), Hayyicha (Gedeo), Guurtii (Somali),
Dere Cima (Gamo), Deira Cimma (Wolayita), and Cimuma (Burji).
 Cont.…
• Customary courts are public assemblies that serve two major
purposes: (a) hearing, discussing and settling disputes, and (b)
revising, adapting, and making laws.
• For instance, among the Siltie people, called Raga System while the
Gamo use the term Dubusha to refer to customary courts.
• Let us summarize the Gamo customary justice system to portray
the three major structures. The customary justice system of the
Gamo people of Southern Ethiopia has the following branches: 1)
Dere Woga, customary laws, 2) Dere Cima, council of elders, and
3) Dubusha, customary courts or assemblies.
 Strengths and limitations of customary justice
systems/institutions
Strengths of customary justice institutions
 Incur limited cost in terms of time and resources/money; elders do not request
payment for their services; fines and compensation are relatively small;

 Conflict resolution process are held in public spaces in the community;

different parties (victims, offenders and community members) participate in the
process; decisions are communicated in public;

Decisions are easily enforced through community-based sanctions including

social exclusion; compliance ensured through blessings and the threat of curses;

 Customary systems aimed at restoring community cohesion, social relations,

collective spirit and social solidarity

 Rely on respect for elders, the tradition of forgiveness, transferring

compensations, embedded in indigenous beliefs
 Cont.…
Limitations of customary justice institutions
 Limitations related to protecting and safeguarding women‘s rights.
Indigenous justice institutions are dominated by men. Women are
excluded from participation at customary courts and assemblies with a
few exceptions.
 Indigenous institutions of dispute resolution and peacemaking are
effective to resolve dispute and restore peace within the same ethnic
group. Their potential in resolving inter-ethnic conflicts and restoring
long-lasting peace is very limited.
 How do you explain this problem?
 Is there a possibility of crafting hybrid institutions to resolve disputes
occurring between different ethnic groups? Discuss this issue among your
classmates.
 Inter-ethnic conflict resolution institutions
• Abbo Gereb is one of indigenous dispute resolution institution in Rayya and
Wajirat district, Southern Tigray that address inter-ethnic conflicts.
• It is. Abbo Gereb, literally means the father of the river Gerewo. Abbo Gereb
serves to settle disputes between individuals or groups from highland Tigray and
lowland Afar.
• Conflict between the two groups often arise because of dispute over grazing land
or water resources, particularly in dry season.
• When conflict arises between parties, notable elders from Tigray and Afar come
together to resolve the dispute and restore peaceful relations.

Intra and inter-ethnic conflicts have become common in our country in recent years.
- What do you think are the causes of these conflicts?
- Is it related to the decline of respect for the elderly in recent times?
- Or has the culture of peaceful coexistence deteriorated?
 Cont.…
• Most of the elders involved in inter-ethnic conflict resolutions are
bilingual: speaking Tigrigna and Afar (Shimeles and Taddese 2008).
• Ethnographic findings also reveal the existence of inter-ethnic
conflict resolution mechanisms when conflicts arise between Afar,
Issa, Tigrayans and Argobba.
• The mechanisms of inter-ethnic disputes have different names. It is
called Xinto among the Afar, Edible among the Issa, Gereb among
the Tigrayans, and Aboroge among the Amhara (Alula and
Getachew, 2008).

Do you know institutions/mechanisms of conflict resolution that address inter-

ethnic conflicts? Bring your experience and knowledge to class discussion!
 Unit Seven
Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices
Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS)

• IKS is defined as technical insight of wisdom gained and developed

by people in a particular locality through years of careful
observation and experimentation with the phenomena around them.
• IKS is not just a set of information that is in the minds of the
people, which can be simply taped and applied.
• It is accessible by recall and practice (Mangetane, 2001).
• IKS is embodied in culture and is described as an integrated pattern
of human knowledge, beliefs and behavior.
 Cont.…

• It refer to a body of empirical knowledge and beliefs handed down

through generations of long-time inhabitants of a specific locale, by
cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings with
each other and their environment (Warren 1991).
• In sum, IKS refers to a total of knowledge and practices, whether
explicit or implicit, used in the management of socioeconomic,
ecological and spiritual facets of life (Hoppers, 2005: 2), stored in
the collective memory and communicated orally among members
of the community and to the future generations [through, stories,
myth, songs, etc].
 Cont.…

• In sum, indigenous knowledge is the knowledge that people in a

given community have developed over time, and that continues to
develop.
• It is based on experience, often tested over centuries of use,
adapted to local culture and environment, dynamic and changing
(International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, IIRR, 1996).
Special Features of Indigenous Knowledge
• Ellen and Harris (1996) identified the following special features of IK that
distinguish it broadly from other knowledge.
 Local, in that it is rooted in a particular community and situated within broader cultural
traditions; it is a set of experiences generated by people living in those communities.
 Tacit knowledge and, therefore, not easily codifiable.

 Transmitted orally, or through imitation and demonstration. Codifying it may lead to

the loss of some of its properties.
 Experiential rather than theoretical knowledge. Experience and trial and error, tested
in the rigorous laboratory of survival of local communities constantly reinforce IK.
 Learned through repetition, which is a defining characteristic of tradition even when
new knowledge is added. Repetition aids in the retention and reinforcement of IK.
 Constantly changing, being produced as well as reproduced, discovered as well as lost;
though it is often perceived by external observers as being somewhat static
 Significance of indigenous knowledge
• Today, both scholars and public policy makers are recognizing the
importance of various local or culture-based knowledge systems in
addressing the pressing problems of development and the
environment.
• The knowledge of local people is an enabling component of
development. In this regard; a large percentage of the earth's
genetic diversity has been maintained and managed through
farmer's IKS (Dewes, 1993).
• IKS enable people to develop strategies for handling household and
communal activities (Mangetane et al., 2001).
• For example in Ethiopia Debo and Jige are an important uniting
forces in communal activities.
• Members of the community unite to provide essential inputs,
including direct labor to operations.
 Preservation, challenges and limitations of IK

 Indigenous knowledge, which has generally been passed from

generation to generation by word of mouth, is in danger of being lost
unless it is formally documented and preserved (Amare, 2009).
 The loss of IK would impoverish society because, just as the world
needs genetic diversity of species, it needs diversity of knowledge
systems (Labelle, 1997).
 The rapid change in the way of life of local communities has largely
accounted for the loss of IK.
 Younger generations underestimate the utility of IK systems because
of the influence of modem technology and education.
 Development projects cannot offer sustainable solutions to local problems
without integrating local knowledge (Warren, 1991).
 "Since IK is essential to development, it must be gathered,
organized and disseminated, just like Western
knowledge''(Agrawal, 1995 in Amare, 2009).
 As IK is the key to local-level development, ignoring people‘s
knowledge leads possibly to failure.
 Similarly, ''one should not expect all the expertise for third world
development to come from developed nations, academic
institutions, multinational corporations or NGOs'' (Amare, 2009).
 It has been suggested that IK, and the technical expertise
developed there become vital tools for rural development(Atte,
1989).
 Regarding the challenges and limitations of IK, Amare (2009)
states the following :
• Modernization has threatens the preservation and continued
development of IK systems (Sherpa, 2005).
• The growth of national and international markets, the imposition of
educational and religious systems and the impact of various
development processes are leading more and more to the
homogenization of the world‘s cultures (Grenier,1998) .
• Consequently, indigenous beliefs, values, customs, know-how and
practices may be altered and the resulting knowledge base
incomplete.