ANTHROPOLOGY RESEARCH

Social Anthropology Research Methods Report



Social Anthropology Research Methods Report

What is social anthropology?

Social Anthropology is the study of humankind in terms of who we are and what our social and cultural existence means. Both the diversity amongst people and the common responses to the challenges of being human are in continuous focus. This means that what one regards as commonplace and that which is seen as extraordinary are turned around: Social Anthropology makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange by investigating the reasons for behaviour and shared meanings of all people, including ourselves (White 2004, 36-37).

Social Anthropology builds on the natural curiosity we all have about what it means to be human. It tries to overcome our stereotypes about other people who appear strange to us, by studying the way they experience and perceive life from their own perspectives. Social Anthropology helps to undermine our ethnocentric ideas by comparing and understanding various lifestyles as meaningful, but diverse responses to common human problems that all deserve our respectful engagement. Our ethnocentric ideas are thereby challenged, allowing us to use the insights that Social Anthropology provides to build up an understanding of human life on a more general level. In this study of people, shared meanings (culture), transmitted through learning and communication, are of special interest and these include ideas about making a living, the supernatural, the body (such as sexuality or genetic differences between populations) and the behaviours associated with these patterns of meaning. Another important perspective that Social Anthropology takes is the study of the social life of people (society) in its varied forms of networks, families, organisations, nations, etc. In the study of people we become increasingly aware of the complexity and creativity of human life and the futility of seeking to draw a clear line between "us" and "them" (Seidel 2009, 107-116).

In 1926 the first permanent position in "Bantu-ology" was taken up by dr. Werner Eiselen. He and his later colleagues developed an approach to the subject, known as "volkekunde", that actively supported Afrikaner nationalism as well as the policies of apartheid. Dr. Eiselen himself became a senior state official and advocate of Separate Development policies (as apartheid was referred to). He became the Secretary of Native Affairs under Hendrik Verwoerd, who had also been an academic in the social sciences at Stellenbosch University. The ideological and intellectual rift between Afrikaans- and English-speaking streams of anthropology in South Africa harmed the international recognition of the subject at Stellenbosch, although some of the lecturers made their way into the international academic world, e.g. Brian du Toit, who became the chair of anthropology at Florida State University, USA (Seidel 2004, 110-125).

In the mid-1990s the department was closed during a reorganisation and scaling down of the faculty. Fortunately, the decision was made to retain the subject as Social Anthropology and to place it with Sociology in one combined department. Since 1997, programmes in Social Anthropology have been introduced on the postgraduate level, while undergraduate courses for Social Anthropology as ...