Anthropology
Understanding Human Diversity
In a rapidly globalizing world, understanding human diversity is more important than ever. Human lives are interconnected, from Bangkok to Boiestown, from San Juan to Saint John, and how we make our way in the world will rely upon how well we can interact with people from different cultural backgrounds. Understanding human diversity is no longer an elective – it is essential for understanding our past, and for building toward a collective future. Anthropology is the study of human diversity, past and present, in all of its material, physical, social, and cultural forms. Anthropology may be practiced in remote places among exotic peoples, or right here at home – either way, it addresses the same essential questions and issues that have preoccupied people throughout human history.
The Study of Anthropology
Because anthropology deals with these essential questions about human existence, it is an ideal fit with St. Thomas University’s liberal arts mandate. If the liberal arts is concerned with the question of how life ought to be lived, it is clear that we must take stock of the billions of lives lived in other places and other times. The value of anthropology in a liberal arts context is in questioning ideas that we take for granted in our own place and time, and in subjecting those ideas to rigorous comparison with the diverse cultures and societies with whom we share our world.
Get Your Hands Dirty
Anthropology is also unique in being a hands-on field of study. Anthropology can be done wherever people are, and wherever people were, both at home and in faraway places. Cultural anthropologists, social anthropologists, and linguists typically spend years living with particular groups of people, participating in their everyday lives. This process of long-term, small-scale, intensive, and detailed study has been dubbed “deep hanging out”, and the insight rings true because many fundamental aspects of human existence only reveal themselves in this way. Archaeologists also conduct long-term fieldwork examining human material culture, excavating, documenting, and analyzing artifacts as a means of answering the same questions about human existence as other scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Physical anthropologists study human skeletal remains not only to understand our physical past and development, but also in modern-day criminal forensic investigations. As a student of anthropology at St. Thomas University, you can expect to get out there in the real world, interacting with people in a variety of social contexts, excavating artifacts, and analyzing bones in our anthropology laboratory.
Speaking of the Real World
You may be saying to yourself “Anthropology sounds fascinating, but what do I do with it?” The answer is: plenty. Students of anthropology go on to success in a wide variety of fields. Anthropologists work as specialists in international development, as museum and art gallery curators, as archivists, as oral historians, and as consultants in land claims, heritage, and public health research, and in social and environmental impact assessment. If you are creative, a background in anthropology can be an asset in documentary film or the music industry. The ethnographic research skills learned in anthropology are even used in the areas of market and consumer research, and anthropologists work in their field for some of the world’s largest advertising firms as well as companies like Intel. You can choose to study anthropology confident in the knowledge that it is both fascinating and useful.
An Ideal Double Major
Anthropology overlaps in important ways with virtually every other discipline represented at St. Thomas University, including economics, philosophy, sociology, criminology, fine arts, and many more. For this reason, anthropology makes an ideal partner in a double-major with another discipline. Anthropology is unique in occupying a middle-ground between the social sciences and the humanities, allowing you to experience the best of both worlds.
Departmental Microsite
For more information, please visit the STU Anthro Blog Microsite.