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The sociology curriculum prepares the student for both academic and applied
research careers in sociology and anthropology. It offers an essential liberal
arts background for many careers and professions, including public service
and administration, communications and public relations, law, business,
medicine, journalism, arts management, environmental science, and other
professions. In addition to offering a major in sociology, the department also
offers a minor in sociology. Beyond the department itself, the faculty are
centrally involved in the black studies, women's studies, environmental
studies, and international studies programs.
Special Programs
The department offers many other opportunities for interested students to
engage in research and practice outside of the classroom. The field study
and internship programs provide opportunities for disciplined sociological
exploration and application of the theoretical and methodological principles
learned in the classroom. These programs encourage the student to explore
careers that they feel may interest them and give them valuable experience
that may help them gain employment after college. Both courses are highly
recommended for students planning to do graduate work.
The program also offers study abroad courses to Ghana and South Africa.
The sociology and anthropology major gives you the intellectual ability to put any facet of modern
society under the microscope by providing critical thinking and research skills. The benefit of
studying sociology and anthropology courses is that students learn fascinating insights into how
society works, by examining the way we live now, and the wide variety of different societies and
cultures that have existed over millennia.
By 'making the normal look strange', sociologists and anthropologists interrogate the way traditions
and inequalities reproduce within societies undergoing the processes of rapid change.
What is Sociology?
The study of sociology illuminates human behaviour by looking for the links between individual
experience and the social context in which we live, work and play. Courses within this major involve
questioning common sense views and personal opinion by asking you to consider the social
influences that shape our lives. A sociological imagination questions the way things are, in order to
think about the way things could be.
What is Anthropology?
Anthropology is the study of humans and cultural differences, in both the past and present. To
understand the full extent and complexities of cultures, and cultural understandings across all of
human history, anthropology draws and builds upon knowledge from the social and biological
sciences, the humanities and physical sciences. A central concern of the anthropology major is the
application of knowledge to the solution of human problems.
What jobs can you get with a major in Sociology and
Anthropology?
A major in sociology and anthropology will provide you with key skills that are very attractive to
employers in a labour market increasingly driven by communication technology, information and
networks. These include research skills which build capacity in areas such as survey design and
statistical interpretation; interview and focus groups; ethnography and observation; media analysis;
and writing research reports.
By studying sociology and anthropology courses, you could explore a career in:
community development
human resources
policy analysis
advisory roles
program management and project coordination
education
research
marketing and PR
media, journalism and IT
statistics
health and welfare services
Suitable for arts and humanities students with:
An interest in grappling social and cultural issues, such as socialisation, identity, race and gender.
Goals to learn how to conduct a social analysis and apply their research to real world situations.
A commitment to ethically leveraging multiple social research methodologies.
Relationship Between Sociology
and Anthropology – Essay
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More precisely, it is defined by Kroeber as ‘the science of man and his works and
behaviour’. Anthropology is “concerned not with particular man but with man in groups,
with races and peoples and their happenings and doings”.
Though the youngest of the traditional social sciences, it has developed and gone
ahead of many of them. It has made outstanding contributions to the study of man.
Sociology, in particular, has been immensely enriched by the anthropological studies.
Anthropology seems to be the broadest of all the social sciences. It studies man both as
a member of the animal kingdom and as a member of the human society. It studies the
biological as well as the cultural developments of man. Anthropology has a wide field of
study. Kroeber mentions two broad divisions of anthropology: (i) Organic or Physical
Anthropology and (ii) the Socio- cultural Anthropology.
Also, it makes use of all the findings of anatomy, physiology, zoology, paleontology and
the like. Its business has been to ascertain how far these principles apply to man, what
forms they take in his particular case.
Physical Anthropology is concerned with the evolution of man, his bodily characteristics,
racial features, and the influence of environment and heredity on the physical
characteristics of man. It has two main branches: (i) Human paleontology which
concentrates on the study of fossils, and (ii) Cosmetology which deals with the human
body in particular.
The main reason for this is a desire to understand better all civilisations, irrespective of
time and place, in the abstract, or as generalised principles as possible. (Social
Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology are often treated as two separate branches).
Sociocultural Anthropology’s main concern is, of course, culture. It deals with the origin
and development of man’s culture. It also studies various social institutions of primitive
communities of the past as well as that of the present. It has three sub-divisions:
(i) Ethnology-the science of peoples and their cultures and life histories as groups,
irrespective of their degree of advancement.
(iii) Linguistics—the study of language in its widest sense, in every aspect and in all its
varieties, but with its main accent on the languages of the primitive peoples.
The Relationship between the Two Sciences:
According to Hoebel, “Sociology and Social Anthropology are, in their broadest sense
one and the same”. Evans Pritchard considers social anthropology a branch of
sociology. Sociology is greatly benefited by anthropological studies.
Sociological topics such as the origin of family, the beginning of marriage, private
property,
the genesis of religion, etc., can better be understood in the light of anthropological
knowledge. The anthropological studies have shown that there is no correlation
between anatomical characteristics and mental superiority. The notion of racial
superiority has been disproved by anthropology.
Further, sociology has borrowed many concepts like cultural area, culture traits,
interdependent traits, cultural lag, culture patterns, culture configuration etc., from socio-
cultural anthropology.
Anthropology as a discipline is so closely related to sociology that the two are frequently
indistinguishable. Both of them are fast growing. The socio-cultural anthropologists
today are also making a study of the present peoples and their societies. In a number of
universities anthropology and sociology are administratively organised into one
department.
The conclusions drawn by sociologists have also helped the anthropologists in their
studies. For example, anthropologists like Morgan and his followers have come to the
conclusion regarding the existence of primitive communism from the conception of
private property in our modern society.
Sociology
Sociology is the study of social life and the social causes and consequences of
human behavior. In the words of C. Wright Mills, sociology looks for the "public
issues" that underlie "private troubles." Sociology differs from popular notions of
human behavior in that it uses systematic, scientific methods of investigation and
questions many of the common sense and taken-for-granted views of our social
world. Sociological thinking involves taking a closer look at our social world and
recognizing that most often things are not necessarily what they seem. A sociologist
understands unemployment, for example, not as the problem of one person who can't
find a job, but as the interaction of economic, political, and social forces that
determine the number of jobs and who has access to them.
Anthropology
Anthropology is a broad, holistic study of human beings and includes the subfields of
archaeology, physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic
anthropology. Anthropologists study human beings from a very broad and
comparative perspective. We are interested in human experience around the
world, past and present. Cultural anthropologists study cultures—from our own
culture to those different from our owns—by living in the culture and gaining the
insiders' point of view.
Commonalities
Both look at the "big picture," are interested in the way society influences people's
lives, and strive to promote understanding. Recognizing these similarities, our major
blends the two areas of study. For those with a strong interest in one discipline or the
other, it is possible to select courses with a primary focus in either, but we encourage
our majors to explore and draw on the insights from both disciplines.