noun

• 1The study of human societies and cultures and their development.

  Also called cultural anthropology, social anthropology

  ‘Comparative studies declined and anthropology shifted to universities.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘So he studied anthropology, inquisitive about human societies and their desires and needs.’
  • ‘Before proceeding, it is important to examine the theoretical developments in anthropology on the politics of reproduction.’
  • ‘Ethnography is a research approach that developed in anthropology to study cultural groups and that has more recently been used to study small-group culture.’
  • ‘His expedition was less a holiday than an exercise in comparative anthropology, since he wanted to examine the differences between American and Australian myths.’
  • ‘As noted above, Australian anthropology incorporates a long tradition of research on Aboriginal societies and on societies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.’

  1. 1.1The study of human biological and physiological characteristics and their evolution.
     Also called physical anthropology
     ‘It provides a solid underpinning of evolutionary biology for those who want to explore ecology, anthropology and social evolution anywhere on earth.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Another important area that will be influenced is anthropology, evolution and human migration.’
     • ‘The new Cartesianism of cognitive science and biological anthropology provide some contemporary exemplars.’
     • ‘I studied plants and plant evolution for the last six to seven years in the states and was in charge of science at the museum, mainly anthropology and zoology.’
     • ‘The new ecology movement in anthropology relates to a deeper understanding of the relationship of technology and social organization to the environment.’
     • ‘Within ecological anthropology there were also critiques of an overemphasis on bounded local analyses.’
     • ‘Ecological anthropology has a long and distinguished history in Papua New Guinea.’
     • ‘He is a little too fond of building huge abstract entities on the back of discoveries from anthropology, zoology and neuroscience.’
     • ‘The categories and relations of evolutionist theory in anthropology expressed deeply held values.’
     • ‘On the contrary, his assessment of the economic origins of human evolution relies heavily on literature, data and facts from anthropology, biology and other natural sciences.’
     • ‘Since the 1990s, ecological anthropology has incorporated a political dimension into ecological analysis.’
     • ‘He has no more training in fields relevant to evolution - biology, paleontology, anthropology, geology, etc - than I or most other people do.’
     • ‘Terrence Deacon works at the interface between neurobiology, developmental biology and biological anthropology.’