Top When you cut someone off on the road and he makes an angry gesture at you, do you ever wonder about it for longer than a moment? If you do, maybe anthropology is your calling. That might sound a little strange, but every gesture that we make has a deeper significance and roots in more than just your past. That gesture the truck driver made has a complex linguistic and cultural history and anthropologists make it their business to trace the history of language, customs and how people interact with each other. The study of other cultures and how people have lived in the past has a great deal to do with how we behave today.
Anthropologists do much of their fieldwork in other countries and often live for many years abroad, but some remain in the country and trace ethnic routes.
Anthropologists are academicians, and most are employed by universities, researching their areas of specialisation and reviewing the work of their peers.
Top Almost all of an anthropologist's professional time is spent with colleagues as they edit and critique each other's work. Anthropologists also spend a great deal of time writing grant proposals to get funding for their research.
A necessary evil of the profession is that great discoveries require money and a researcher must become a professional schmoozer in order to sell the government, universities and private grant-giving organisations on the value of their research. No anthropologist enjoys this process, which takes so much time away from the part of the job that they love.
The adage 'publish or perish' applies particularly to anthropology; anthropologists must publish articles in scholarly journals to foster awareness about their work and to build strong reputations.
There is cut-throat competition among researchers for grant money.
Aspiring anthropologists must develop a speciality early on. One way of doing this is to spend time as a research assistant to professors. At the graduate level, students either decide to pursue their Ph.D. or to leave academia to work at museums or travel abroad. Cutting-edge anthropological fields of study deal with economics, such as emerging markets and race and gender studies.
Teaching positions are very limited, so anthropologists specialising in newer and less-researched areas may have a better chance at being appointed to fledgling departments.
Top Anthropology is taught at various colleges and universities all over the country, both in
bachelors’ and masters’ programmes.
Research is an important aspect of anthropology. Various organisations, including the Anthropological Survey of India, public-health organisations and planning commissions also offer opportunities for research and field work.
Anthropologists who are employed in museums are required to combine research with administrative duties. They get involved in various projects like excavation and research on the collections at museums.
Anthropology is divided into the several branches. A few of the elementary ones are:
Socio-Cultural Anthropology
This deals with the study of associations, bands, tribes, communities or the manner in which people collect themselves and form groups, their folk music and dance.
Biological and Physical Anthropology
This deals with the study of human beings as physical organisms and their place in biological evolution, through observation and measurements of bodily variations and physical attributes of existing and pre-historic human types. It also deals with the classification of early forms of man and the physical differences between races, human genetics, modes of physiological adaptations and reaction to different physical environment.
Archaeological Anthropology
This deals with the investigation and analyses of various relics of early human activity. The main task performed by the prehistoric archaeologist is that of digging up, identifying and classifying relics, including bones and other material from other areas in order to determine the chronology of events. Archaeological anthropologists are thus involved in historical reconstruction based on non-literary evidence.
Linguistic Anthropology
This is the branch of anthropology that deals with the study of the origin and evolution of language. While linguistics is mainly concerned with the study of how language, particularly the written form, is constructed, linguistic anthropology deals with the study of unwritten as well written languages.
Applied Anthropology
This can help government agencies in areas of birth control, malnutrition, growth, medicine, juvenile delinquency, agricultural practices, tribal welfare and rehabilitation. Such research is also useful for solving industrial problems of labour unrest.
For work at museums and teaching positions in colleges and universities, a postgraduate degree is necessary.
For a bachelors’ degree in anthropology, one must have cleared the intermediate level examination with science subjects, while for a masters’ degree in anthropology, one has to have cleared the three-year bachelors’ programme. Most candidates are selected on merit, assessed from previous performance.
The M.Phil. programme takes one-and-a-half years, whereas a Ph.D. takes at least two years.
Cultural anthropology requires a broad base of knowledge, a strong command of foreign languages, excellent writing and research skills, and a passion for the subject.
Formulating and understanding cultural theories requires a solid grasp of history, sociology, science and linguistics, which means that it takes many years of study, both in the classroom and outside, for an anthropologist to become an expert in his field.
Many anthropologists cite an early research assistant position with a favorite professor or mentor as their first real job in anthropology. Research assistants read and summarise articles, grade papers and transcribe interviews.
After graduate school, many anthropology students travel to gain practical experience with cultural observation. They continue to assist established anthropologists and as they acquire more responsibility, they get to write reports and conduct interviews.
After acquiring a Ph.D, most anthropologists seek out professorships at universities, where they derive their primary income from teaching and grants.
The more renowned anthropologists are often asked to advise government agencies and companies on domestic and foreign endeavours. For successful anthropologists, pay after 10 years on the job is not astronomical, but is definitely comfortable.
The starting salary in government departments is about Rs 6000 a month. However, the starting salary at the Anthropological Survey of India is about Rs 3,500 a month.
Apart from colleges and universities, anthropologists often find employment in various anthropological and archaeological research organisations, including the Anthropological Survey of India, with headquarters in Calcutta.
Many museums offer employment to anthropologists for undertaking excavation, exploration of pre-historic sites and for preservation, reconstruction and classification of objects and exhibits in museums.
Anthropologists are also employed in the community health sectors, where they work as social scientists, dealing with the problems of public health, nutrition and disease.
They also offer advice to medical institutions on the various new medicines for checking epidemics and other disease prevention activities.
Moreover, the communications sector, including the human resource development organisations, which deal directly with human relations and communicating with people have also started employing anthropologists on a large scale.
Anthropologists possessing enough research experience are also employed in the planning commissions, the Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and other government departments.
Police departments employ anthropologists possessing expertise in forensic science, for purposes of crime detection.
Various non-government organisations also provide employment to socio-cultural anthropologists because of their expertise in the understanding of the relations between industry and society.