Читать книгу Anthropology For Dummies - Cameron M. Smith - Страница 19

Part 4 of this book introduces the many ways that the lessons of anthropology are relevant in daily life. Anthropology isn’t just studied by scruffy professors clothed in tweeds (although I have to admit that yes, I do have a tweed jacket). Anthropologists are employed by many companies and government agencies, bringing what they know of humanity to the tables of commerce, international diplomacy, and other fields, as applied anthropologists.

Applied anthropologists help humanity get along in a very literal sense. Chapter 17 shows how the lessons of anthropology are important to understanding and preventing cultural conflict.

Anthropology also helps humanity survive. Humanity faces enormous challenges, from overpopulation to language extinction and climate change (covered in Chapter 18) and “common-sense solutions” to these problems aren’t too effective, sometimes because what we think of as “common sense” may not apply in a culture other than our own. But with a subtler understanding of why humanity is the way it is, applied anthropologists are better suited to implementing changes, particularly on the community level, than many government officials who may know a lot about high-level politics but little about cultural traditions and values in the smaller communities they govern.

Chapter 19 takes you into the lab, where anthropologists are analyzing DNA with methods that can help you find out where your genetic roots lie. This chapter shows you that they ultimately lie in the great continent of Africa.

Finally, Chapter 20 has some exciting examples of how archaeological discoveries help us flesh out the history books. The common people of the ancient world — and unless you’re royalty, that means your ancestors — didn’t write much, but archaeology has given them a voice. Here you can find out about the lives of common laborers of ancient Egypt, American slaves, and the vanished Greenlandic Norse.