Читать книгу A Companion to Medical Anthropology - Группа авторов - Страница 46

Historical or “Grand” Theory in Anthropology There are a number of very solid contemporary books on anthropological theory, mostly presented as a historical progression of both positivist and humanistic dialogs and developments (Murphy and Erickson 2017). That approach provides students with an interesting view of the anthropological theoretical debate as a dialectic process of point, counterpoint, and synthesis, leading to new (often labeled “neo”) iterations of the basic theories and counter theories. These theoretical paradigms are sometimes labeled “grand theory” and, for some anthropologists, function more as foundational philosophies for understanding culture and human behavior than as “testable theory.” In contrast, the other social sciences predominantly consider testable theory as the gold standard. The distinction between adherence to “grand theory,” as opposed to a pragmatic focus on testable midrange theory is one of the common distinctions between applied and non-applied medical anthropology.

The primary theoretical threads in anthropology can be cataloged as one of five cultural themes, with associated sub-themes that accommodate competing definitions and explications of the basic theories. The five themes include (1) evolutionary theories that focus on creating an understanding of individual, social and cultural “change through time”; (2) cognitive or cultural domain theories that explore the relationships between what and how people think, and what and how they behave – these theories explore the shared mental processes that exist primarily within human minds (e.g., thought processes, beliefs, emotions, knowledge, etc.) and how those processes link to the observable behaviors that those same individuals exhibit (behaviors, actions, etc.); (3) theories about the social and cultural structures that humans create and the organization of human behavior beyond the individual level (e.g., kinship, social networks, voluntary associations, organization theory, institutions) and the impact of those entities on everyday life; (4) theories of human manipulations and human understanding of symbols (the domains of linguistic anthropology, symbolic anthropology, communication theories, etc.); and (5) theories that explore integrated cultural–ecological relationships (biology and behavior interactions at multiple levels), including relationships of humans to the biological and physical environments surrounding them, and vice versa.