Talk:Social anthropology

message: Is there anyone who has specialization in Sociology and Social/Cultural Anthropology?
If there is, someone should create a new article on how similar sociology and Social/Cultural anthropology are. Sociology and Anthropology are so similar to each other especially with Cultural Anthropology.
I cannot believe that no one has created an article talking about their similarities and none of the Sociology and Social/Cultural Anthropology articles mention their very close relationship together.
If anyone has specialization in both fields or at least know them very well, please someone or people should create an article talking about how they are so similar to each other and how Social/Cultural Anthropology is almost a duplicate study of Sociology.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Canto2009 (talk • contribs) 20:48, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Someone should create a new article

message: Having read the article, I now know all about the history of social anthropology... but what exactly is it? What do they do? Mike Peel 08:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  So what is it? 

message: on what social anthropology is. This is a slightly amended extract from the UK Anthropology Benchmark Statement, which I have put in the references. I was on this panel, which represented all the Anthropology programmes in the UK, and I drafted most of this section, though it was amended and approved by the entire committee. Although the product of a committee, in this case should provide a pretty NPOV account. I will edit it more, particluarly the longer sections on Medical Anthropology and Ethnomusicology as these were extended to protect these small areas funding. They are, however, academically honest as they stand, so I may not be in a hurry to amend them.
--Mdfischer 18:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The link seems to have moved. Mccajor 06:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Have replaced with the current link to Benchmark Statement -Mdfischer 14:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added more substance

message: I propose that we end consideration of merging social anthropology page into cultural anthropology. See talk:Cultural anthropology for arguments against merging. Mdfischer 18:34, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded. Mccajor 06:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Propose end merger with Cultural Anthropology

message: I would suggest that the list of anthropologists interviewed for the Macfarlane Interviews be moved to a separate article. Currently it's longer than the whole rest of the article put together, and it doesn't contribute much more than the external link to the Interviews themselves. Mccajor 06:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was about to post about this myself. The interviews are an amazing resource, but its completely over the top to list them here. This article should be about Social Anthropology, not dominated by an index to a resource for studying the history of that discipline (as good as that resource may be). By all means, lets provide a link to the list of interviews on his website from this article, but the proper place for any account of the scope of these interviews is in the article on Alan Macfarlane (although even there that kind of lengthy list would be inappropriate for a wikipedia article). Robotforaday 22:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Macfarlane Interviews? 

message: The external links section for this article is a bit odd, when you look at it in the context of other articles about academic disciplines. The external links section for Geology does not list departments offering "programs". Neither does the external links section for sociology, economics, cultural studies, or neurology. The external links section should surely link to such things as sites for further reading, professional associations etc. Robotforaday 22:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: External links section

message: would people who watch this page please review the article, Early infanticidal childrearing, which makes many claims about anthropology and about non-Western societies?  I was once involved in a flame-war with another editor, and it would be inappropriate for me to do a speedy delete or nominate the page for deletion.  More important, I think others need to comment on it.  I engaged in a detailed exchange recently with one other editor here, on the talk page; you may wish to review the discussion but it is getting involuted and I ask that you comment separately.  Thanks, Slrubenstein   |  Talk 12:32, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello, you might want to raise this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthropology, where it should reach the people who could be of help here. Robotforaday (talk) 12:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article of concern 

message: The articles Cultural anthropology, Ethnology and Social anthropology are wildly, almost unbelievably, redundant.  I propose that they be merged and redirected to one (more fully sourced, articulate and complete) article, with short sections explaining the doctrinal, pedagogical and methodological differences between (American-led) cultural and (British-led) social anthropology, and how they relate to the overall view of ethnology from its origins to today, and integrating all the material.  I don't care what article the final result lives at.  The present state of the articles is very confusing to the reader, and gives the impression that all three of these are separate fields, when they absolutely are not, they are simply three different lenses from which to view precisely the same endeavo[u]r. I'm labeling this merge proposal "tentative" because I have not slapped up any merge tags; I think some discussion is in order as to what the merge target should be. Keeping these articles separate (other than as short articles limited to discussion of how the particular branch/variant differs from others, the way the Philology article relates to the Linguistics article) is silly and unhelpful to the reader. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 23:25, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge discussion notice copied from [[Talk:Cultural anthropology]] 

message: After all uncited material was deleted - leaving only a stub - I did a major overhaul of Incest taboo.  Hoping that it rises to our standards for good anthropology related articles, would people who watch this page mind looking it over, making any obvious improvements or commenting on the talk page?  Thanks, Slrubenstein   |  Talk 19:43, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  a request for people who watch this page 

message: The arguments against a merger are weak.  Every major institution treats them as the same.
If we keep them separate, where does it end?  For example, do we identify forensic anthropology as its own branch?  There is a wikipedia page for it.  How about medical anthropology?  How about separating biological and evolutionary?
Cultural and Social anthropology are essentially the same thing, inextricably linked (the way biological and evolutionary are).  They should be identified as the same discipline.  
I challenge anyone to show me ONE major institution that divides the two in its department, ONE major textbook that divides the two, etc.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.138.130.156 (talk) 17:49, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propose Merger With Cultural Anthropology 

message: It is absurd to cite the number of references to terms like "cultural anthropology" and "social anthropology".  Anyone who has ever actually studied either, knows they should be merged.  I am so disgusted with this conversation, I am actually nauseated.  It is crap like this (the separation of the two) that keeps Wikipedia from being taken seriously.
Open a freaking textbook.  Every anthropology textbook says there are 4 fields.  These idiots here on Wikipedia are trying to set a trend NOT accepted by the mainstream.
Why does this meta-analysis APPEAR to work?  Because cultural anthropology is the most oft-studied field, and depending on the location of the authors of a journal article, they will refer to it as either cultural or social.
Keeping the two separate is like saying an AB is a different degree than a BA.
You are all fools.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.138.129.142 (talk) 04:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Combine it, for the love of God 

message: Fool I may be, but having been trained in, taught and done research integrating Social, Cultural, Linguistic and Biological Anthropology for over 25 years, I still find these quite distict in important ways. Having been trained in the US, and undertaken most of my career in the UK I have had to deal with these differences rather more explicitly than do most anthropologists. 
Anthropologists are anthropologists. The specialities they may undertake reflect different research problems and methods for undertaking these. Many anthropologists have more than one speciality, and a common combination is Social and Cultural anthropology, but no means exclusively. However the research questions and approaches for these are quite different. Admittedly, anthropology is a small discipline in the scope of things, and if space were constrained it would be possible to write a combined entry that included both, but there is no joint name they could be given, the entry would have to be entitled Social and Cultural Anthropology, or Cultural and Social Anthropology. There are no perspectives where one is a subset of the other, much less equivalents. But this is Wikipedia, and there are no space constraints, so the only question is can they be meaningfully differentiated. I think so, the difference is very real to me on every research project I undertake. 
For example, take my latest project, Human Adaptation to Ecosystem Change, within which I am working with three ecologists, a sociologist, two cultural anthropologists and an agricultural economist. I am providing expertise in social, cultural and biological anthropology together with the use of computational modelling to integrate our different perspectives and results into a common account.
The social anthropology input to the project involves understanding the social organisation of agriculture and other land use in an Indian community in Western Ghatts. Specifically, now people organise themselves into social groups, maintain relationships, hierarchical power relations and how these are perpetuated over time, how these are being challenged and how land use fits into this set of relations. In particular, this builds the foundation for the rest of the project.
The cultural anthropology focus is on agicultural knowledge, its organisation, distribution and internal structure, how knowledge is reproduced, and the mechanisms for change in knowledge. The foundation provided by the social analysis will help address some of these issues, but by no means all. Likewise, this will help to address some problems in the analysis aof social relations, but by no means all. The methods for collecting data on each of these is distinct, and they will not be undertaken together for the most part in the field.
This example aside, there is a pretty clear historical difference that is not just a matter of naming. Until around 1990 there were very few professional anthropologists in the UK who undertook research with a significant cultural dimension, though these few were prominant (e.g. Edmund Leach, Roy Ellen, Mary Evans). None were exclusively cultural anthropologists. Since 1990 recourse to including cultural aspects of different peoples has expanded. Since the same time in the USA cultural anthropology has been tearing itself apart, with probably a slight majority of those who would have called themselves cultural anthropologists two decades ago now doubting the existance or significance of culture at all. Research priorities in social anthropology on both continents have changed over 20 years, but not to become more like cultural anthropology but to accomodate greater emphasis on emergence and complexity, something anthropology has in common with most sciences over that time. Cultural and Social Anthrology have not been converging, but if anything diverging to a greater degree, one having made the transition into dealing with complexity, the other having been largely broken on the rocks in its attempts.
I'll have to come back to this later to finish. Mdfischer (talk) 18:51, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clear distinctions between Social and Cultural Anthropology 

message: I was wondering whether someone could assess whether one could add Fredrik Barth, the Norwegian social anthropologist, to the list of persons associated with social anthropology. Since I noticed that in your main article about "Social anthropology", you have that list of persons under the title of "Anthropologists associated with social anthropology", I must mention that I am not sure if Mr. Barth was an anthropologist to start with, possibly a sociologist, or whether he had other basis of initial education. I actually think that the title of that list of persons you have in that main article should be reformulated, because these days not only anthropologists may be interested in or associated with Social anthropology, it could be just as well sociologists, politologists, etc. In any case here is information about Mr. Fredrik Barth obtained from wikipedia itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_Barth, http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_Barth, 
Thank you for taking this into consideration.
161.4.82.7 (talk) 09:55, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introducing Fredrik Barth 

message: Hi! I wrote an article about emerging field of anthropology and it is threaten by deletion (probably from people who are interested in another fields). So if somebody has a time for a quick view and discussion (keep or delete) the article will be glad!
Wikiditor (talk) 08:53, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Quantum_anthropology]] help 

message: This article needs to cover the distinction of social anthropology from ethnology; the latter article makes this distinction (and from cultural anthropology). That third article distinguishes from social anthropology but not really from ethnology. Only the ethnology article is clear.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:28, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distinction from [[ethnology]] 

message: — Assignment last updated by Alyssagarcia.422 (talk) 22:18, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Culture