Page 41 - DLIS407_INFORMATION AND LITERATURE SURVEY IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Information and Literature Survey in Social Sciences

Notes The goal of anthropology is to provide a holistic account of humans and human nature. This means
that, though anthropologists generally specialize in only one sub-field, they always keep in mind
the biological, linguistic, historic and cultural aspects of any problem. Since anthropology arose as
a science in western societies that were complex and industrial, a major trend within anthropology
has been a methodological drive to study peoples in societies with more simple social organization,
sometimes called "primitive" in anthropological literature, but without any connotation of "inferior."
Today, anthropologists use terms such as "less complex" societies or refer to specific modes of
subsistence or production, such as "pastroalist" or "forager" or "horticulturists" to refer to humans
living in non-industrial, non-western cultures, such people or folk (ethnos) remaining of great interest
within anthropology.
The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a people in detail, using biogenetic,
archaeological, and linguistic data alongside direct observation of contemporary customs. In the 1990s
and 2000s, calls for clarification of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer knows where his
or her own culture ends and another begins, and other crucial topics in writing anthropology were
heard. It is possible to view all human culture as part of one large, evolving global culture. These
dynamic relationships, between what can be observed on the ground, as opposed to what can be
observed by compiling many local observations remain fundamental in any kind of anthropology,
whether cultural, biological, linguistic or archaeological.

Caution The goal of anthropology is to provide a holistic account of humans and human
nature.

5.1.2 Geography

Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main subfields: human geography and physical
geography. The former focuses largely on the built environment and how space is created, viewed
and managed by humans as well as the influence humans have on the space they occupy the latter
examines the natural environment and how the climate, vegetation & life, soil, water and landforms
are produced and interact. As a result of the two subfields using different approaches a third field
has emerged, which is environmental geography. Environmental geography combines physical and
human geography and looks at the interactions between the environment an humans.
Geographers attempt to understand the earth in terms of physical and spatial relationships. The first
geographers focused on the science of mapmaking and finding ways to precisely project the surface of
the earth. In this sense. Geography bridges some gaps between the natural science and social science.
Historical geography is often taught in a college in a unified Department of Geography. Modern
geography is an all encompassing discipline, closely related to GISc that seeks to understand humanity
and its natural environment. The fields of urban Planning, Regional Science, and planetology are
closely related to geography. Practitioners of geography use many technologies and methods to collect data
such as GIS, remote sensing, aerial photography, statistics, and global positioning systems (GPS).
The field of geography is generally split into two distinct branches: physical and human. Physical
geography examines phenomena related to climate, oceans, soils and the measurement of earth.
Human geography focuses on fields as diverse as cultural geography, transportation, health, military
operations and cities. Other branches of geography include social geography, regional geography,
geomatics, and environmental geography.

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