The Nature and Scope of Anthropology

The Nature and Scope of Anthropology
What Anthropologists Do
Whenever man lives or has lived, anthropologists find things to do. The variety of anthropological researches is illustrated by the following article subjects, found in five recent issues of a leading anthropological journal: achievements of the genetical method in physical anthropology, the place of religion in human life, marriage instability among the Tarahumara of Mexico, anthropological problems of the origin of the speakers of Indo-European languages, discussions of the applicability of Freudian concepts of interpretation of folk tales, a method of determining the caste hierarchy in an Indian village, the cross-cultural study of female initiation rites, the origin of the creole language in the West Indies, human incest taboos and mating habits animals, blood group studies of four South American tribes, how conflicts are resolved in two Mexican communities, race as an evolutionary episode, the relation between special type of cousin marriage and a widespread system of naming relatives, and the informal social structure of European villages.