Making Democracy Work

Anthropology  /ænθrɵˈpɒlədʒi/ is the academic study of humanity. It deals with all that is characteristic of... the human experience, from physiology and the evolutionary origins to the social and cultural organization of human societies as well as individual and collective forms of human experience. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean humankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study." Anthropology's basic concerns are the definition of human life and origin, how social relations among humans are organized, who the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens are, what the characterizations of human physical traits are, how humans behave, why there are variations among different groups of humans, how the evolutionary past of Homo sapiens has influenced its social organization and culture and so forth. Anthropology originated in the colonial encounter between Western people and colonized non-western peoples, as Europeans tried to understand the origins of observable cultural diversity.
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