Ethnology

Ethnology, subdivision of anthropology. Other subdivisions include biological anthropology, social anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. Ethnology, typically practised by sociocultural anthropologists in continental Europe, is concerned with the study of cultures in their traditional forms, and in their adaptations to changing conditions in the modern world.

Ethnography, the observational branch of ethnology, describes each culture, including its language, the physical characteristics of its people, its material products, and its social customs. In describing a particular people, for example, ethnographers gather information about that people's location and geographical environment. They also investigate all aspects of the group's culture, including food, shelter, dress, transport arrangements, and economy; its customs regarding government, property, and division of labour; its patterns of production and exchange; its customs regarding birth, adulthood initiation rites, marriage, and death; its religious ideas relating to magic, supernatural beings, and the universe; and its artistic, mythological, and ceremonial interpretations of its natural and social environment.

Ethnologists are concerned with all aspects of culture in the contemporary world and attempt to present a perspective from which to understand modern society. They stress the observation and collection of data, and, in comparing the social organization of various societies, ethnologists emphasize the interrelationship between the individual and the family, clan, people, and other groups (social, political, or religious) that may exist within a society. In making comparisons, ethnologists must differentiate between responses peculiar to the society and those that are general to humankind. This differentiation clarifies the role of learned behaviour in the development of distinctive cultures. Some studies analyse relationships between social phenomena and ecological adaptations.

The family is the fundamental unit of social structure, the only unit common to all groups of people. It has specific functions with relation to its members and to the total society. It is the primary social institution, serving as the means of transferring culture from one generation to another. Division of labour between the sexes is often a strong influence in keeping the family together. The institution takes different forms among different peoples. Family systems ordinarily count descent through both father and mother, but many peoples consider a child as belonging to either the father's or the mother's family. This type of inheritance constitutes the unilateral family. The term “sib” in American anthropological usage and the term “clan” in British usage denote the unilateral-descent group—that is, matrilineal or patrilineal clans indicate lines of descent through the mother or father, respectively. The sib or clan has ceremonial, economic, and political functions in many societies.

Society is never separable from the individuals of which it is composed, and the experience and behaviour of an individual are shaped from birth by pre-existing customs. The interrelationship between behaviour patterns and ideas, concepts, and attitudes has impelled some anthropologists to use a psychoanalytic approach, with emphasis on personality. The effect of personality on the total range of institutions within a culture may be studied in this way. The effect of the culture on the formation of personalities has also been studied.

Ethnologists often employ evidence derived from other sciences in the study of various cultures. For example, the cultivation of the sweet potato as a food plant in Polynesia and eastern Melanesia suggests possible trans-Pacific voyages, because botanists believe the plant originated in pre-Columbian Central or South America.