ethnology n : the branch of anthropology that deals with the division of humankind into races and with their origins and distribution and distinctive characteristics

English

Noun

1. The branch of anthropology that studies and compares the different human cultures.

Related terms

• ethology

Translations

Ethnology (from the Greek , ethnos meaning "family, lineage, people") is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.

Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct contact with the culture, ethnology takes the research that ethnographers have compiled and then compares and contrasts different cultures. The term ethnology is credited to Adam Franz Kollár who used and defined it in his Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates published in Vienna in 1783. Kollár's interest in linguistic and cultural diversity was aroused by the situation in his native multi-lingual Kingdom of Hungary and his roots among its Slovaks, and by the shifts that began to emerge after the gradual retreat of the Ottoman Empire in the more distant Balkans.

Among the goals of ethnology have been the reconstruction of human history, and the formulation of cultural invariants, such as the alleged incest taboo and culture change, and the formulation of generalizations about "human nature", a concept which has been criticized since the 19th century by various philosophers (Hegel, Marx, structuralism, etc.). In some parts of the world (including the USA and Great Britain), it is also referred to as cultural or social anthropology. The view of ethnology as a constituent part of cultural anthropology is not universal, though. Ethnology has been considered an academic field since the late 18th century especially in Europe and is sometimes conceived of as any comparative study of human groups.

The 15th century "discovery of America" had an important role in the new Occidental interest toward the Other, often qualified as "savages", which was either seen as a brutal barbarian or as a "noble savage". Thus, civilization was opposed in a dualist manner to barbary, a classic opposition constitutive of the even more commonly-shared ethnocentrism. The progress of ethnology, for example with Claude Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology, led to the criticism of conceptions of a linear progress, or the pseudo-opposition between "societies with histories" and "societies without histories", judged too dependent on a limited view of history as constituted by accumulative growth.

Lévi-Strauss often referred to Montaigne's essay on anthropophagy as an early example of "ethnology". Lévi-Strauss aimed, through a structural method, at discovering universal invariants in human society, which he thought was the prohibition of the incest. However, the claims of such cultural universalism have been criticized by various 19th and 20th century social thinkers, among the more important include: Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Althusser and Deleuze.

References

Bibliography

• Johann Georg Adam Forster Voyage round the World in His Britannic Majesty’s Sloop, Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (2 vols), London (1777)
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude, The Elementary Structurs of Kinship, (1949), http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807046698, Structural Anthropology (1958)http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/046509516X
• Mauss, Marcel, originally published as Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques in 1925, this classic text on gift economy appears in the English edition as The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societieshttp://www.amazon.com/dp/039332043X/.
• Maybury-Lewis, David, Akwe-Shavante society. (1967) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195197291, The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States (2003)http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MAYPOL.html?show=contents.
• Clastres, Pierre, Society Against the State (1974), http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0942299019
• Mihai Pop, Glauco Sanga Problemi generali dell'etnologia europea La Ricerca Folklorica, No. 1, La cultura popolare. Questioni teoriche (Apr., 1980), pp. 89-96

List of scholars of ethnology

• Amadou Hampâté Bâ
• Johann Georg Adam Forster
• Pierre Clastres
• Horatio Hale
• Robert Jaulin
• Yanagita Kunio
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• Marcel Mauss
• David Maybury-Lewis
• Alfred Metraux
• James Mooney
• Augustus Pitt Rivers
• Wilhelm Schmidt
• Ruth Benedict
• Bronisław Malinowski
• The Brothers Grimm
• Josiah Nott
• Louis Nicolas
• Marshall Sahlins
• Dr. Jose Rizal
• Dr. Colin M. Turnbull
• Jane Goodall
• Jared Diamond
• Wade Davis
• Raymond Firth
• Franz Boas
• Antun Radić

See also

• Anthropology
• Cultural Survival
• Culture
• Ethnocentrism
• Ethnophilosophy
• Evolutionism
• Functionalism
• Indigenous Peoples
• Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Marxism
• Modernism
• Post-Modernism
• Postcolonial
• Primitive culture
• Primitivism
• Racism
• Society
• Structural anthropology

Websites relating to ethnology

• http://www.ethnologue.com/ describes the languages and ethnic groups found worldwide, grouped by host nation-state.
• Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History - Over 160,000 objects from Pacific, North American, African, Asian ethnographic collections with images and detailed description, linked to the original catalogue pages, field notebooks, and photographs are available online.