What is anthropology?

Breaking down the word anthropology, its origins are from the Greek word anthropos "human" and logia "study."

Anthropology itself is the holistic study of humanity. Where other academic disciplines may have taken a narrow stance on an issue anthropology chooses to incorporate anything and everything it is to be human with the ultimate goal of defining who we are, how we came to be and where we are going.

In essence we all practice anthropology every day because of its fundamental ground of curiosity. We are curious about ourselves and curious about others.

Hybridization of History As Illustrated by Native American Case Studies: by M. Zylstra

European expansion into the new world forced “people of diverse origins and social makeup … to take part in the construction of a common world” and thus a common history. (Martin 1987: 11) However, the native peoples of North America have had a history distinctly different from the West’s dating back well before the old world and the new world converged.

Through a Eurocentric perspective anthropologists have defined and confined time and history to a snapshot, a discontinuous moment in time which is vastly different from the unique nature of the Native Americans mythic conception of reality.