at the beginning of the semester I told
you that I understood most of you signed
up for this class because it filled a
requirement for your general education
course but I hoped you would find ways
that you could apply the concepts that
you learned by the end of this semester
Some of the most important ideas we
started talking about on the first day
of class Concepts that are important for
applying anthropology to your everyday
lives include holism and comparison,
ethnocentrism and cultural relativism,
culture, diversity, and biocultural The
simplest way to apply anthropology is
just to understand that culture is a
learned behavior and there's a wide
variety of ways of doing things We can
recognize that our ethnocentrism is just
a product of learning our culture from a
young age and apply cultural relativism
to understand other practices from an
insider point of view instead of judging
from our own cultures perspective It's
also important to understand how culture
and biology are interrelated and
biocultural
Culture impacts biology in many ways
from our creation of racial categories
to health and illness We can consider
globalization in applying anthropology
and understanding how cultures interact
with each other
We're not forming a global culture but
we are sharing ideas, learning about
others, having conflicts, and reacting to
those conflicts in many ways We can
apply cultural relativism in these
situations, understanding that others
don't necessarily want to be like us or
that societies that are struggling are
often struggling because of outside
influence on their cultures not because
their culture is doing anything wrong So
we can use anthropology in our everyday
interactions but also on a broader scale
If we want to help people in other
places or try to solve global social
problems the primary key to doing this
is to talk to people to get their inside
perspective and
involve them in helping their own cultures
Just because our way works for us
doesn't mean that it's the only right
way of being successful People don't
tend to want others from the outside to
fix their cultures They want help but on
their own terms to decide when they need
the help and how they need the help This
is where holism of anthropology also
comes into play because culture is
integrated When we try to fix a problem
from the outside we might not think
about consequences on other parts of
culture Working with people on their own
cultures is the only way that we can
take holism into account The comparative
approach is also important as it helps
us to see the diversity that exists
Diversity, that idea that just means
variety, is important in helping us to
find creative new solutions All of these
concepts are important for applying
anthropology in our everyday lives and
on a broad scale
