Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different
peoples and the relationships between them (compare
cultural,
social, or
sociocultural anthropology).
Scientific discipline
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 ''ethnologia'' (''ethnology'') is credited to
Adam Franz Kollár (1718-1783) who used and defined it in his ''Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates'' published in
Vienna in 1783. as: “the science of nations and peoples, or, that study of learned men in which they inquire into the origins, languages, customs, and institutions of various nations, and finally into the fatherland and ancient seats, in order to be able better to judge the nations and peoples in their own times.”
Kollár's interest in linguistic and cultural diversity was aroused by the situation in his native multi-ethnic and multilingual
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
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University ...
in the more distant
Balkans
The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...
.
[Gheorghiţă Geană, "Discovering the whole of humankind: the genesis of anthropology through the Hegelian looking-glass." In: Han F. Vermeulen and Arturo Alvarez Roldán, eds. Fieldwork and Footnotes: Studies in the History of European Anthropology.'' 1995.]
Among the goals of ethnology have been the reconstruction of
human history
Human history, also called world history, is the narrative of humanity's past. It is understood and studied through anthropology, archaeology, genetics, and linguistics. Since the invention of writing, human history has been studied thro ...
, and the formulation of
cultural invariants, such as the
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, ethnology has developed along independent paths of investigation and
pedagogical doctrine, with ''
cultural anthropology'' becoming dominant especially in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, and ''
social anthropology'' in
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It ...
. The distinction between the three terms is increasingly blurry. 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 exploration of America by European explorers had an important role in formulating new notions of the Occident (the
Western world), such as the notion of the "
Other". This term was used in conjunction with "savages", which was either seen as a brutal barbarian, or alternatively, as the "
noble savage". Thus,
civilization
A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).
...
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
Structural anthropology is a school of sociocultural anthropology based on Claude Lévi-Strauss' 1949 idea that immutable deep structures exist in all cultures, and consequently, that all cultural practices have homologous counterparts in other ...
, 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
cannibalism as an early example of ethnology. Lévi-Strauss aimed, through a
structural method, at discovering universal invariants in human society, chief among which he believed to be the
incest taboo. However, the claims of such cultural
universalism have been criticized by various 19th- and 20th-century social thinkers, including
Marx,
Nietzsche,
Foucault,
Derrida,
Althusser, and
Deleuze.
The French school of ethnology was particularly significant for the development of the discipline, since the early 1950s. Important figures in this movement have included
Lévi-Strauss,
Paul Rivet,
Marcel Griaule,
Germaine Dieterlen, and
Jean Rouch.
Scholars
See:
List of scholars of ethnology
See also
*
Anthropology
*
Cultural anthropology
*
Comparative cultural studies
*
Cross-cultural studies
*
Ethnography
*
Folklore studies
*
Cultural survival
Cultural Survival (founded 1972) is a nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, which is dedicated to defending the human rights of indigenous peoples.
History
Cultural Survival was founded by anthropologist David May ...
*
Culture
*
Ethnocentrism
*
Evolutionism
Evolutionism is a term used (often derogatorily) to denote the theory of evolution. Its exact meaning has changed over time as the study of evolution has progressed. In the 19th century, it was used to describe the belief that organisms deliberat ...
*
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
*
Intangible cultural heritage
*
Marxism
*
Meta-analysis
*
Critical theory
*
Modernism
*
Postmodernism
*
Postcolonial
*
Decoloniality
Decoloniality ( es, decolonialidad) is a school of thought used principally by an emerging Latin American movement which focuses on untangling the production of knowledge from a primarily Eurocentric episteme. It critiques the perceived universali ...
*
Primitive culture
*
Primitivism
*
Scientific Racism
*
Secondary research
Secondary research involves the summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing research. Secondary research is contrasted with primary research in that primary research involves the generation of data, whereas secondary research uses primary res ...
*
Society
*
Structural anthropology
Structural anthropology is a school of sociocultural anthropology based on Claude Lévi-Strauss' 1949 idea that immutable deep structures exist in all cultures, and consequently, that all cultural practices have homologous counterparts in other ...
*
Structural functionalism
*
Ethnobiology ]
Ethnobiology is the scientific study of the way living things are treated or used by different human cultures. It studies the dynamic relationships between people, biota, and environments, from the distant past to the immediate present.culture ...
*
Ethnopoetics
*
Ethnic studies
*
Critical race studies
*
Cultural studies
References
Bibliography
*
Forster, Johann Georg Adam. ''
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 Structures of Kinship'', (1949), ''Structural Anthropology'' (1958)
*
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 Societies''.
*
Maybury-Lewis, David. ''Akwe-Shavante society'' (1967), ''The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States'' (2003).
*
Clastres, Pierre. ''
Society Against the State'' (1974).
*Pop, Mihai and Glauco Sanga
"Problemi generali dell'etnologia europea" ''La Ricerca Folklorica'', No. 1, ''La cultura popolare. Questioni teoriche'' (April 1980), pp. 89–96.
External links
What is European Ethnology?Webpage "History of German Anthropology/Ethnology 1945/49-1990Languagesdescribes the languages and ethnic groups found worldwide, grouped by host nation-state.
- 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.
National Museum of Ethnology-
Osaka,
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
*
{{Authority control
Ethnicity
Cultural anthropology
Sociological theories
Sociology of culture