Social anthropology and its contribution to modern multiculturalism
The sciences that study society were often based onobservations of contemporaries and compatriots. Thus, the researcher had the same scientific paradigm, the same moral and moral attitudes, culture and values as the subject of his study. He lived in the same society, and watched him, as it were, "from within", "the jeweler's gaze" isolating laws and levers that affect people (members of this society).
But the task became incredibly complicated when it came toabout other collectives of people who are remote from the researcher by a cultural abyss. This involved studying the communities of modern Australian aborigines or primitive tribes, the culture of ancient Greeks and Romans. Sometimes even the motivation of the actions of a medieval man seems to us incomprehensible. In this situation, the social anthropologist must temporarily "get out" of his society in order to learn and understand those who live entirely according to other laws and concepts. This approach can be called "studying from an armchair".
Social anthropology, the founderswhich acted by M. Moss and E. Durkheim, when studying isolated communities and cultures later divided into two main directions. The former can be described as "positivistic evolutionism". Its main representatives are J. Frazer, E. Taylor and G. Morgan. They proceeded from positions of development of a society from the lowest forms to the higher. Consequently, "primitive people", other cultures were for them only a moment, a step, and sometimes a dead-end branch of the development of human society.
In the early twentieth century, social anthropologyhas developed a fundamentally different approach - Neo-Kantian antiscientism, whose authors (R.Lowie and others) called the method of predecessors "a hike in the zoo." This trend found its continuation in the "understanding", interpretative (E. Evans-Prichard, K.Hirz), "symbolic", (V. Turner), "cognitive" anthropology (S.Tayler, Mary Douglas). When studying "other" cultures, the researcher should discard the "templates" of modern man, but at the same time keep respect for those people whom he studies. The fact that in society there is no concept of private property, individualism and career, does not make the members of this society "non-citizens", some hominids or "Martians". To understand the person of this or that time or culture is the main approach of this direction.
Social anthropology as a science of society andhis influence on the individual was greatly enriched, thanks to the works of Claude Levi-Strauss. He founded such a flow in this humanitarian discipline as structuralism. Taking as a basis a certain temporary "cut", the scientist took out the "structures" - for example, the position of women, attitudes toward other gentiles and other such "strata." Structural approach gave impetus to gender studies (M. Mead), and also allowed to study certain "subcultures" of the modern society of big cities (goths, punks, hippies and others).
Social anthropology seeks not to studystructures and mechanisms, but to the knowledge of man in all his social spatiality. If we approach the individual as a clean sheet, on which our societies write their laws, we will thereby depreciate it. The eternal struggle and harmony of man and society in which he lives, the study of the mechanisms of their interaction - these are the main objects of study of social anthropology. In modern society there are no "primitive peoples", nor are "strange oddballs", but each culture deserves respect and tolerance.
