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Ethnology




Among its goals are 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 (like the USA and Great Britain) it is also referred to as cultural or social anthropology, however ethnology is not only a single part of cultural anthropology. Ethnology has been considered as a Scientific discipline since the late 18th century but can be generally applied to any comparative study of human groups.

The 15th century "discovery of America" had an important role in the new Occident al 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 , Nietzsche , Foucault , Althusser and Deleuze .


LIST OF SCHOLARS OF ETHNOLOGY






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SEE ALSO



WEBSITES RELATING TO ETHNOLOGY

  • http://www.ethnologue.com/ describes the languages and ethnic groups found worldwide, grouped by host nation-state.

  • http://www.movinganthropology.org - The Moving Anthropology Student Network/Moving Anthropology Social Network connects young anthropologists and anthropology students from European and other countries

  • 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.