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Article: Anthropology and Ethnology
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.
The history of the terms "anthropology" and "ethnology" tells much about the changing scope of the field and central debates within it. Today we assume that they are closely related
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"ethnology" is the study of culture, a dominant part of the enterprise of "anthropology," the study of humankind
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but this was not always the case. The two terms once had different, even opposed, meanings. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, "anthropology" meant the science of the whole nature of man and emphasized the classification of physical characteristics, often to prove the fundamental differences among humans. "Ethnology" ...