How perspective of Anthropology can be used to study global trends like global warming erosion of biodiversity? (CSS 2017)
RECENT TRENDS IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT
At the outset to point out that although this seeks to describe the development of theories in anthropology since 1950, it is necessary, in order to put this in a proper perspective, to review the past in brief. It shall also be necessary to look at the developments in other disciplines, particularly in linguistics, because they came to provide the basic ideas on which much of the progress in anthropology in recent times largely depends. Anthropological thought has always progressed along two mutually exclusive paths and based on two basically different principles materialist and ideological. The materialists consider that the aim of anthropological study is to find out the basic law that governs the development of society and culture. Among the earlier exponents of this line of thought were Morgan, Tylor, Fraser, Spencer etc. The School of Evolution stood for scientific study of society and culture. In recent times, Cultural Ecology, Ecological Anthropology, Cultural Materialism etc. subscribe to this view.