World Anthropology Day 2024 Theme, Images, Quotes, History:
Anthropology Day is a day for anthropologists to celebrate our discipline while sharing it with the world around us.
Anthropology Day is always held on the third Thursday in February. It is a day for anthropologists to celebrate their discipline while sharing it with the world. The Department of Anthropology at UGA has organized activities and displays to showcase how this field helps in understanding humanity’s past, present and future.
World Anthropology Day was started by American Anthropological Association (AAA) in 2024 as National Anthropology Day. Later on, in the following year it was changed as World Anthropology Day as it was felt that anthropology is crucial to the whole world and not just to Americans.
Anthropology can be understood in simple language as the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human in terms of behaviour and biology, and human societies in the past and present with the outlook to explore future. It helps us to understand our human origins, our distinctiveness as a species, and our great diversity being human. It provides a better understanding of our world, why humans act the way we do, and how it affects our physical, cultural, and social environments.
Now in the context of Arunachal Pradesh, did anyone of you ever wonder why the traditional food habits of Tawang contains lots of milk products like butter and cheese, whereas most of the Tani tribes have bamboo shoots as part of their important food ingredient? Why the people of high altitude have houses made of stones, and again why sub-tropical areas have wood and bamboo houses?
Most people would generally answer saying, “it is a part of their Culture”. Then what is culture? To an Anthropologist, the notion of culture and understanding of cultural practices has always been fascinating because of the power it entails in terms of understanding human beings. Culture is the pattern of learned and shared behaviour over a period of time by a particular group of people that help them to adapt and transform the world they live in.
The evolution process of culture of any tribe and community is determined by an immediate environment and needs. Cultural tradition develop as a response to specific human needs as opined by Bronislaw Malinowski, an anthropologist known as father of modern Anthropology; the one who carried out one of the longest field work, for almost three years among Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea. From the perspective of Malinowski, cultural evolution is a complex process, as complex as human organism. The discourse on human culture and its practices has been recurrent phenomena and this has become more evident in today’s era of technological booming and high mobility of people.