Social anthropology and its contribution to modern multiculturalism

The sciences that study society were often based on observations 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 to other collectives of people who were separated from the researcher by a cultural abyss. This concerned the study of 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, founded by M. Moss and E. Durkheim, later divided into two main directions in the study of isolated communities and cultures. The first 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 anthropology 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. Guerz), "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 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 about society and its impact on the individual has been 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 faiths and other such "strata." The 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 study structures and mechanisms, but to the knowledge of man in all of 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, like "strange oddballs," but each culture deserves respect and tolerance.