Revision summary
Social anthropology grew from intensive fieldwork in small-scale societies. Sociology grew from industrial class, state, and survey. Malinowski versus Durkheim is the textbook origin split. Srinivas and Béteille show the Indian overlap. The wall is departmental, not a law of nature.
Model answer
Introduction
Social anthropology and sociology both study social relations. They grew from different field habits, scales, and colonial histories.
Body
The usual contrasts
- Social anthropology, after Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, specialised in small-scale, kinship-heavy societies and long fieldwork.
- Sociology, after Durkheim, Weber, and Marx, specialised in industrial classes, the state, and surveys of large populations.
- Method: participant observation versus questionnaire and official statistics, as a crude teaching split.
Why the wall is thin
- M. N. Srinivas brought village India into both rooms. Béteille wrote as sociologist with anthropological closeness.
- Urban ethnography and multi-sited work erased the ‘primitive versus modern’ division.
- In Britain the names marked departments. In India the same village can sit on either syllabus.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD SA[Social anthropology] --> FW[Long fieldwork kinship] SO[Sociology] --> ST[State class survey] BOTH[Village India] --> SA BOTH --> SO
Conclusion
The difference is historical method and scale, not two species of fact. Anthropology’s mark remains intensive fieldwork; sociology’s mark remains the large institutional set.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Society and Culture.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2015 · Q1(b)). View answer →
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Is anthropology only tribes?
No. Cities, labs, and offices are now ordinary fields.
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Does sociology never do ethnography?
It does. The old contrast is a teaching shorthand.
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