Revision summary
The definition blocks anecdote, presentism, and a West-only sample. Boas and Malinowski made fieldwork and comparison the system. Holism joins bones, tools, words, and institutions. All times and places include fossils and Indian villages alike. Objectivity is method, not innocence about colonial power.
Model answer
Introduction
The sentence is a teaching definition of anthropology as one science of humans. Each adjective blocks a common reduction.
Body
Systematic and objective
- Systematic means comparison, genealogy, excavation, and measurement, not traveller’s anecdote. Franz Boas made method the reply to armchair ranking.
- Objective here means controlled observation and the attempt to separate the ethnographer’s values from the report. It does not mean a view from nowhere. Malinowski’s Trobriand diary later showed the strain.
- Emile Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown wanted social facts treated as things. Interpretive workers such as Clifford Geertz kept systematic description while reading public meaning.
Holistic, all times, all places
- Holism joins biology, language, archaeology, and social life. A palaeolithic flake, a kinship term, and a haemoglobin allele are one species’ file.
- All times runs from Australopithecus and the Indian palaeolithic to the factory and the clinic.
- All places refuses a civilised-savage split. Boas, Herskovits, and Srinivas at Rampura treated every society as a full case.
Limits of the slogan
- Objectivity is an ethic of method, not a claim that culture has no power. Feminist and postcolonial critique, after Talal Asad and others, showed how colonial offices shaped the archive.
- Holism is a research programme. No monograph covers everything. The argument still holds as a refusal to study only the West, only the present, or only the gene.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD A[Anthropology] --> SY[Systematic method] A --> O[Disciplined observation] A --> H[Four-field holism] H --> T[All times] H --> P[All places]
Conclusion
Anthropology is systematic comparison, an effort at disciplined observation, and a four-field holism across time and space. The slogan is a charter. Practice must still name power, history, and the observer.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Discuss different forms of primate social organisation
Next question in the 2022 paper (Q2). View answer →
-
Does holistic mean one person does everything?
No. Teams and reading across fields keep holism. The point is not to drop biology or history.
-
Is anthropology only the study of tribes?
No. The charter is humankind. Cities, labs, and courts are inside the same argument.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2022 · Q1(e) · Anthropology GS 1 · 10 marks
Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Learning and Action (PLA). -
2021 · Q8(a) · Anthropology GS 1 · 20 marks
Discuss various tools of data collection in conducting anthropological research
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2022 · Anthropology GS 1 · 10 marks
Debate between formalist and substantivist approaches
Economic Organization
Formalists treat scarcity and choice as universal. Substantivists, after Polanyi, treat reciprocity, redistribution, and market as historical forms. Kula and Nuer cattle show goods locked in kinship and prestige. Spheres of exchange refuse one money. Use both tools: calculation inside an instituted process.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2022 · Anthropology GS 1 · 10 marks
Mesolithic rock art in Indian subcontinent
Mesolithic
Mesolithic paintings sit on Indian sandstone and granite shelters. Bhimbetka, recorded by Wakankar, is the central cluster. Scenes show hunt, dance, and early animal management. Microlith floors tie the pictures to a foraging economy. The art is ritual and record, not a later doodle.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2022 · Anthropology GS 1 · 10 marks
Radcliffe-Brown's ideas on status, role and institution
Functionalism (Malinowski)
Status is a recognised position in social structure. Role is the rights and duties of that position. Institution is the standardised behaviour that holds statuses together. Andaman and Australian fieldwork supplied the cases. The triad is useful if conflict and history are not treated as noise.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.