Anthropology

===Art, media, music, dance and film===
{{Anthropology of art}}

==== Art ====
{{main|Anthropology of art}}

One of the central problems in the anthropology of art concerns the universality of 'art' as a cultural phenomenon. Several anthropologists have noted that the Western categories of 'painting', 'sculpture', or 'literature', conceived as independent artistic activities, do not exist, or exist in a significantly different form, in most non-Western contexts.<ref>Layton, Robert. (1981) ''The Anthropology of Art''.</ref> To surmount this difficulty, anthropologists of art have focused on formal features in objects which, without exclusively being 'artistic', have certain evident 'aesthetic' qualities. Boas' ''Primitive Art'', [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]]' ''The Way of the Masks'' (1982) or Geertz's 'Art as Cultural System' (1983) are some examples in this trend to transform the anthropology of 'art' into an anthropology of culturally specific 'aesthetics'.{{cn|date=September 2022}}

==== Media ====
{{main|Media anthropology}}
[[File:Punu mask Gabon.JPG|thumb|upright|left|A Punu tribe mask, Gabon, Central Africa]]
Media anthropology (also known as the anthropology of media or mass media) emphasizes [[ethnography|ethnographic studies]] as a means of understanding producers, audiences, and other cultural and social aspects of mass media. The types of ethnographic contexts explored range from contexts of media production (e.g., ethnographies of newsrooms in newspapers, journalists in the field, film production) to contexts of media reception, following audiences in their everyday responses to media. Other types include [[cyber anthropology]], a relatively new area of [[internet research]], as well as ethnographies of other areas of research which happen to involve media, such as development work, [[social movement]]s, or health education. This is in addition to many classic ethnographic contexts, where media such as radio, [[newspaper|the press]], [[new media]], and television have started to make their presences felt since the early 1990s.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Spitulnik, Deborah |title=Anthropology and Mass Media|journal=Annual Review of Anthropology|volume=22|page=293|doi=10.1146/annurev.an.22.100193.001453|url=http://www.philbu.net/media-anthropology/Spitulnik_MediaAnthro.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.philbu.net/media-anthropology/Spitulnik_MediaAnthro.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|year=1993}}</ref>

==== Music ====
{{main|Ethnomusicology}}
Ethnomusicology is an academic field encompassing various approaches to the study of music (broadly defined), that emphasize its cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dimensions or contexts instead of or in addition to its isolated sound component or any particular repertoire.

Ethnomusicology can be used in a wide variety of fields, such as teaching, politics, cultural anthropology etc. While the origins of ethnomusicology date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, it was formally termed "ethnomusicology" by Dutch scholar [[Jaap Kunst]] {{circa|1950}}. Later, the influence of study in this area spawned the creation of the periodical ''[[Ethnomusicology (academic journal)|Ethnomusicology]]'' and the [[Society for Ethnomusicology|Society of Ethnomusicology]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Ethnomusicology|url=https://www.britannica.com/science/ethnomusicology|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|access-date=2020-05-09|archive-date=18 September 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200918122551/https://www.britannica.com/science/ethnomusicology|url-status=live}}</ref>

==== Visual ====
{{main|Visual anthropology}}
Visual anthropology is concerned, in part, with the study and production of [[ethnography|ethnographic]] photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, [[new media]]. While the term is sometimes used interchangeably with [[ethnographic film]], visual anthropology also encompasses the anthropological study of visual representation, including areas such as performance, museums, art, and the production and [[reception theory|reception]] of [[anthropology of media|mass media]]. Visual representations from all cultures, such as sandpaintings, tattoos, sculptures and reliefs, cave paintings, scrimshaw, jewelry, hieroglyphs, paintings, and photographs are included in the focus of visual anthropology.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chio |first=Jenny |date=2021-07-26 |title=Visual anthropology |url=https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/visual-anthropology |journal=Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology |language=en}}</ref>