What’s the distinction between sociology and anthropology?
Sociology is the study of your culture, anthropology is the study of other cultures.
The above, pretty much. I majored in Anthropology, and minored in Sociology, and there was about a 75% overlap in classes.
Anthropology also encompasses Archeology (digging up the bones, and cultural artifacts too) and Physical Anthropology (the bones, evolution, and all that) along with Cultural Anthropology.
And Linguistics.
My father has a Ph.D in Sociology. I have a BA in Anthropology.
In my opinion, Sociology observes the behavior of people in herds, for example demography.
Anthropology asks the “why” of what they do, for example ethnography.
But there’s a LOT of overlap.
In the US, professional sociology is predominantly quantitative. I’m a Ph.D. student in sociology who’s never taken an anthro class, but my sense is that anthro (at least cultural anthro) is much more qualitative/ethnographic.
As for the our culture/their culture distinction, I don’t think that holds up. There are plenty of sociologists who study cultures other than their own, and plenty who do cross-national work as well. I assume that there are also anthropologists who study their own cultures.
There’s plenty of room for overlap, though - not just between soc and anthro, but between all the social sciences, and many of the humanities. They’re all about people, just with difference foci.
More a grey area than a line. Traditionally, anthropologists are thought of as the men and women in the pith helmets studying the so-called primitive cultures, but there’s more to the story in modern times. My anthropolgy head in undergrad defined anthropology something along the lines of “the study of man, woman and their culture, wherever on Earth and whenever in history or prehistory they may be found.” He bristled a little at the perception that anthropologists only study other contemperary cultures (he taught a class on the anthropology of the United States), saying that the focus of modern anthropology was on all aspects of mankind, physical, cultural, societal, historical, and otherwise. Like BetsQ said, a large percentage of sociologists do study their own society and a large percentage of anthropologists study other cultures, but there are a significant number of sociologists who study other societies and anthropologists who study their own cultures.
I am an anthropology student, but I don’t have very much experience in sociology. It seems to me that anthropology is much more holistic, evaluating as many variables and interrelationships as possible, though I say this with only a limited understanding of sociology. In anthropology, a single study might encompass different fields like biology, chemistry, ethnography, human anatomy, history, cartography, etc.
As far as study of one’s own culture goes, I have done some ethnographic fieldwork (survey and interview) in my own hometown, and I’ve participated in an extensive archaeological survey of an orphanage that operated from 1895-1950ish (by no means ancient), which was actually located on part of my school’s present campus.