ABSTRACT
Anthropology, as its Greek roots suggest, is the study of man, or as we would now say, human beings, so we can include women in the definition. Literally it means words about man or human beings. It is generally defined as the scientific study of the physical, social, and cultural development of man. The anthropological study of material culture explained is similar to archaeology, except that the focus is on more contemporary times, objects, and artifacts with which most of us are familiar, and it uses a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject. The central concept in anthropological theory is culture, a term that has been defined in numerous ways by social scientists over the years. Social anthropologist Mary Douglas offers a different perspective on why people buy the things they do or are given the things they have: grid-group theory, which she developed over the course of her long and distinguished career.
