UNITY OF ANTHROPOLOGY AS A BIO-SOCIAL SCIENCE
It is about one and a half century ago, a new discipline appeared in the academic arena, which was coined under the rubric, called 'Anthropology'. There was a realization that social phenomenon cannot be fully understood or explained sole by the social world independent of the bio-organic phenomenon that was an essential component of the earth from which life itself emerged.
The purpose of this topic is not to trace the traditional dilemma of when and how men evolved (some call it to be 'pre-history') and how their culture transformed over the long history of mankind. The point which seems very pertinent here is to throw some light about how culture and biology intrinsically interacts with each other even in the contemporary world though surprisingly few intellectuals claim that human being has gained total and absolute freedom from the pervasive influence of biology (to put more precisely, 'physical anthropology'). I would emphatically respond to it with the answer 'not at all and never it can happen'.
A curious look, not to speak of careful investigation, will provide ample evidence that the social surroundings and cultural practices of a particular human group silently exerts immense influence on the biology ( in lay word, 'health system') of any human group that manifests itself in the long term over the biological potentials of that group in question. Why doctors often advise the patients of degenerative diseases (coronary heart disease, diabetic mellitus, hypertension, etc :) 'avoid rich fatty foods', 'take some physical exercise daily', and the like apart from costly high powered medicines that become almost indispensable regular food menu.
Food is a culture specific phenomenon which is never devised by a community from the view point of biological consideration. Even when a food habit becomes part of a cultural system, its inventors never work it out from careful nutritional values.
The social environmental variation, such as "urban" and "rural" habitat displays remarkably differential pattern of health and disease among the population. The people of the rural environment are more prone to the dangers of 'infectious disorders" than the urban affluent people and they are relatively immune from the maladies of chronic deadly degenerative disorders mentioned earlier. Why then the pattern of disease differs across cultural variation. The crux of the difference lies in the life ways (culture) which are characteristic feature of the social environments.
Essentially, rural and urban life ways have distinctive implication for biological make up of the segments of respective sectors. The rural habitat demands more manual labor from the people for their livelihood. The energy expenditure falls short of the daily the energy consumption (because of poor inadequate diet and minimum income).
The shortage in the nutritional store leads to a condition of malnutrition and thus consequential high vulnerability to the threat of the infectious diseases. Yet such a nutritional deficit induces a definite protection from the curse of the degenerative disorders.
On the contrary, the urban people are by nature sedentary for their urban livelihood whereas the food intake surpasses the actual nutritional requirement. The continual process of accumulation of energy from excess food seems inevitably deleterious in the long term for transition of the biological disposition.
The process of change of the health condition is anthropologically known as "epidemiological transition". The incidence of the deadly degenerative disorders is markedly higher in the urban population than their urban counterpart. The genetic changes associated with the complex problem of epidemiological transition are permanent: it goes on along the familial line of descent. By contrast, the infectious diseases are never genetically transmitted and can be treated. This shows clearly how society and biology are intertwined with one another.
There are innumerable instances which can be cited in support of this observation. Anthropology as a distinctive area of knowledge will remain unique as long as it stresses on the interaction of both with a unified boundary. It is not a question of triggering a new argument to erase the importance of so called 'pre-history' or 'physical anthropology" at a time when we are more interested to take up assignments as a medical anthropologist.
It is desirable to gain more recent knowledge from the recent revolutionary findings of genetics, molecular biology, and microbiology. Such knowledge will equip the anthropologists of the new century to solve more practical problems that are jeopardizing the population of the present world.
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