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What Is Underlying Anthropology?

What Is Underlying Anthropology?

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Within anthropology, gender is a popular topic of study. This broad topic covers a variety of aspects of a culture, and is included in almost every ethnographic study.
Underlying anthropology is the concept that sex and gender are distinct. While both concepts are related, understanding their difference in meaning is key to understanding anthropological writings. Sex is used to describe the biological characteristics that an individual is born with, while gender is used to describe the social characteristics that a society considers either masculine or feminine.

History

When anthropology originated as a discipline, anthropologists did not consider the differences between sex and gender, and instead saw them as obvious, natural elements.

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