(a) Discuss various tools of data collection in conducting anthropological research. (20 marks) (b) Discuss the physiological and…

(a) Tools of Data Collection in Anthropological Research Anthropological data are primary (collected in the field) or secondary (existing records), and the discipline relies on prolonged fieldwork.

Observation: participant observation, pioneered by Malinowski among the Trobriand Islanders (Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 1922) and used in India by Srinivas at Rampura, involves living with the community, learning the language and recording in field notes and diaries. Non-participant observation suits sensitive settings.

Interview: structured interviews and schedules suit comparable data; unstructured and key-informant interviews give depth; life histories and case studies trace individual and group trajectories. Focus group discussions and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) with mapping and ranking involve communities.

Questionnaires and surveys: used for larger samples, including household censuses and sociometry, and mixed with qualitative data (triangulation).

Genealogical method: Rivers (Torres Strait expedition, 1898) used genealogies to record kinship, descent and marriage, and they remain essential for tribal fieldwork.

Physical anthropology: anthropometry, dermatoglyphics, blood-group and genetic sampling.

Visual and technical aids: photography, film, audio recording and GIS or GPS, with informed consent.

Secondary sources: archives, the Census of India, gazetteers, People of India project, ethnographies, court records and Anthropological Survey of India reports.

Primary data give depth, while secondary data give context; good fieldwork combines both, with ethics and reflexivity.

(b) Physiological and Evolutionary Theories of Aging Aging (senescence) is the progressive decline in function and rising mortality with age. Physiological theories explain how it occurs (proximate); evolutionary theories explain why it exists (ultimate).

Physiological theories: the wear-and-tear theory (Weismann) sees use as damaging tissue; the free-radical theory (Harman, 1956) blames oxidative damage by reactive oxygen species; the telomere theory links cell division to telomere shortening and the Hayflick limit, causing cellular senescence; accumulated DNA damage and somatic mutation, protein cross-linking (glycation), immunosenescence and neuroendocrine decline are also cited. Insulin/IGF signalling, mTOR and genes such as FOXO3 (associated with human longevity) link nutrition to lifespan, as in caloric restriction.

Evolutionary theories: natural selection weakens with age, since few individuals live to old age (Hamilton, 1966). Medawar (1952) proposed mutation accumulation: late-acting harmful mutations escape selection. Williams (1957) proposed antagonistic pleiotropy: genes helpful early, harmful late, are selected. Kirkwood's disposable soma theory says limited energy favours reproduction over body repair. Hawkes's grandmother hypothesis explains human post-reproductive life, supported by primate studies on chimpanzees.

(c) Lévi-Strauss on the Structural Analysis of Kinship Lévi-Strauss, in The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), treated kinship as a system of communication among groups, borrowing from Saussure and Jakobson's structural linguistics. He saw structure not in observed behaviour but in underlying rules.

The incest taboo is the universal bridge between nature and culture: it forces people to give women outward, so marriage becomes an exchange of women (alliance theory) among groups, creating social solidarity. Elementary structures prescribe whom one must marry, through cross-cousin marriage; complex structures, such as in Europe, only prohibit certain kin and leave choice to other factors. Restricted exchange occurs between two groups or moieties through bilateral cross-cousin marriage, as in the Australian Kariera. Generalised exchange links three or more groups in a cycle through matrilateral cross-cousin marriage, as among the Kachin and Purum, and is more integrative.

In Structural Anthropology (1958), his kinship atom (brother, sister, father, son, with the avunculate relation to mother's brother) shows paired binary oppositions of attitude between relatives, answering Radcliffe-Brown.

Critique: Leach and Needham questioned its universal claims, and feminists note that women are treated as objects of exchange.