Why is the study of society and culture important?
“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” E. Burke. Anthropology, archaeology and sociology all give us insight into where we’ve come from, what mistakes we’ve made and what good things we’ve lost to the passage of time. If we didn’t know about Western Culture 500 years ago, it would be like not remembering your own self after every birthday and having to reinvent your world. We learn beautiful things, like art and music, and we learn much larger ideas like absolute moralities from the crimes of war. A specific example would be: In knowing about the collapse of tribal cultures during colonialization, we can now learn to protect those few remaining uncontacted tribes such as those along the Peruvian Amazon and the Nicobar Islands.
