Why Study Anthropology?

Anthropology concerns itself with the entire range of human activities and achievements: past, present and future. In this era of rapid globalization, it has become increasingly important to understand the world, how humans adapt to and transform their natural and social environments, and how we relate to one another. An understanding of the institutional, cultural and social causes of global problems and solutions can be meaningfully explored through the lens of anthropology. The anthropology program at Seton Hall provides students with the tools to analyze and understand the complex, increasingly pluralistic and rapidly changing world in which we find ourselves in the twenty-first century. Human rights and social justice, environmental challenges, power relations between countries and cultures and a heightened awareness of inequality in terms of race ethnicity, gender, sexuality, access to the world’s resources as well as solutions to these inequalities, are all issues about which anthropology concerns itself.

A major or minor in anthropology provides students with uniquely holistic foundation in the liberal arts, the social sciences, the biological sciences and the humanities. Students receive a well rounded education with many opportunities for specialization in a number of different areas drawn from anthropology’s holistic approach to the study of human beings and their relationship to the non-human world of living beings and the environment. Many of our graduates find work in the public sector at governmental institutions, cultural institutions and social service organizations which address a number of pressing issues in these economically and politically troubled times. The private sector is also a rich source of employment for anthropology majors. Most international corporations hire students trained in ethnographic research to work in their product development and marketing departments as well as in their public relations and outreach departments. With a major or minor in anthropology our graduates have also gone on to study anthropology at the graduate level, diplomatic relations, business, law and law enforcement, medicine, and education. In an increasingly pluralistic world, employers find it both essential and attractive that their prospective employees be capable of navigating their way through the diversity of the world’s cultural, social and political realities with skill and ease.