Discuss the role of physical, social and archaeological anthropology in studying tourism.

Role of physical anthropology in studying tourism:

This branch of anthropology apart from studying man as a product of evolutionary process also involves an analysis of human population. Both approaches revolve around a common theme of human variation and adaptation.

This is important because men do not live in a vacuum. They are constantly interacting with the environment.

This field considers such issues as how the environment has affected and continues to affect man’s structure. 

Because this field deals with studying how the human physical form undergoes change this branch of anthropology has had more inputs for the tourism industry than any other.

It is seen from various research conducted that people relatively isolated from others apparently change very slowly in physical form while populations having constant contacts with many structurally diverse people may change rapidly in bodily structure in a relatively short time.

Physical anthropology answers such questions as what happens when people of different varieties interbreed or is there any relationship between a man’s physical type and his temperament, intelligence, special attitudes or behavior in general.

The answers to these questions are the prime concern for tourism policymakers since this plays a significant role in the monitoring of tourism-borne diseases like AIDS.

In many countries like Thailand where sex tourism is practiced these studies contribute towards formulating therapies for educating high-risk groups like sex workers.

Another interesting contribution of physical anthropological studies to tourism is to improve various facilities especially in transportation.

Let us see how. Somatometry a division of anthropology may be defined as systematised technique to measure living body including hand and faces. Different types of instruments have been designed specially to measure different parts of the human body.

Role of social anthropology in studying tourism:

The anthropology of tourism offers an insight into the socio-cultural dimensions of tourism, such as the behaviors of cultures and societies.

International tourists in the second half of the twentieth century started to visit those locations in which many anthropologists had carried out their fieldwork.

The interaction between tourists and local people provided a new source of anthropological inquiry. 

Therefore, traditionally in tourism studies, anthropology tended to deal with the impacts of tourism on the lifestyles, traditions, and cultures of local people, residents or ‘hosts’.

Over the past few decades, anthropologists have started to shift their focus from largely negative ethnographic.

Role of archaeological anthropology in studying tourism:

Archaeological anthropology attempts to trace the origin, growth and development of the culture it the past. It attempts to reconstruct the forms of the past and to trace their growth and development in time.

These studies play the role of detectives in uncovering the past be it pre or post history. The archaeologists in most cases reconstruct the culture of the past from the material remains alone.

Items like buried utensils, weapons, rubber sheets, stone carvings, figures of baked clay, ruins describe something of ancient culture and to relate it to the environment in which it occurred.

We can say that archeologists make a major contribution to our knowledge of cultural history and development. Through many studies archaeologists have decided that cultural evolution has not been equally rapid in different parts of the world.

These records by archaeologists give us many clues as to the ways in which cultures change.

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