Academic Programs

Anthropology, Sociology, and Social Work are three disciplines interested in the study of human behavior. Anthropology is committed to the analysis of human behavior, past and present, across the world; anthropology's four fields have as cornerstones both cultural relativism and the fact of human evolution. Sociology also studies human behavior, though it is more interested in industrialized societies; most often, sociology looks at behavior in groups and institutions as major subjects of study. Social Work takes sociological and anthropological data, as well as information from psychology, social pyschological, family studies, and child development, to come up with theories of human behavior and practice guidelines. Social Work, for instance, has insisted for a number of decades that human behavior is embedded within social networks; lately this set of theories is called Human Behavior in the Social Environment. All three disciplines are united in their passion for resolving issues of social justice; all three disciplines are concerned with empowering the powerless. All three disciplines understand the rootedness and contextuality of human behavior, and all three actively work for equality of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, social class, degrees of physical abilities, and age, among other things. We are proud to be a united department with separate yet sympathetic perspectives.