Anthony Oliver-Smith (Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Florida) is a highly-experienced research essay writer. Just like authors from the write my essay service, he has completed numerous papers that deserved appreciation and good reviews from the scientific community.

One of his best works was a research essay on natural hazards disasters.

What was his anthropological research about?

The professor admitted that this paper closes with a discussion of the possibilities of studying hazards and disasters for building a theory in anthropology, especially in matters of the relationship between man and the environment as well as sociocultural changes.

He indicated that the problem of social change is one of the central, key ones in modern anthropology. Its significance is determined by an applied significance - clarification of the issues that make up the problem of sociocultural dynamics (causes and factors of sociocultural changes, the close and distant prospects of emerging trends, the stages of the dynamic process, etc.), has an important explanatory and prognostic meaning.

The 20th century significantly changed the cultural appearance of modern civilization, and by the beginning of the new millennium, the cultural and economic system of even those ethnic communities that for a relatively long time remained committed to the "traditional" culture turned out to be significantly transformed.

What are socio cultural changes?

Professor Anthony Oliver-Smith is often asked, "What are socio cultural changes?"

As a rule, he explains that the same concept - "social change" - describes transformations related to different levels of social organization (micro-, meso-, macro-level), capturing various spheres of society (environmental, demographic, technological, economic, political, sociocultural, social psychological (etc.) changes), characterized by different dynamic parameters (different speed, scale, complexity, direction).

The category of social changes, therefore, covers any transformation of social structures, practices, the emergence of new or ensuring the functioning of former groups, forms of interaction, and behavior.

Various sources and goals, the influence of different reasons (structural (interests and values of social groups), normative (systems of norms and customs), behavioral (individual preferences) and other factors)), as well as specificity of the course of social changes lead to the fact that they acquire various configurations.

This is why anthropological topics for essay like "social change" or "social dynamics" as the subject of research cannot be considered satisfactory. This, in fact, does little to clarify the question of what exactly the researcher intends to focus on.

These highly ramified categories must be strictly concretized and instrumentalized.

In his paper "Anthropological Research on Hazards and Disasters," Oliver-Smith focused his interest on "significant" socio cultural changes.

And their number can be attributed only to those that are associated with the fundamental transformation of the very structure of a sociocultural community or a situation as a whole. For example, with the transformations of the main social institutions and, which is especially important in the context of the research, with the transformations of value-semantic structures that make up the core of culture.

Since social change per se is highly multivalued and versatile, its study can be carried out within the framework of various theoretical and methodological approaches designed to describe nature and explain the essence and direction of the ongoing transformations.

During the essay writing process, the professor underlined one essential thing. Obviously, the influence of hazards and disasters is quite clearly traced in various spheres of social structure. In particular, it reigns in the economy, political organization, social relations, educational guidelines, culturally accepted concepts of the universe and understanding of the place of man in them, etc.

Overall, Anthony's job made the scientific community discuss anthropological contributions to disaster management, as well as research on hazard perception and risk assessment.