Anthropology in SIL promotes sociocultural awareness, supports ethnographic research, and provides resources for cultural documentation.

Anthropology has historically explored the details of human existence. It offers ways to help understand people and their sociocultural environments.

Sociocultural environments influence people’s behavior and help define their identity. Society is the organizational and structural scaffolding that surrounds people, while culture refers to the meaning generated within the social environment. Understanding society and culture means being able to comprehend a complex web of tradition and change, physical and symbolic, sacred and mundane. As environments change, so do people and vice versa. The dynamic interaction between people and their environments produces a fascinating array of diversity. Building awareness of these complexities through training, research and technical resources is the goal of Anthropology in SIL.

Training: SIL training programs offer intensive introductions to cultural anthropology and field methods.

Research: SIL promotes ethnographic research and publishes its findings in books, journals and online at Ethnologue.com and SIL Electronic Working Papers.

Resources: SIL produces software tools designed for ethnographic research.