Challenge Issue It is a challenge to make sense of who we are. Where did
we come from? Why are we so radically different from some animals and so sur-
prisingly similar to others? Why do our bodies look the way they do? How do we
explain so many different beliefs, languages, and customs? Why do we act in cer-
tain ways? What makes us tick? While some people answer these questions with
biological mechanisms and others with social or spiritual explanations, scholars in
the discipline of anthropology address them through a holistic, integrated approach.
Anthropology considers human culture and biology, in all times and places, as in-
extricably intertwined, each affecting the other in important ways. This photograph,
taken in a specialized maternity clinic in Gujarat, India, provides a case in point.
Since commercial surrogacy—the practice of paying a woman to carry another’s
fetus to term—was legalized in 2002, wealthy childless parents from all over the
globe have traveled to India for this service. Chosen by foreigners because of their
healthy drug-free lifestyle and lower fees, Indian women take on extra biological risk
to make it possible for others to reproduce their genes. Global politics and local cul-
tural practices interact with the seemingly purely biological process of birth. Under-
standing humanity in all its biological and cultural variety, past and present, is the
fundamental contribution of anthropology. In the era of globalization, this contribu-
tion is all the more important. Indeed, the holistic and integrative anthropological
perspective has become essential to human survival.
© New York Times/Stephanie Sinclair/VII Network