Cultural anthropology

Cultural anthropology, also called socio-cultural anthropology, is one of
four commonly recognized fields of anthropology, the holistic study of
humanity. It reflects in part a reaction against earlier Western discourses
based on an opposition between "culture" and "nature," according to which
some human beings lived in a "state of nature." Anthropologists argue that
culture IS "human nature," and that all people have a capacity to classify
experiences, encode classifications symbolically, and teach such
abstractions to others. Since culture is learned, people living in different
places have different cultures. Anthropologists have also pointed out that
through culture people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways,
so people living in different environments will often have different
cultures. Much of anthropological theory has been motivated by an
appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local (particular
cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of
connections between people in distant places).

A Brief History

Modern socio-cultural anthropology has its origins in 19th century
"ethnology." Ethnology involves the systematic comparison of human
societies. Scholars like Sir E.B. Tylor and Sir J.G. Frazer in England
worked mostly with materials collected by others -- usually missionaries,
explorers, or colonial officials -- and are today called "arm-chair
anthropologists." Ethnologists were especially interested in why people
living in different parts of the world sometimes had similar beliefs and
practices. Ethnologists in the 19th century were divided: some, like Grafton
Elliot Smith, argued that different groups must somehow have learned from
one another, however indirectly; in other words, they argued that cultural
traits spread from one place to another, or "diffused." Others argued that
different groups were capable of inventing similar beliefs and practices
independently. Some of those who advocated "independent invention," like
Lewis Henry Morgan, additionally supposed that similarities meant that
different groups had passed through the same stages of cultural evolution.

20th century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human
societies must pass through the same stages in the same order. Some 20th
century ethnologists, like Julian Steward, have instead argued that such
similarities reflected similar adaptations to similar environments (see
cultural evolution). Others, like Claude Levi-Strauss, have argued that they
reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of human thought (see
structuralism).

By the 20th century most socio-cultural anthropologists turned to the study
of ethnography, in which an anthropologist actually lives among another
society for a considerable period of time, simultaneously participating in
and observing the social and cultural life of the group. This method was
developed by Bronislaw Malinowski (who conducted fieldwork in the Trobriand
Islands and taught in England) and promoted by Franz Boas (who conducted
fieldwork in Baffin Island and taught in the United States). Although 19th
century ethnologists saw "diffusion" and "independent invention" as mutually
exclusive and competing theories, most ethnographers quickly reached a
consensus that both processes occur, and and that both were plausible
explanations for cross-cultural similarities. But these ethnographers
pointed out that such similarities were often superficial, and that even
traits that spread through diffusion often changed their meaning and
functions as they moved from one society to another. Accordingly, these
anthropologists were less interested in comparing cultures, generalizing
about human nature, or discovering universal laws of cultural development,
than they were in understanding particular cultures in their own terms. They
and their students promoted the idea of "cultural relativism," that a
person's beliefs and behaviors could only be understood in the context of
the culture in which he or she lived.

In the early 20th century socio-cultural anthropology developed in different
forms in Europe and the United States. European "social anthropologists"
focused on observed social behaviors, and "social structure", that is,
relationships among social roles (e.g. husband and wife, or parent and
child) and social institutions (e.g. religion, economy, and politics).
American "cultural anthropologists" focused on the ways people expressed
their view of themselves and their world, espcially in symbolic forms (e.g.
art and myths). These two approaches frequently converged (e.g. kinship is
both a symbolic system and a social institution), and generally complemented
one another. Today almost all socio-cultural anthropologists refer to the
work of both sets of predecessors, and are equally interested in what people
do and what people say.

Today socio-cultural anthropology is still dominated by ethnography.
Nevertheless, many contemporary socio-cultural anthropologists have rejected
earlier models of ethnography that treated local cultures as bounded and
isolated. These anthropologists are still concerned with the distinct ways
people in different locales experience and understand their lives, but they
often argue that one cannot understand these particular ways of life solely
in the local context; one must analyze them in the context of regional or
even global political and economic relations. Notable proponents of this
approach are Arjun Appadurai, James Clifford, Jean Comaroff, John Comaroff,
James Ferguson, Akhil Gupta, George Marcus, Sidney Mintz, Michael Taussig,
Joan Vincent, and Eric Wolf.

   * Eskimo
   * Ainu
   * Native American
   * hunter-gatherers
   * nomads