Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology
focused on the study of cultural variation
among humans.
It is in contrast to social anthropology,
which perceives cultural variation as a subset
of the anthropological constant.
Cultural anthropology has a rich methodology,
including participant observation (often called
fieldwork because it requires the anthropologist
spending an extended period of time at the
research location), interviews, and surveys.
One of the earliest articulations of the anthropological
meaning of the term "culture" came from Sir
Edward Tylor who writes on the first page
of his 1871 book: "Culture, or civilization,
taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is
that complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any
other capabilities and habits acquired by
man as a member of society."
The term "civilization" later gave way to
definitions given by V. Gordon Childe, with
culture forming an umbrella term and civilization
becoming a particular kind of culture.The
anthropological concept of "culture" 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 have argued that culture is
"human nature", and that all people have a
capacity to classify experiences, encode classifications
symbolically (i.e. in language), and teach
such abstractions to others.
Since humans acquire culture through the learning
processes of enculturation and socialization,
people living in different places or different
circumstances develop 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 originated
in 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
distinct places/circumstances).The rise of
cultural anthropology took place within the
context of the late 19th century, when questions
regarding which cultures were "primitive"
and which were "civilized" occupied the minds
of not only Marx and Freud, but many others.
Colonialism and its processes increasingly
brought European thinkers into direct or indirect
contact with "primitive others."
The relative status of various humans, some
of whom had modern advanced technologies that
included engines and telegraphs, while others
lacked anything but face-to-face communication
techniques and still lived a Paleolithic lifestyle,
was of interest to the first generation of
cultural anthropologists.
Parallel with the rise of cultural anthropology
in the United States, social anthropology,
in which sociality is the central concept
and which focuses on the study of social statuses
and roles, groups, institutions, and the relations
among them—developed as an academic discipline
in Britain and in France.
The umbrella term socio-cultural anthropology
draws upon both cultural and social anthropology
traditions.
== Theoretical foundations ==
=== The critique of evolutionism ===
Anthropology is concerned with the lives of
people in different parts of the world, particularly
in relation to the discourse of beliefs and
practices.
In addressing this question, ethnologists
in the 19th century divided into two schools
of thought.
Some, like Grafton Elliot Smith, argued that
different groups must have learned from one
another somehow, however indirectly; in other
words, they argued that cultural traits spread
from one place to another, or "diffused".
Other ethnologists argued that different groups
had the capability of creating 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 (See also classical social evolutionism).
Morgan, in particular, acknowledged that certain
forms of society and culture could not possibly
have arisen before others.
For example, industrial farming could not
have been invented before simple farming,
and metallurgy could not have developed without
previous non-smelting processes involving
metals (such as simple ground collection or
mining).
Morgan, like other 19th century social evolutionists,
believed there was a more or less orderly
progression from the primitive to the civilized.
20th-century anthropologists largely reject
the notion that all human societies must pass
through the same stages in the same order,
on the grounds that such a notion does not
fit the empirical facts.
Some 20th-century ethnologists, like Julian
Steward, have instead argued that such similarities
reflected similar adaptations to similar environments.
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 that both can plausibly account
for cross-cultural similarities.
But these ethnographers also pointed out the
superficiality of many such similarities.
They noted that even traits that spread through
diffusion often were given different meanings
and function from one society to another.
Analyses of large human concentrations in
big cities, in multidisciplinary studies by
Ronald Daus, show how new methods may be applied
to the understanding of man living in a global
world and how it was caused by the action
of extra-European nations, so highlighting
the role of Ethics in modern anthropology.
Accordingly, most of these anthropologists
showed less interest in comparing cultures,
generalizing about human nature, or discovering
universal laws of cultural development, than
in understanding particular cultures in those
cultures' own terms.
Such ethnographers and their students promoted
the idea of "cultural relativism", the view
that one can only understand another person's
beliefs and behaviors in the context of the
culture in which he or she lived or lives.
Others, such as Claude Lévi-Strauss (who
was influenced both by American cultural anthropology
and by French Durkheimian sociology), have
argued that apparently similar patterns of
development reflect fundamental similarities
in the structure of human thought (see structuralism).
By the mid-20th century, the number of examples
of people skipping stages, such as going from
hunter-gatherers to post-industrial service
occupations in one generation, were so numerous
that 19th-century evolutionism was effectively
disproved.
=== Cultural relativism ===
Cultural relativism is a principle that was
established as axiomatic in anthropological
research by Franz Boas and later popularized
by his students.
Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "...civilization
is not something absolute, but ... is relative,
and ... our ideas and conceptions are true
only so far as our civilization goes."
Although Boas did not coin the term, it became
common among anthropologists after Boas' death
in 1942, to express their synthesis of a number
of ideas Boas had developed.
Boas believed that the sweep of cultures,
to be found in connection with any sub-species,
is so vast and pervasive that there cannot
be a relationship between culture and race.
Cultural relativism involves specific epistemological
and methodological claims.
Whether or not these claims require a specific
ethical stance is a matter of debate.
This principle should not be confused with
moral relativism.
Cultural relativism was in part a response
to Western ethnocentrism.
Ethnocentrism may take obvious forms, in which
one consciously believes that one's people's
arts are the most beautiful, values the most
virtuous, and beliefs the most truthful.
Boas, originally trained in physics and geography,
and heavily influenced by the thought of Kant,
Herder, and von Humboldt, argued that one's
culture may mediate and thus limit one's perceptions
in less obvious ways.
This understanding of culture confronts anthropologists
with two problems: first, how to escape the
unconscious bonds of one's own culture, which
inevitably bias our perceptions of and reactions
to the world, and second, how to make sense
of an unfamiliar culture.
The principle of cultural relativism thus
forced anthropologists to develop innovative
methods and heuristic strategies.
Boas and his students realized that if they
were to conduct scientific research in other
cultures, they would need to employ methods
that would help them escape the limits of
their own ethnocentrism.
One such method is that of ethnography: basically,
they advocated living with people of another
culture for an extended period of time, so
that they could learn the local language and
be enculturated, at least partially, into
that culture.
In this context, cultural relativism is of
fundamental methodological importance, because
it calls attention to the importance of the
local context in understanding the meaning
of particular human beliefs and activities.
Thus, in 1948 Virginia Heyer wrote, "Cultural
relativity, to phrase it in starkest abstraction,
states the relativity of the part to the whole.
The part gains its cultural significance by
its place in the whole, and cannot retain
its integrity in a different situation."
=== 
Theoretical approaches ===
== 
Foundational thinkers ==
=== Lewis Henry Morgan ===
Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), a lawyer
from Rochester, New York, became an advocate
for and ethnological scholar of the Iroquois.
His comparative analyses of religion, government,
material culture, and especially kinship patterns
proved to be influential contributions to
the field of anthropology.
Like other scholars of his day (such as Edward
Tylor), Morgan argued that human societies
could be classified into categories of cultural
evolution on a scale of progression that ranged
from savagery, to barbarism, to civilization.
Generally, Morgan used technology (such as
bowmaking or pottery) as an indicator of position
on this scale.
=== Franz Boas, founder of the modern discipline
===
Franz Boas established academic anthropology
in the United States in opposition to Morgan's
evolutionary perspective.
His approach was empirical, skeptical of overgeneralizations,
and eschewed attempts to establish universal
laws.
For example, Boas studied immigrant children
to demonstrate that biological race was not
immutable, and that human conduct and behavior
resulted from nurture, rather than nature.
Influenced by the German tradition, Boas argued
that the world was full of distinct cultures,
rather than societies whose evolution could
be measured by how much or how little "civilization"
they had.
He believed that each culture has to be studied
in its particularity, and argued that cross-cultural
generalizations, like those made in the natural
sciences, were not possible.
In doing so, he fought discrimination against
immigrants, blacks, and indigenous peoples
of the Americas.
Many American anthropologists adopted his
agenda for social reform, and theories of
race continue to be popular subjects for anthropologists
today.
The so-called "Four Field Approach" has its
origins in Boasian Anthropology, dividing
the discipline in the four crucial and interrelated
fields of sociocultural, biological, linguistic,
and archaic anthropology (e.g. archaeology).
Anthropology in the United States continues
to be deeply influenced by the Boasian tradition,
especially its emphasis on culture.
=== Kroeber, Mead and Benedict ===
Boas used his positions at Columbia University
and the American Museum of Natural History
to train and develop multiple generations
of students.
His first generation of students included
Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Edward Sapir
and Ruth Benedict, who each produced richly
detailed studies of indigenous North American
cultures.
They provided a wealth of details used to
attack the theory of a single evolutionary
process.
Kroeber and Sapir's focus on Native American
languages helped establish linguistics as
a truly general science and free it from its
historical focus on Indo-European languages.
The publication of Alfred Kroeber's textbook,
Anthropology, marked a turning point in American
anthropology.
After three decades of amassing material,
Boasians felt a growing urge to generalize.
This was most obvious in the 'Culture and
Personality' studies carried out by younger
Boasians such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict.
Influenced by psychoanalytic psychologists
including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, these
authors sought to understand the way that
individual personalities were shaped by the
wider cultural and social forces in which
they grew up.
Though such works as Coming of Age in Samoa
and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword remain
popular with the American public, Mead and
Benedict never had the impact on the discipline
of anthropology that some expected.
Boas had planned for Ruth Benedict to succeed
him as chair of Columbia's anthropology department,
but she was sidelined by Ralph Linton, and
Mead was limited to her offices at the AMNH.
=== Wolf, Sahlins, Mintz and political economy
===
In the 1950s and mid-1960s anthropology tended
increasingly to model itself after the natural
sciences.
Some anthropologists, such as Lloyd Fallers
and Clifford Geertz, focused on processes
of modernization by which newly independent
states could develop.
Others, such as Julian Steward and Leslie
White, focused on how societies evolve and
fit their ecological niche—an approach popularized
by Marvin Harris.
Economic anthropology as influenced by Karl
Polanyi and practiced by Marshall Sahlins
and George Dalton challenged standard neoclassical
economics to take account of cultural and
social factors, and employed Marxian analysis
into anthropological study.
In England, British Social Anthropology's
paradigm began to fragment as Max Gluckman
and Peter Worsley experimented with Marxism
and authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund
Leach incorporated Lévi-Strauss's structuralism
into their work.
Structuralism also influenced a number of
developments in 1960s and 1970s, including
cognitive anthropology and componential analysis.
In keeping with the times, much of anthropology
became politicized through the Algerian War
of Independence and opposition to the Vietnam
War; Marxism became an increasingly popular
theoretical approach in the discipline.
By the 1970s the authors of volumes such as
Reinventing Anthropology worried about anthropology's
relevance.
Since the 1980s issues of power, such as those
examined in Eric Wolf's Europe and the People
Without History, have been central to the
discipline.
In the 1980s books like Anthropology and the
Colonial Encounter pondered anthropology's
ties to colonial inequality, while the immense
popularity of theorists such as Antonio Gramsci
and Michel Foucault moved issues of power
and hegemony into the spotlight.
Gender and sexuality became popular topics,
as did the relationship between history and
anthropology, influenced by Marshall Sahlins
(again), who drew on Lévi-Strauss and Fernand
Braudel to examine the relationship between
symbolic meaning, sociocultural structure,
and individual agency in the processes of
historical transformation.
Jean and John Comaroff produced a whole generation
of anthropologists at the University of Chicago
that focused on these themes.
Also influential in these issues were Nietzsche,
Heidegger, the critical theory of the Frankfurt
School, Derrida and Lacan.
=== Geertz, Schneider and interpretive anthropology
===
Many anthropologists reacted against the renewed
emphasis on materialism and scientific modelling
derived from Marx by emphasizing the importance
of the concept of culture.
Authors such as David Schneider, Clifford
Geertz, and Marshall Sahlins developed a more
fleshed-out concept of culture as a web of
meaning or signification, which proved very
popular within and beyond the discipline.
Geertz was to state:
"Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an
animal suspended in webs of significance he
himself has spun, I take culture to be those
webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore
not an experimental science in search of law
but an interpretive one in search of meaning."
Geertz's interpretive method involved what
he called "thick description."
The cultural symbols of rituals, political
and economic action, and of kinship, are "read"
by the anthropologist as if they are a document
in a foreign language.
The interpretation of those symbols must be
re-framed for their anthropological audience,
i.e. transformed from the "experience-near"
but foreign concepts of the other culture,
into the "experience-distant" theoretical
concepts of the anthropologist.
These interpretations must then be reflected
back to its originators, and its adequacy
as a translation fine-tuned in a repeated
way, a process called the hermeneutic circle.
Geertz applied his method in a number of areas,
creating programs of study that were very
productive.
His analysis of "religion as a cultural system"
was particularly influential outside of anthropology.
David Schnieder's cultural analysis of American
kinship has proven equally influential.
Schneider demonstrated that the American folk-cultural
emphasis on "blood connections" had an undue
influence on anthropological kinship theories,
and that kinship is not a biological characteristic
but a cultural relationship established on
very different terms in different societies.Prominent
British symbolic anthropologists include Victor
Turner and Mary Douglas.
=== The post-modern turn ===
In the late 1980s and 1990s authors such as
James Clifford pondered ethnographic authority,
in particular how and why anthropological
knowledge was possible and authoritative.
They were reflecting trends in research and
discourse initiated by feminists in the academy,
although they excused themselves from commenting
specifically on those pioneering critics.
Nevertheless, key aspects of feminist theory
and methods became de rigueur as part of the
'post-modern moment' in anthropology: Ethnographies
became more interpretative and reflexive,
explicitly addressing the author's methodology,
cultural, gender and racial positioning, and
their influence on his or her ethnographic
analysis.
This was part of a more general trend of postmodernism
that was popular contemporaneously.
Currently anthropologists pay attention to
a wide variety of issues pertaining to the
contemporary world, including globalization,
medicine and biotechnology, indigenous rights,
virtual communities, and the anthropology
of industrialized societies.
=== Socio-cultural anthropology subfields
===
== Methods ==
Modern cultural anthropology has its origins
in, and developed in reaction to, 19th century
ethnology, which involves the organized comparison
of human societies.
Scholars like E.B.
Tylor and J.G.
Frazer in England worked mostly with materials
collected by others – usually missionaries,
traders, explorers, or colonial officials
– earning them the moniker of "arm-chair
anthropologists".
=== Participant observation ===
Participant observation is one of the principle
research methods of cultural anthropology.
It relies on the assumption that the best
way to understand a group of people is to
interact with them closely over a long period
of time.
The method originated in the field research
of social anthropologists, especially Bronislaw
Malinowski in Britain, the students of Franz
Boas in the United States, and in the later
urban research of the Chicago School of Sociology.
Historically, the group of people being studied
was a small, non-Western society.
However, today it may be a specific corporation,
a church group, a sports team, or a small
town.
There are no restrictions as to what the subject
of participant observation can be, as long
as the group of people is studied intimately
by the observing anthropologist over a long
period of time.
This allows the anthropologist to develop
trusting relationships with the subjects of
study and receive an inside perspective on
the culture, which helps him or her to give
a richer description when writing about the
culture later.
Observable details (like daily time allotment)
and more hidden details (like taboo behavior)
are more easily observed and interpreted over
a longer period of time, and researchers can
discover discrepancies between what participants
say—and often believe—should happen (the
formal system) and what actually does happen,
or between different aspects of the formal
system; in contrast, a one-time survey of
people's answers to a set of questions might
be quite consistent, but is less likely to
show conflicts between different aspects of
the social system or between conscious representations
and behavior.Interactions between an ethnographer
and a cultural informant must go both ways.
Just as an ethnographer may be naive or curious
about a culture, the members of that culture
may be curious about the ethnographer.
To establish connections that will eventually
lead to a better understanding of the cultural
context of a situation, an anthropologist
must be open to becoming part of the group,
and willing to develop meaningful relationships
with its members.
One way to do this is to find a small area
of common experience between an anthropologist
and his or her subjects, and then to expand
from this common ground into the larger area
of difference.
Once a single connection has been established,
it becomes easier to integrate into the community,
and more likely that accurate and complete
information is being shared with the anthropologist.
Before participant observation can begin,
an anthropologist must choose both a location
and a focus of study.
This focus may change once the anthropologist
is actively observing the chosen group of
people, but having an idea of what one wants
to study before beginning fieldwork allows
an anthropologist to spend time researching
background information on their topic.
It can also be helpful to know what previous
research has been conducted in one's chosen
location or on similar topics, and if the
participant observation takes place in a location
where the spoken language is not one the anthropologist
is familiar with, he or she will usually also
learn that language.
This allows the anthropologist to become better
established in the community.
The lack of need for a translator makes communication
more direct, and allows the anthropologist
to give a richer, more contextualized representation
of what they witness.
In addition, participant observation often
requires permits from governments and research
institutions in the area of study, and always
needs some form of funding.The majority of
participant observation is based on conversation.
This can take the form of casual, friendly
dialogue, or can also be a series of more
structured interviews.
A combination of the two is often used, sometimes
along with photography, mapping, artifact
collection, and various other methods.
In some cases, ethnographers also turn to
structured observation, in which an anthropologist's
observations are directed by a specific set
of questions he or she is trying to answer.
In the case of structured observation, an
observer might be required to record the order
of a series of events, or describe a certain
part of the surrounding environment.
While the anthropologist still makes an effort
to become integrated into the group they are
studying, and still participates in the events
as they observe, structured observation is
more directed and specific than participant
observation in general.
This helps to standardize the method of study
when ethnographic data is being compared across
several groups or is needed to fulfill a specific
purpose, such as research for a governmental
policy decision.
One common criticism of participant observation
is its lack of objectivity.
Because each anthropologist has his or her
own background and set of experiences, each
individual is likely to interpret the same
culture in a different way.
Who the ethnographer is has a lot to do with
what he or she will eventually write about
a culture, because each researcher is influenced
by his or her own perspective.
This is considered a problem especially when
anthropologists write in the ethnographic
present, a present tense which makes a culture
seem stuck in time, and ignores the fact that
it may have interacted with other cultures
or gradually evolved since the anthropologist
made observations.
To avoid this, past ethnographers have advocated
for strict training, or for anthropologists
working in teams.
However, these approaches have not generally
been successful, and modern ethnographers
often choose to include their personal experiences
and possible biases in their writing instead.Participant
observation has also raised ethical questions,
since an anthropologist is in control of what
he or she reports about a culture.
In terms of representation, an anthropologist
has greater power than his or her subjects
of study, and this has drawn criticism of
participant observation in general.
Additionally, anthropologists have struggled
with the effect their presence has on a culture.
Simply by being present, a researcher causes
changes in a culture, and anthropologists
continue to question whether or not it is
appropriate to influence the cultures they
study, or possible to avoid having influence.
=== Ethnography ===
In the 20th century, most cultural and social
anthropologists turned to the crafting of
ethnographies.
An ethnography is a piece of writing about
a people, at a particular place and time.
Typically, the anthropologist lives among
people in another society for a period of
time, simultaneously participating in and
observing the social and cultural life of
the group.
Numerous other ethnographic techniques have
resulted in ethnographic writing or details
being preserved, as cultural anthropologists
also curate materials, spend long hours in
libraries, churches and schools poring over
records, investigate graveyards, and decipher
ancient scripts.
A typical ethnography will also include information
about physical geography, climate and habitat.
It is meant to be a holistic piece of writing
about the people in question, and today often
includes the longest possible timeline of
past events that the ethnographer can obtain
through primary and secondary research.
Bronisław Malinowski developed the ethnographic
method, and Franz Boas taught it in the United
States.
Boas' students such as Alfred L. Kroeber,
Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead drew on his
conception of culture and cultural relativism
to develop cultural anthropology in the United
States.
Simultaneously, Malinowski and A.R.
Radcliffe Brown´s students were developing
social anthropology in the United Kingdom.
Whereas cultural anthropology focused on symbols
and values, social anthropology focused on
social groups and institutions.
Today socio-cultural anthropologists attend
to all these elements.
In the early 20th century, socio-cultural
anthropology developed in different forms
in Europe and in the United States.
European "social anthropologists" focused
on observed social behaviors and on "social
structure", that is, on relationships among
social roles (for example, husband and wife,
or parent and child) and social institutions
(for example, religion, economy, and politics).
American "cultural anthropologists" focused
on the ways people expressed their view of
themselves and their world, especially in
symbolic forms, such as art and myths.
These two approaches frequently converged
and generally complemented one another.
For example, kinship and leadership function
both as symbolic systems and as social institutions.
Today almost all socio-cultural anthropologists
refer to the work of both sets of predecessors,
and have an equal interest in what people
do and in what people say.
=== Cross-cultural comparison ===
One means by which anthropologists combat
ethnocentrism is to engage in the process
of cross-cultural comparison.
It is important to test so-called "human universals"
against the ethnographic record.
Monogamy, for example, is frequently touted
as a universal human trait, yet comparative
study shows that it is not.
The Human Relations Area Files, Inc.
(HRAF) is a research agency based at Yale
University.
Since 1949, its mission has been to encourage
and facilitate worldwide comparative studies
of human culture, society, and behavior in
the past and present.
The name came from the Institute of Human
Relations, an interdisciplinary program/building
at Yale at the time.
The Institute of Human Relations had sponsored
HRAF's precursor, the Cross-Cultural Survey
(see George Peter Murdock), as part of an
effort to develop an integrated science of
human behavior and culture.
The two eHRAF databases on the Web are expanded
and updated annually.
eHRAF World Cultures includes materials on
cultures, past and present, and covers nearly
400 cultures.
The second database, eHRAF Archaeology, covers
major archaeological traditions and many more
sub-traditions and sites around the world.
Comparison across cultures includies the industrialized
(or de-industrialized) West.
Cultures in the more traditional standard
cross-cultural sample of small scale societies
are:
=== Multi-sited ethnography ===
Ethnography dominates socio-cultural anthropology.
Nevertheless, many contemporary socio-cultural
anthropologists have rejected earlier models
of ethnography as treating local cultures
as bounded and isolated.
These anthropologists continue to concern
themselves 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 from a local perspective; they
instead combine a focus on the local with
an effort to grasp larger political, economic,
and cultural frameworks that impact local
lived realities.
Notable proponents of this approach include
Arjun Appadurai, James Clifford, George Marcus,
Sidney Mintz, Michael Taussig, Eric Wolf and
Ronald Daus.
A growing trend in anthropological research
and analysis is the use of multi-sited ethnography,
discussed in George Marcus' article, "Ethnography
In/Of the World System: the Emergence of Multi-Sited
Ethnography".
Looking at culture as embedded in macro-constructions
of a global social order, multi-sited ethnography
uses traditional methodology in various locations
both spatially and temporally.
Through this methodology, greater insight
can be gained when examining the impact of
world-systems on local and global communities.
Also emerging in multi-sited ethnography are
greater interdisciplinary approaches to fieldwork,
bringing in methods from cultural studies,
media studies, science and technology studies,
and others.
In multi-sited ethnography, research tracks
a subject across spatial and temporal boundaries.
For example, a multi-sited ethnography may
follow a "thing," such as a particular commodity,
as it is transported through the networks
of global capitalism.
Multi-sited ethnography may also follow ethnic
groups in diaspora, stories or rumours that
appear in multiple locations and in multiple
time periods, metaphors that appear in multiple
ethnographic locations, or the biographies
of individual people or groups as they move
through space and time.
It may also follow conflicts that transcend
boundaries.
An example of multi-sited ethnography is Nancy
Scheper-Hughes' work on the international
black market for the trade of human organs.
In this research, she follows organs as they
are transferred through various legal and
illegal networks of capitalism, as well as
the rumours and urban legends that circulate
in impoverished communities about child kidnapping
and organ theft.
Sociocultural anthropologists have increasingly
turned their investigative eye on to "Western"
culture.
For example, Philippe Bourgois won the Margaret
Mead Award in 1997 for In Search of Respect,
a study of the entrepreneurs in a Harlem crack-den.
Also growing more popular are ethnographies
of professional communities, such as laboratory
researchers, Wall Street investors, law firms,
or information technology (IT) computer employees.
== Topics in cultural anthropology ==
=== Kinship and family ===
Kinship refers to the anthropological study
of the ways in which humans form and maintain
relationships with one another, and further,
how those relationships operate within and
define social organization.
Research in kinship studies often crosses
over into different anthropological subfields
including medical, feminist, and public anthropology.
This is likely due to its fundamental concepts,
as articulated by linguistic anthropologist
Patrick McConvell: Kinship is the bedrock
of all human societies that we know.
All humans recognize fathers and mothers,
sons and daughters, brothers and sisters,
uncles and aunts, husbands and wives, grandparents,
cousins, and often many more complex types
of relationships in the terminologies that
they use.
That is the matrix into which human children
are born in the great majority of cases, and
their first words are often kinship terms.Throughout
history, kinship studies have primarily focused
on the topics of marriage, descent, and procreation.
Anthropologists have written extensively on
the variations within marriage across cultures
and its legitimacy as a human institution.
There are stark differences between communities
in terms of marital practice and value, leaving
much room for anthropological fieldwork.
For instance, the Nuer of Sudan and the Brahmans
of Nepal practice polygyny, where one man
has several marriages to two or more women.
The Nyar of India and Nyimba of Tibet and
Nepal practice polyandry, where one woman
is often married to two or more men.
The marital practice found in most cultures,
however, is monogamy, where one woman is married
to one man.
Anthropologists also study different marital
taboos across cultures, most commonly the
incest taboo of marriage within sibling and
parent-child relationships.
It has been found that all cultures have an
incest taboo to some degree, but the taboo
shifts between cultures when the marriage
extends beyond the nuclear family unit.There
are similar foundational differences where
the act of procreation is concerned.
Although anthropologists have found that biology
is acknowledged in every cultural relationship
to procreation, there are differences in the
ways in which cultures assess the constructs
of parenthood.
For example, in the Nuyoo municipality of
Oaxaca, Mexico, it is believed that a child
can have partible maternity and partible paternity.
In this case, a child would have multiple
biological mothers in the case that it is
born of one woman and then breastfed by another.
A child would have multiple biological fathers
in the case that the mother had sex with multiple
men, following the commonplace belief in Nuyoo
culture that pregnancy must be preceded by
sex with multiple men in order have the necessary
accumulation of semen.
==== Late twentieth-century shifts in interest
====
In the twenty-first century, Western ideas
of kinship have evolved beyond the traditional
assumptions of the nuclear family, raising
anthropological questions of consanguinity,
lineage, and normative marital expectation.
The shift can be traced back to the 1960s,
with the reassessment of kinship's basic principles
offered by Edmund Leach, Rodney Neeham, David
Schneider, and others.
Instead of relying on narrow ideas of Western
normalcy, kinship studies increasingly catered
to "more ethnographic voices, human agency,
intersecting power structures, and historical
contex".
The study of kinship evolved to accommodate
for the fact that it cannot be separated from
its institutional roots and must pay respect
to the society in which it lives, including
that society's contradictions, hierarchies,
and individual experiences of those within
it.
This shift was progressed further by the emergence
of second-wave feminism in the early 1970s,
which introduced ideas of martial oppression,
sexual autonomy, and domestic subordination.
Other themes that emerged during this time
included the frequent comparisons between
Eastern and Western kinship systems and the
increasing amount of attention paid to anthropologists'
own societies, a swift turn from the focus
that had traditionally been paid to largely
"foreign", non-Western communities.Kinship
studies began to gain mainstream recognition
in the late 1990s with the surging popularity
of feminist anthropology, particularly with
its work related to biological anthropology
and the intersectional critique of gender
relations.
At this time, there was the arrival of "Third
World feminism", a movement that argued kinship
studies could not examine the gender relations
of developing countries in isolation, and
must pay respect to racial and economic nuance
as well.
This critique became relevant, for instance,
in the anthropological study of Jamaica: race
and class were seen as the primary obstacles
to Jamaican liberation from economic imperialism,
and gender as an identity was largely ignored.
Third World feminism aimed to combat this
in the early twenty-first century by promoting
these categories as coexisting factors.
In Jamaica, marriage as an institution is
often substituted for a series of partners,
as poor women cannot rely on regular financial
contributions in a climate of economic instability.
In addition, there is a common practice of
Jamaican women artificially lightening their
skin tones in order to secure economic survival.
These anthropological findings, according
to Third World feminism, cannot see gender,
racial, or class differences as separate entities,
and instead must acknowledge that they interact
together to produce unique individual experiences.
==== Rise of reproductive anthropology ====
Kinship studies have also experienced a rise
in the interest of reproductive anthropology
with the advancement of assisted reproductive
technologies (ARTs), including in vitro fertilization
(IVF).
These advancements have led to new dimensions
of anthropological research, as they challenge
the Western standard of biogenetically based
kinship, relatedness, and parenthood.
According to anthropologists Maria C. Inhorn
and Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli, "ARTs have pluralized
notions of relatedness and led to a more dynamic
notion of "kinning" namely, kinship as a process,
as something under construction, rather than
a natural given".
With this technology, questions of kinship
have emerged over the difference between biological
and genetic relatedness, as gestational surrogates
can provide a biological environment for the
embryo while the genetic ties remain with
a third party.
If genetic, surrogate, and adoptive maternities
are involved, anthropologists have acknowledged
that there can be the possibility for three
"biological" mothers to a single child.
With ARTs, there are also anthropological
questions concerning the intersections between
wealth and fertility: ARTs are generally only
available to those in the highest income bracket,
meaning the infertile poor are inherently
devalued in the system.
There have also been issues of reproductive
tourism and bodily commodification, as individuals
seek economic security through hormonal stimulation
and egg harvesting, which are potentially
harmful procedures.
With IVF, specifically, there have been many
questions of embryotic value and the status
of life, particularly as it relates to the
manufacturing of stem cells, testing, and
research.Current issues in kinship studies,
such as adoption, have revealed and challenged
the Western cultural disposition towards the
genetic, "blood" tie.
Western biases against single parent homes
have also been explored through similar anthropological
research, uncovering that a household with
a single parent experiences "greater levels
of scrutiny and [is] routinely seen as the
'other' of the nuclear, patriarchal family".
The power dynamics in reproduction, when explored
through a comparative analysis of "conventional"
and "unconventional" families, have been used
to dissect the Western assumptions of child
bearing and child rearing in contemporary
kinship studies.
==== Critiques of kinship studies ====
Kinship, as an anthropological field of inquiry,
has been heavily criticized across the discipline.
One critique is that, as its inception, the
framework of kinship studies was far too structured
and formulaic, relying on dense language and
stringent rules.
Another critique, explored at length by American
anthropologist David Schneider, argues that
kinship has been limited by its inherent Western
ethnocentrism.
Schneider proposes that kinship is not a field
that can be applied cross-culturally, as the
theory itself relies on European assumptions
of normalcy.
He states in the widely circulated 1984 book
A critique of the study of kinship that "[K]inship
has been defined by European social scientists,
and European social scientists use their own
folk culture as the source of many, if not
all of their ways of formulating and understanding
the world about them".
However, this critique has been challenged
by the argument that it is linguistics, not
cultural divergence, that has allowed for
a European bias, and that the bias can be
lifted by centering the methodology on fundamental
human concepts.
Polish anthropologist Anna Wierzbicka argues
that "mother" and "father" are examples of
such fundamental human concepts, and can only
be Westernized when conflated with English
concepts such as "parent" and "sibling".A
more recent critique of kinship studies is
its solipsistic focus on privileged, Western
human relations and its promotion of normative
ideals of human exceptionalism.
In "Critical Kinship Studies", social psychologists
Elizabeth Peel and Damien Riggs argue for
a move beyond this human-centered framework,
opting instead to explore kinship through
a "posthumanist" vantage point where anthropologists
focus on the intersecting relationships of
human animals, non-human animals, technologies
and practices.
=== Institutional anthropology ===
The role of anthropology in institutions has
expanded significantly since the end of the
20th century.
Much of this development can be attributed
to the rise in anthropologists working outside
of academia and the increasing importance
of globalization in both institutions and
the field of anthropology.
Anthropologists can be employed by institutions
such as for-profit business, nonprofit organizations,
and governments.
For instance, cultural anthropologists are
commonly employed by the United States federal
government.The two types of institutions defined
in the field of anthropology are total institutions
and social institutions.
Total institutions are places that comprehensively
coordinate the actions of people within them,
and examples of total institutions include
prisons, convents, and hospitals.
Social institutions, on the other hand, are
constructs that regulate individuals' day-to-day
lives, such as kinship, religion, and economics.
Anthropology of institutions may analyze labor
unions, businesses ranging from small enterprises
to corporations, government, medical organizations,
education, prisons, and financial institutions.
Nongovernmental organizations have garnered
particular interest in the field of institutional
anthropology because of they are capable of
fulfilling roles previously ignored by governments,
or previously realized by families or local
groups, in an attempt to mitigate social problems.The
types and methods of scholarship performed
in the anthropology of institutions can take
a number of forms.
Institutional anthropologists may study the
relationship between organizations or between
an organization and other parts of society.
Institutional anthropology may also focus
on the inner workings of an institution, such
as the relationships, hierarchies and cultures
formed, and the ways that these elements are
transmitted and maintained, transformed, or
abandoned over time.
Additionally, some anthropology of institutions
examines the specific design of institutions
and their corresponding strength.
More specifically, anthropologists may analyze
specific events within an institution, perform
semiotic investigations, or analyze the mechanisms
by which knowledge and culture are organized
and dispersed.In all manifestations of institutional
anthropology, participant observation is critical
to understanding the intricacies of the way
an institution works and the consequences
of actions taken by individuals within it.
Simultaneously, anthropology of institutions
extends beyond examination of the commonplace
involvement of individuals in institutions
to discover how and why the organizational
principles evolved in the manner that they
did.Common considerations taken by anthropologists
in studying institutions include the physical
location at which a researcher places themselves,
as important interactions often take place
in private, and the fact that the members
of an institution are often being examined
in their workplace and may not have much idle
time to discuss the details of their everyday
endeavors.
The ability of individuals to present the
workings of an institution in a particular
light or frame must additionally be taken
into account when using interviews and document
analysis to understand an institution, as
the involvement of an anthropologist may be
met with distrust when information being released
to the public is not directly controlled by
the institution and could potentially be damaging.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Cultural Anthropology at Wikibooks
Media related to Cultural anthropology at
Wikimedia Commons
Human Relations Area Files
A Basic Guide to Cross-Cultural Research
Webpage "History of German Anthropology/Ethnology
1945/49-1990
The Moving Anthropology Student Network-website
- The site offers tutorials, information on
the subject, discussion-forums and a large
link-collection for all interested scholars
of cultural anthropology
