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 a
posited anthropological constant. The umbrella term sociocultural anthropology includes both
cultural and social anthropology traditions.[1]

Edward Burnett Tylor

Anthropologists have 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).[2]
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.[3]

Contents

 1Comparison with social anthropology

 2History
 3Theoretical foundations
o 3.1The critique of evolutionism
o 3.2Cultural relativism
o 3.3Theoretical approaches
 4Foundational thinkers
o 4.1Lewis Henry Morgan
o 4.2Franz Boas, founder of the modern discipline
o 4.3Kroeber, Mead, and Benedict
o 4.4Wolf, Sahlins, Mintz, and political economy
o 4.5Geertz, Schneider, and interpretive anthropology
o 4.6The post-modern turn
 o 4.7Socio-cultural anthropology subfields
 5Methods
o 5.1Participant observation
o 5.2Ethnography
o 5.3Cross-cultural comparison
o 5.4Multi-sited ethnography
 6Topics in cultural anthropology
o 6.1Kinship and family
 6.1.1Late twentieth-century shifts in interest
 6.1.2Rise of reproductive anthropology
 6.1.3Critiques of kinship studies
o 6.2Institutional anthropology
 7See also
 8References
 9External links

Comparison with social anthropology[edit]

The rubric cultural anthropology is generally applied to ethnographic works that are holistic in
approach, oriented to the ways in which culture affects individual experience, or aim to provide a
rounded view of the knowledge, customs, and institutions of a people. Social anthropology is a term
applied to ethnographic works that attempt to isolate a particular system of social relations such as
those that comprise domestic life, economy, law, politics, or religion, give analytical priority to the
organizational bases of social life, and attend to cultural phenomena as somewhat secondary to the
main issues of social scientific inquiry.[4]
Parallel with the rise of cultural anthropology in the United States, social anthropology developed as
an academic discipline in Britain and in France.[5]

History[edit]
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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."[6] 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.[7]
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 mind of
not only Freud, but many others. Colonialism and its processes increasingly brought European
thinkers into direct or indirect contact with "primitive others."[8] 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.
Theoretical foundations[edit]
The critique of evolutionism[edit]
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".

In the unilineal evolution model at left, all cultures progress through set stages, while in the multilineal
evolution model at right, distinctive culture histories are emphasized.

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.[9]

Cultural relativism[edit]
Main article: 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."[10] 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.
[11]
 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.[citation needed]
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."[12]

Theoretical approaches[edit]
 Actor–network theory  Functionalism
 Cultural materialism  Interpretive
 Culture theory  Political Economy
 Feminism  Practice Theory

Foundational thinkers[edit]
Lewis Henry Morgan[edit]
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[edit]

Main article: Boasian anthropology

Franz Boas (1858–1942), one of the pioneers of modern anthropology, often called the "Father of American
Anthropology"

Franz Boas (1858–1942) 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.[13] 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.
Margaret Mead (1901–1978)

Ruth Benedict in 1937

Kroeber, Mead, and Benedict[edit]

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 (1923) 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 Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and Benedict's The Chrysanthemum
and the Sword (1946) 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 in favor
of Ralph Linton,[14] and Mead was limited to her offices at the AMNH.[15]

Wolf, Sahlins, Mintz, and political economy[edit]

Main articles: Political Economy in anthropology, Eric Wolf, Marshall Sahlins, and Sidney Mintz
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;[16] Marxism became an increasingly popular
theoretical approach in the discipline.[17] 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, 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.[18]