Socio-Cultural Anthropology

Definition
Social-cultural anthropology studies the diversity of human
societies in time and space, while looking for commonalities
across them. It uses a holistic strategy—linking local and global,
past and present—to offer various approaches to understanding
contemporary challenges.

anthropology that deals with human culture especially with

respect to social structure, language, law, politics, religion,
magic, art, and technology 
Focus of SCA
• Sociocultural anthropologists explore how people variously
positioned within the world today live and understand the world,
their aspirations and struggles, and how shared systems of
ideas (i.e., culture) relate to the structured ways that people act
and interact in society (i.e., power).
Its difference
• In all its interests, ongoing input from archaeology, biological
anthropology, and linguistics has given sociocultural
anthropology a uniquely broad and deep perspective on the
human condition, and its stream of theory is fed from these
other sources of knowledge about the human condition.
• Exploring how language is learned and shared between
cultures through linguistics. Discovering the meanings of
what people have left behind through archeology.
SOCIAL VS CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
• The key difference between the two discipline is that the social
anthropology is a field of study that focuses on the society
and the social institutions. On the other hand, in cultural
anthropology, the focus is on the culture of a society.
BRANCHES (SUBFIELDS)
• Anthropology of art.
• Cognitive anthropology.
• Anthropology of development.
• Ecological anthropology.
• Economic anthropology.
• Feminist anthropology and anthropology of gender and sexuality.
• Ethnohistory and historical anthropology.
• Kinship and family.
beginning
• 1920s
• 'Social' and 'cultural' anthropology was developed in the 1920s. It
was associated with the social sciences and linguistics rather than
the human biology and archaeology studied in anthropology.
• The earliest and most quoted definition is the one formulated in
1871 by Edward Burnett Tylor: Culture or Civilization, taken in its
wide 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.
METHODS USED BY
ANTHROPOLOGISTS
• The methods of sociocultural anthropology are
primarily ethnographic, through means of qualitative data.
This contrasts with quantitative data, which is the type of data
often used in other anthropological fields, such as archaeology
and physical anthropology.