Cultural Anthropology

The term “anthropology” derives from a combination of the Greek words antropos, or human, and logos, or knowledge/science. It means, then, the knowledge and research of human beings. Cultural anthropology, in turn, is the research of humans as cultural and social creatures. Instead of human biology or psychology it is interested in the diverse cultures and societies which humans have created throughout their history around the globe. As cultural anthropologists, we seek to understand different cultures in their own terms and examine how cultures shape the thoughts and actions of all humans, ourselves included. Cultural anthropology is equally interested in the unique characteristics of different cultures and the commonalities that link diverse cultures. Thus the field is often characterized by a comparative perspective.

What, then, is culture? To cultural anthropologists “culture” means all the customs, habits, values, attitudes, and beliefs which an individual learns as a member of her or his society. Thus, culture means the ways of acting and ways of thinking that are typical to a particular community; it entails things as diverse as economies, subsistence strategies, arts and crafts, religions, ideas about gender, and social structures of power and inequality. Each human society has a culture (or, quite commonly, various cultures and sub-cultures) and the actions and thoughts of each individual are shaped by her or his cultural background.

The research interests of cultural anthropology are extremely diverse. In the past, cultural anthropologists, most of whom were Europeans or Euro-Americans, concentrated primarily on the study of remote and, from their perspective, “exotic” peoples. However, since the 1960s it has been increasingly common for all anthropologists, Europeans included, to conduct research in their own societies and about their own cultures. Thus, one can today easily find researchers focusing in themes as diverse as Inuit myths, nationalism in the Internet, exchange networks among native New Guineans, gender ideologies among urban American teenagers, or the effects of globalization on the life-ways of Finnish farmers.

The field of cultural anthropology can be divided into numerous special fields, each of which concentrates on a particular theme or aspect of the socio-cultural life. Such special fields include for example anthropology of religion, economic anthropology, anthropology of art, and political anthropology. In each field research is furthermore done from a variety of theoretical perspectives, adding to the internal diversity of the discipline of cultural anthropology.

Cultural anthropologists have traditionally sought knowledge and understanding of the cultures and societies they study through practices known collectively as “ethnographic fieldwork”. This means that we spend time with the people we study, live with them, talk with them, participate in their lives, and document it with notes, tapes, photos, and videos. As such research puts the researcher and the “objects” of the research in intimate contact with one another, the ethical responsibilities of a fieldworker are great. Therefore cultural anthropologists maintain that fieldwork, as well as all anthropological research, ought to be made in close co-operation with the people whom they wish to study. In addition to fieldwork, cultural anthropologists commonly analyze various kinds of archival materials and popular media in their efforts to grasp the customs, values, worldviews, and politics shaping human lives in different societies.