Branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans
For the publication, see Cultural Anthropology (journal).
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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 term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions.[1]
Edward Burnett Tylor, founder of cultural anthropology
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]
^Fisher, William F. (1997). "1997". Annual Review of Anthropology. 26: 439–64. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.439. S2CID 56375779.
^Cunha, Manuela (2014). "The Ethnography of Prisons and Penal Confinement" (PDF). Annual Review of Anthropology. 43: 217–33. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102313-030349. hdl:1822/32800. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.
^"In his earlier work, like many anthropologists of this generation, Levi-Strauss draws attention to the necessary and urgent task of maintaining and extending the empirical foundations of anthropology in the practice of fieldwork.": In Christopher Johnson, Claude Levi-Strauss: the formative years Archived 2023-01-10 at the Wayback Machine, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 31
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