Cultural Anthropology
In North America;
the discipline's largest branch, cultural anthropology, applies the comparative method
and evolutionary perspective to human culture. Culture represents the entire database
of knowledge, values, and traditional ways of viewing the world, which have been
transmitted from one generation ahead to the next - nongenetically, apart from DNA--
through words, concepts, and symbols.
Cultural anthropologists study humans through a descriptive lens called the
ethnographic method, based on participant observation, in tandem with face-to-face
interviews, normally conducted in the native tongue.
Ethnographers compare what they see and hear themselves with the observations
and findings of studies conducted in other societies. Originally, anthropologists pieced
together a complete way of life for a culture, viewed as a whole. Today, the more likely
focus is on a narrower aspect of cultural life, such as economics, politics, religion or art.
Cultural anthropologists seek to understand the internal logic of another society. It
helps outsiders make sense of behaviors that, like face painting or scarification, may
seem bizarre or senseless.
Through the comparative method an anthropologist learns to avoid "ethnocentrism," the
tendency to interpret strange customs on the basis of preconceptions derived from
one's own cultural background. Moreover, this same process helps us see our own
society--the color "red" again--through fresh eyes.
We can turn the principle around and see our everyday surroundings in a new light, with
the same sense of wonder and discovery anthropologists experience when studying life
in a Brazilian rain-forest tribe.
Though many pictures cultural anthropologists thousands of miles from home residing
in thatched huts amid wicker fences, growing numbers now study U.S. groups instead,
applying anthropological perspectives to their own culture and society.
