AANT100 - Cultural Anthropology: Understanding Theories and Methods

This essay delves into the realm of cultural anthropology, elucidating its significant role in comprehending human behavior and societies across diverse cultures and time periods. It highlights the core principles of cultural anthropology, emphasizing the study of cultural variation, the origin and development of human culture, and adaptation to the environment. The essay further explores ethnographic methods, including emic and etic approaches, used by cultural anthropologists to record and interpret cultural data. It differentiates cultural anthropology from other subfields like physical, archaeological, and linguistic anthropology, while acknowledging their shared focus on humanity. The document concludes by underscoring the importance of cultural anthropology in understanding the complexities of human existence and cultural diversity. Desklib offers a platform to explore similar solved assignments and study resources.

Running head: CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
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1CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology is the science of humanity involving the study of humans, human
behaviour and societies in past and present (Marcus & Fischer, 2014). The subject is manifested
best as a scientific study of human culture and societies covering past and present throughout the
world. Anthropology provides a holistic approach to study humankind. There are four subfields
in anthropology that give necessary time and opportunity to the anthropologists to study the
entire variety present in human species. The four subfields are Cultural anthropology,
archaeology, biological anthropology and linguistic anthropology (Scupin & DeCorse 2016).
This easy is on the cultural anthropology and its contribution to understanding human
experience. The essay also discusses the theories and methods that are used in cultural
anthropology and the way this subfield is different than other three subfields.
Cultural anthropology is the branch of anthropology precisely on the study of cultural
variation among humans. It deals with the origin, history and development of human culture.
Often cultural anthropologist study groups that have different goals, values, views of reality and
environmental adaptation than the one they belong (Lewis, 2017). Through the cultural
anthropology, it is found that culture is learned and it is through the culture that one adapts to the
environment. Firstly, the specific field was restricted to the societies termed as “primitive,
savage, tribal and traditional.” Since the early anthropologists were European and North
American, the primary interest was on the societies that were different than them. However,
today anthropologist studies have gone beyond that boundary to study more than simple tribal,
traditional or primitive society. The study of cultural anthropology has extended to village
communities with modern societies as well as cities and industrial enterprises.
After covering the contribution made by the cultural anthropologist in understanding the
human behaviour and humankind, it is essential to know the way anthropologist record and

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represent cultural data and use them to address theoretical issues. Anthropology is a sphere of
science that deals with the objective collection and recording of empirical data as well as the
treatment of their findings in term of an explanatory system.
Ethnography: The process of recording and representing a type of culture of a specific
group of people is called ethnography. It is a fieldwork method which studies the features,
patterns and principles of coherent integration (Bernard & Gravlee, 2014). The process of
producing ethnography is on the basis of primary data on field observation of the selected culture
group. The cultural anthropologists are also named as ethnographers. The field work involves
interviews and conversation with the culture group through longitudinal research and observation
of the participants. In this method, data collected by the anthropologist will have handwritten
notes that are made during the observations, interpretations from the conversation with the
sample or the group of people selected for observation, survey data as well as demographic
statistics. There are two kinds of field works, emic and etic. The emic approach refers to the field
research where the knowledge and viewpoints are obtained within the social group, and the etic
approach is when the similar function is performed from outside of the social group (Takhar-Lail
& Chitakunye, 2015). The emic approach is always viewing from local people’s perspective, the
way local people perceive and categorize the world, the set of believes they have along with the
regulations they follow, also the way they imagine and explain feelings and experiences
(Whitaker, 2017). In the etic approach, the members tend to be very involved with themselves,
therefore, the ethnographers observe and interpret their culture impartially.
Like the other four subfields, the cultural anthropology also deals with the human
behaviour and humankind. It talks about human and humanity of different societies and different
time zones and the emergence of human life. However, the cultural anthropology is only in the

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sphere of culture, and it examines similarities and dissimilarities among various cultures of the
world. The other subfields of anthropology, physical anthropology, archaeological anthropology
and linguistic anthropology deal with different aspects such as human as biological organisms,
historic and prehistoric way, the aspect of language of different societies and culture. Since all
the elements have own area of studies, these subfields are different from one another, however,
dealing with only human being also makes them similar to each other.

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References:
Bernard, H. R., & Gravlee, C. C. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of methods in cultural anthropology.
Rowman & Littlefield.
Lewis, I. (2017). Social and cultural anthropology in perspective: Their relevance in the modern
world. Routledge.
Marcus, G. E., & Fischer, M. M. (2014). Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental
moment in the human sciences. University of Chicago Press.
Scupin, R., & DeCorse, C. R. (2016). Anthropology: A global perspective. Pearson Education.
Takhar-Lail, A., & Chitakunye, P. (2015). Reflexive introspection: Methodological insights from
four ethnographic studies. Journal of Business Research, 68(11), 2383-2394.
Whitaker, E. M. (2017). Emic and Etic Analysis. The Wiley
‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social
Theory, 1-2.