Cultural
Anthropology
Cultural anthropologists study
cultural variation among humans, collect
observations, usually through participant
observation called fieldwork and examine the
impact of global economic and political
processes on local cultural realities.
“Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man or woman as a member of society.”
- Sir Edward Tylor
Since humans acquire culture through a processes of learned behavior and socialization, people living in different places or different circumstances develop different cultures. Anthropologists have also 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).
