The Anthropology Of Cultural Anthropology

Ethnography tells about a culture and the members that comprise this culture. A definition is the scientific description of the customs and individual people of a culture. The process of doing this assignment allowed me to explore another aspect of a cultural group. I was able to learn extensively about interactions between individuals and how see them as a culture. The group that comprises my ethnography is a cultural group very common to Utah. The culture I focused on was the LDS culture, to be more specific I studied a sub-culture of this group. My subculture was a group of 12 year old adolescents that are a Sunday school class in this culture.

What is anthropology? This is a question that can be answered in numerous ways, but we are going to define it as simple as possible. If we break the word down into its two components it means the study of human beings. “Anthropo” means human beings or human kind and “logy” or “logia” is Greek for the study or knowledge of something. When we put it all together, it is the study of human beings which can be very broad. Anthropology can be broken down into four subfields: physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology.

Anthropology is holistic. Humans are social beings more than anything, but with underlying psychological, biological and cultural connotations. The field of anthropology encompasses everything and anything having to do with humankind throughout history. Anthropology attempts to answer the tough questions about the human condition. What influences our actions? How has our species changed? Why do we look down on other cultures or societies? The questions are endless. It is the anthropologists’ job to try and answer them with unbiased subjectivity in order to come analytical conclusions about us as humans. (Kottak 14). To understand humans and the complexity of our cultures anthropology uses knowledge not only from the social and biological sciences, but also the physical sciences and humanities. In order to cover such a wide base of human history and interaction, anthropology itself has been split up into four different subsets that allow us to delve deeper into the understanding of the human condition. What is common throughout all the subsets is the application of knowledge in an effort to solve human problems. Throughout history though, the problems we have faced as humans have not always been the same. In fact they often change from generation to generation. For anthropology to keep up with these changes it’s had to

Culture is one of the most relevant elements that can define not only a society but also a country’s cumulative beliefs and system. Often noted as the origins of a country, culture is definitive in the sense that it harbors all the elements that can provide justification on the traditions and norms set by the society for its members. More often than not, the society members follow norms in order to create a harmonious community, and the beliefs and the traditions serve as the poles or grounding rules for each member to follow. Culture is very dynamic in the way that it can change over a variety of foreign influences but what is permanent about it is that original elements about it often lingers with the influences, therefore making it multi-faceted and broad. More importantly, culture serves as an individual and unique trait each society has, and therefore sets it apart from other countries and other societies.

Culture is a strong determinant of people's views of the very nature and meaning of

This interpretation must make meaning from the culture in the same way that natives draw meaning. According to Spradley (1979), the structural components of cultural meaning come from what people say, what they do, and what artifacts they use (p. 9). In anthropological field work, he or she attempts to observe and document these cultural aspects. In addition, and more importantly, the anthropologist must then, as accurately as possible, make inferences which parallel those of the natives.

“The Tall and the Short of It” by Barry Bogin in 1998 show the prime example for applying anthropological theories in order to understand the evolution of the human process. This article show how anthropology is used to reaffirm and or disapproves the scientific theories about human development. Bogin shows through Biology Anthropology by explaining the characteristics of genetic of the mother along with the environment can change over time. In “The Tall and the short of It” Bogin show how the different concepts of anthropology (Biological anthropology) is used to show how the external environment along with the internal environment process help shapes human development.

Culture can be defined as the behaviours and belief characteristics of a particular social, ethnic,

Different societies exist throughout the world and within these societies each society develops culture that works best for them. Within these cultures they pass all their acquired knowledge and traditions down from generation to generation. Nevertheless, each culture has their own way of life, own marriage beliefs, their own values and feelings on life and religious beliefs. Cultures tend to have their own way to run their government, and ways to keep their economy up to their standards. Most importantly in cultural anthropology it is imperative to value culture relativism. This is the view in which no culture is superior to other

There are numerous definitions of culture but I will use the definition of the interpretive approach and Clifford Geertz’s, which defines culture as a meaning system which members use to interpret the world around them. Culture

Culture is the aquired knowledge that people use to interpret, experience, and generate social behavior.

Culture is a system of beliefs that are shared and communicated within a certain group of

Culture is one of the major influences on our lives and social interactions; culture is associated with our characteristics of religion, societal norms of behavior; moreover, culture is always changing and the influence increases. With every religion there are traditions and cultures that are a form of art as it involves many characteristics’ of individuals and their beliefs, values, and perspective, for this reason, there are various dynamics in terms of how culture is involved and the influence of our actions, such as media, peers, family, and socializations. Culture is a factor of social environment and what is modeled to us in our early years of development.

The idea behind anthropology of asking what it means to be human and your role in life is something that I feel like everyone is trying to

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1962) identify over 150 scientific definitions of the concept of culture. Indeed, many authors have tried to define culture and this is why there are so many definitions and that a unique one is hard to find. First of all, Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) assume that culture is a suite of patterns, implicit and explicit, “of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts” (p.47). Later, Hofstede adds that culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1991, p.51). This definition is the most widely accepted one amongst practitioners. For Winthrop (1991), culture is the distinctive models of thoughts, actions and values that composed members of a society or a social group. In other words,