Anth/ro/polog/y/Cultural

• Cultural Anthropology

  • Overview

    • Cultural anthropology studies how people make meaning and organize social life across communities and historical settings. It examines practices, institutions, values, relationships, and the ways people describe their own worlds.
    • The American Anthropological Association describes cultural anthropology as one of the discipline's four fields and emphasizes the study of how people use language, make meaning, and organize social action.

  • Approach

    • Cultural anthropologists observe communities in context and attend to the accounts people give of their own practices. Methods vary by question and community; no single method represents the whole field.
    • Cultural explanations are strongest when they attend to differences within a community as well as differences between communities. Culture is learned and contested, not a fixed trait shared identically by every member of a group.

  • Related concepts

    • Questions about borrowing, ownership, power, and unequal exchange between communities connect cultural anthropology to Cultur/al/Appropriation.

  • Sources

    • American Anthropological Association: What is Anthropology?